Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2014-06-25
US National Archives enshrines Wikipedia in Open Government Plan, plans to upload all holdings to Commons
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The US National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) has committed to engaging with Wikimedia projects in their newest Open Government Plan. The biannual effort is a roadmap for how the agency will accomplish its goals in the digital age. In the first plan, issued in 2010, Archivist of the United States David Ferriero wrote "the cornerstone of the work that we do every day is the belief that citizens have the right to see, examine, and learn from the records that document the actions of their Government. But in this digital age, we have the opportunity to work and communicate more efficiently, effectively, and in completely new ways."
These "new ways" included reaching out to Wikipedia, starting in 2011 with the hiring of Dominic McDevitt-Parks as a Wikipedian in residence. The position began as a student internship, but McDevitt-Parks has since moved to being a digital content specialist with a specialty in the Wikimedia sites. Ferriero has spoken at multiple Wikimedia events, including the Wikipedia in Higher Education summit in 2011 (see Signpost coverage) and Wikimania 2012 (video; transcript; Signpost coverage). He has been frequently quoted saying varying forms of "if Wikipedia is good enough for the Archivist of the United States, maybe it should be good enough for you."
How has the Wikimedia movement benefited from NARA and McDevitt-Parks' placement? There are three organized projects dedicated to NARA. On Wikisource, NARA has an ongoing initiative that is transcribing US government documents. On Commons, NARA has uploaded over 100,000 images, the most recent of which came a month ago. The English Wikipedia has gone into action with several articles related to images from NARA, such as Desegregation in the United States Marine Corps. The site has benefited with several images uploaded for specific users, such as living Medal of Honor recipients, like Charles H. Coolidge, and the lead images for three US battleship articles: Pennsylvania-class battleship, USS Arizona (BB-39), and South Carolina-class battleship (Editor's note: the author of this article has made significant contributions to the last three pages).
All of that is in the past, though. The Open Government Plan lays out what NARA wants to accomplish in the next two years; but as a general plan it suffers from a lack of specifics. The Signpost contacted McDevitt-Parks to learn what the inclusion of Wikipedia in this plan will mean for the site.
He told us that there is no quantitative target for a total number of image uploads, because NARA plans to upload all of its holdings to Commons. "The records we have uploaded so far contain some of the most high-value holdings (e.g. Ansel Adams, Mathew Brady, war posters)", he said. "However, we are not limiting ourselves to particular collections. Our approach has always been simply to upload as much as possible ... to make them as widely accessible to the public as possible."
To accomplish this, volunteers are working with NARA on a new upload script to port images to Commons; the work in progress is posted on Github. At NARA itself, an API is in development that will make it easier to extract the metadata of the images. Given these efforts, McDevitt-Parks says that they will "allow us to more easily upload all of our existing digitized holdings to Wikimedia Commons and similar third-party platforms, and also that in the future upload to platforms like Commons will be the end of all digitization. Looking at it this way, I would say that in a way all of our digitization efforts are also for upload to Wikimedia Commons."
In the meantime, the special requests process—the first pilot launched by NARA when McDevitt-Parks began his tenure—is still available for Wikipedia editors. In the future, they hope that this ad hoc arrangement can be supplemented with a volunteer citizen scanning program that will be able to "generate greater Wikipedian-initiated digitization."
What do the Vietnamese, Waray-Waray, and Swedish Wikipedias all have in common?
5, 10, and 15 years ago
31 August 2022
Four billion words and a few numbers
28 December 2021
Progress at Wikipedia Library and Wikijournal of Medicine
28 June 2020
The deprecation of Persondata; RfA – A broken process; Complaints from users on Swedish Wikipedia
3 June 2015
US National Archives enshrines Wikipedia in Open Government Plan, plans to upload all holdings to Commons
25 June 2014
Swedish Wikipedia's millionth article leads to protests; WMF elections—where are all the voters?
19 June 2013
Picture of the Year voting begins; Internet culture covered in Sweden and consulted in Russia; brief news
2 May 2011
Report from the Swedish Wikipedia
21 August 2006
The Vietnamese and Philippines-based Waray-Waray Wikipedias have crossed the one million article rubicon—the tenth and eleventh to do so. Just like the Swedish Wikipedia, the sites have attained this symbolic milestone with the help of bots, a process that has divided opinions among Wikimedians from several languages. For example, for a previous Signpost article on the topic, German Wikipedian Achim Raschka pointed us to an entry Denis Diderot wrote for the Encyclopédie, titled "Aguaxima". Diderot lamented that all they knew about the Aguaxima was that it was a plant in Brazil, yet he still had to describe it: "If all the same I mention this plant here, along with several others that are described just as poorly, then it is out of consideration for certain readers who prefer to find nothing in a dictionary article or even to find something stupid than to find no article at all."
In an email to the Wikimedia-l mailing list, Vietnamese Wikipedian Minh Nguyen wrote that some editors on the site shared similar concerns and were "alarmed" at the sharp uptick in bot-created articles. Yet at the same time, crossing the one million article mark with a high proportion of auto-articles led the community to look at its small size—its roughly 1250 active editors is less than the Catalan Wikipedia, a language with almost 60 million less speakers—and they are taking steps to ease the learning curves of new editors.
The question of active users is even more pertinent for fellow millionaire Waray-Waray, which has just 71 active users. The related Cebuano Wikipedia, which has also embraced bot-created articles and will soon join the million article club, has even fewer.
Meanwhile, the Swedish Wikipedia's article-creation bot has started editing again. The bot's operator told the Signpost that the source code has been rewritten to use the most recent references, though it is currently mostly operating on the Waray-Waray and Cebuano Wikipedias, which will soon also have one million articles. Other Wikipedias, such as Farsi (mostly spoken in Iran), have also expressed an interest in the bot's operation. Why have other Wikipedias not adopted similar processes, aside from those (like the English and German) that have philosophical objections? Lsj believes "it is mostly a matter of whether there is somebody who knows both bots and the target language well enough, and is prepared to devote the time required. Small language versions likely do not have such a person."
- This article was updated after publication with information and comments from Minh Nguyen.
In brief
- Commons devolving into full-blown URAA conflict: Battle lines have formed over the past few months with a split in the Commons community over the American Uruguay Round Agreements Act, which restored US copyrights on several works. While arguments over the Commons mission have gone on for years (in the Signpost in the past year alone—op-ed, reply, and forum), the URAA debate came to a head only recently with a large community request for comment. This was closed with a strong majority in favor of disallowing deletions based on URAA alone, but a subsequent discussion was rejected both on legal grounds and as being, in the words of several editors, "unclear". Recent discussions have taken place on the Wikimedia-l mailing list, but the current situation is muddled. A new proposal to break the deadlock has been started on Commons' administrators' noticeboard, but Wikimedia Foundation board member Samuel Klein has quickly suggested a major change that would modify Commons' policy to read "Keep something that is public domain in its country of origin, as long as there is reason to believe that rights-holders would want it to be used in the rest of the world."
- Wiknics: US and Dutch Wikimedians are organizing Wiknics for early July.
- Wikimania volunteers needed: The organizers of this year's London Wikimania have issued a call for volunteers to serve in a number of capacities during the conference week (8–10 August).
- Engineering goals: The Wikimedia Foundation's Engineering and Product Development department is currently formulating its goals for the 2014–15 fiscal year. Editors are invited to contribute their views on the draft plan's talk page.
- Quarterly reviews: Three quarterly reviews have been published on Meta: the editing team (formerly VisualEditor), Parsoid team, and Analytics team. Quarterly reviews aim to ensure accountability and allow senior Foundation staff to offer specific guidance to their proliferous and diverse initiatives.
Reader comments
Fake war, or real sport?
Despite the interest generated by its season finale, Game of Thrones still couldn't top the World Cup, which still dominated interest, as evidenced by the fact that this top 10 is virtually identical to last week's, just with a different dead celebrity.
For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.
As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of 15–21 June, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:
Rank Article Class Views Image Notes 1 2014 FIFA World Cup 
2,506,641 
While it is cold comfort to those (like me) whose home teams are already spanked and turfed, this exceptionally goal-heavy World Cup has produced some very entertaining football. Historically, this tournament has boiled down to a contest between Europe and South America, with each continent claiming 10 titles. Now, with England sent home, Spain crashing out and Italy and Portugal teetering, it seems the first South American World Cup in 36 years is favouring the home sides, with Chile, Colombia and Uruguay all storming through their first matches. But with Costa Rica coming out of nowhere to the shock and awe of everyone, could this be North America's turn? 2 FIFA World Cup 
1,337,592 The broader article on the history of the competition may have been accessed by people looking for the long view, but in truth it was probably more to do with people looking for the more specific article above. 3 Amazon.com 
843,747 
This article suddenly reappeared in the top 25 a few months ago after a long absence; it's always difficult to determine the reasons for the popularity of website articles (how many are simply misaimed clicks on the Google search list?) but there are at least two possibilities: first, it released its digital media player, Amazon Fire TV on April 2, and second, it is currently embroiled in a dispute with publisher Hachette that could decide whether book publishers even need to exist in the post-digital world. 4 Game of Thrones
770,438 
Well, that was the season finale. I half-expected it to beat the World Cup, but our users don't seem to have the crazed thirst for this show they displayed last year. 5 2010 FIFA World Cup
694,266 
The current World Cup has buoyed interest in the last one, with people doubtless looking for parallels, clues for upcoming matches, or omens. 6 Game of Thrones (season 4)
577,004 This is the page with the plot synopses for each episode. 7 Casey Kasem
566,000 
The legendary radio personality died this week at the age of 82. There is no American of my generation or older who would not recognize Casey Kasem's voice. He hosted the national show American Top 40 for a total of 25 years, but will probably be best known outside the US as the English voice of Shaggy Rogers, the owner of Scooby-Doo – a role he played for nearly 40 years. (That isn't his normal voice though; if you want to hear what he usually sounded like, check out his voice cameo in Ghostbusters.) 8 List of Game of Thrones episodes 
493,961 The episode list is probably used to look up air dates. 9 2014 in film
482,811 
A new entry for the list, probably in preparation for the Hollywood summer movie season. 10 2014 FIFA World Cup squads
441,589 
This is most likely the result of residents of competing countries checking out their opponents.
Reader comments
"We need to be true to who we are": Foundation's new executive director speaks to the Signpost
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In a Forbes video uploaded to YouTube three years ago entitled Why SugarCRM hired a CIO, Lila Tretikov was asked: "When you actually approached SugarCRM for the job, you weren't really looking for a CIO [chief information officer] title, were you?" She responded, "I don't think I wanted a title—I was curious about the job ... I am the kind of person who's led by curiosity, so I like jobs that will challenge me. So, title is not relevant to me; if I can solve a big problem, you can call me anything you want!"
Since May this year, Forbes has called Tretikov "executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation", naming her on its list of the world's 100 most powerful women. "Top of her agenda", says Forbes, "is to lead the community's struggle to increase diversity: 87% of Wikipedia contributors are men".
Last month, the Moscow-born technologist agreed to give her first interview as WMF executive director to the Signpost. The interview covers three key challenges for the movement: grantmaking, the global south, and gender. A second interview later this year will deal with engineering and products.
Interview transcript
Tony1: Lila Tretikov, congratulations on your appointment!
- Lila Tretikov: Thank you so much, I'm really happy to be here.
Last year, your predecessor said that with such a high proportion of funding going to chapter staff and bricks and mortar offices, we need to ask whether the benefits are turning out to be worth the cost. Where do you stand on that?
- Well, I think that the question we should ask is what results do we get for every dollar we spend. And this is the question that we should be asking across the board—both from ourselves, as well as any grantees that we fund. As long as the funds produce the results that we are looking for, I think the programs should continue, and at the same time we should be identifying those programs that are not results oriented, both internally and externally.
To be more specific, you've recently stressed the fundamental importance of measuring impact on our end users, the readers. It's early days yet, but in terms of likely reader impact, are you keen to determine whether engineering our products deserves a higher proportion of donors' funds at the expense of grantmaking?
- I would look at the question slightly differently. I think we need to look at what is at the base of what we're actually delivering to [both our] readers and our contributors every day. The thing that we deliver first and foremost is the ability to communicate, share information, and create knowledge. In order to do that, a big, huge component of that, is the service. Our ability to keep the lights on, on our data centers, creating software that keeps up to date, that is fast, robust, easy to use, and is a joy for both readers and writers; and providing access to that service from as many places around the globe as possible. So, very very expensive proposition. So if you compare us to other companies that provide services on this scale, we are actually tiny. So you compare us, let's say to, Yahoos and Googles of the world, we're incredibly efficient. But even [so], we still need to be investing more in that service.
To go to specific grantmaking activities then, one person wrote that the Berlin Wikimedia conference hasn't resulted in a single long-term editor, and did nothing to create content or improve our infrastructure and software. You yourself said in Zurich that editathons are one of the more difficult and expensive things you can do in terms of attracting new editors. Should these types of outreach be considered a lower priority than they have been?
- So I think we need to quantify what exactly we deliver in our editathons—what value we provide. And I think there are some that have shown some promise, and others that might not be as good as a return for the dollar. So with that in mind, it's really important for us to measure the results and base our decisions on those results. Typically, yes, events tend to be more expensive but, interestingly enough, they have different impacts in different regions of the world. I think what we often forget about, is that different cultures interact and engage differently. So an editathon that may not produce a lot of value or a lot of output, say, in North America, may actually produce a lot of value in India, let's say (and I'm using these as examples). But I think it's really important for us to be sensitive to cultures and individual communities when making those decisions.
Of course, learning how to measure that across the cultural veil is a challenge, isn't it?
- Absolutely. This is one of our top priorities: to ensure that we actually have good, consistent, clear, and monitorable measurements across our organizations. This is something that we're looking very seriously at.
To turn now to the global south, the amount of global south funding is still running at only about 20% of Foundation grant money, this is for three-quarters of the world's population. So according to Asaf Bartov in the grantmaking department, it has actually been hard to find fundable projects that align with the Wikimedia global mission. Bartov has said that a key to success in global south programs is having a core of self-motivating active editors, even if it's only four or five people. he says we don't yet have an answer as to how you grow such a core, where it currently doesn't exist in the global south. What's your plan?
- So I think there is a lot of learning that we have been doing, and some progress that we have made, even in the last three quarters. Our total number of grants have grown to be over 50% of all of the grants that we made.
That's in numbers, of course, which includes a lot of travel grants and scholarships.
- Yes, you're exactly right. So we are finding more and more people who are interested and are engaging. That said, we do need to continue in getting engaged and involved in those regions. And we're planning to do that. We're actually planning to grow, again, to double the investment in the global south in the next year.
The foundation's core values concerning openness, transparency, and conflict of interest, are most familiar to progressive movements in the global north. Wikimedia Bangladesh has just made a big deal about how they achieved incorporation without paying the customary “speed money” to government officials. Do you favor a zero-tolerance policy towards practices that our core values might label as “corrupt” but in parts of the Global South are regarded as just the cost of doing business?
- I think we need to be true to who we are, and when we start diluting that principle, we will lose our focus. You know, it's the same question as asking whether you'd go and pay a bribe and do business. I don't think this is acceptable for us. This goes to the center of our ethos.
So let me get this right: the global south affiliate might pay small tips or bribes, or whatever we want to call them, to poorly paid civil servants to get things moving. Are these morally and—in terms of the attitude of WMF Legal—in the same category as the embezzlement scandals involving chapter board members in Kenya and Spain in 2012, or the fact that we still don't have the financial statement from Hong Kong's Wikimania last year, in which orders of magnitude more money is still at stake?
- I think that at the very top it's just not acceptable to accept corruption as the way of life anywhere. Our job is to change in some ways, how people think and educate people around the world—and this is part of our mission. At the same time, I think what you're asking is: do we live by our own standards? And do we think that it's okay if somebody doesn't practice the recommendation? I don't think that's okay and we're working very diligently with that chapter to help them get through and provide them the recommendation. We're doing everything [within] our ability, given that it's a completely separate organization from the WMF.
Okay so, it'll always be a bit of push and pull between an NGO's Global North headquarters and basic ethics, and its sprawling affiliates right around the world in very different social, political, and economic contexts.
- Well, I don't think that necessarily needs to be push and pull; in fact, I see the movement, the individual volunteers, the readers, and the WMF as all in one camp and that's a question of having common goals and common focus. And as we move forward into doing our strategic planning over the next year, I think that needs to come into play and that record needs to come into play, as opposed to push and pull and tension.
In the time we still have, can we turn now to the gender gap then? What's your advice for a female editor, on say, the English Wikipedia, who feels uncomfortable even revealing her gender on wiki?
- Well, first of all, I think it's on us to improve this environment and to make sure that everybody feels welcome on our websites. And I think we need to be working on that. That said, anybody can edit anonymously. So if somebody's not comfortable revealing who they are, they don't have to do it.
I've had contact with more than one female editor who has revealed her gender to me privately, only after some time, and utterly refuses to reveal it onwiki for a bunch of fears, whether well founded or not. Would you encourage that person to get to a point where she can reveal that she's a woman?
- So I feel very sad about the fact that people don't feel comfortable. That said, I wouldn't encourage anybody do to something that they're not comfortable with doing. I would really encourage our community and the WMF and our chapter partners to do everything in their power to create a more accepting [environment] and a culture that is more comfortable for women.
In Zurich, you said that the gender gap might be related to two hurdles, which I found very interesting. First, attracting women to make their first edit, and second, retaining them after they've made that first click.
- (agreeing) Um-hm.
Let's deal with them one at a time. How is your thinking evolving around what might encourage women to join the editing community in the first place. Specifically what kind of data do we need?
- So, let's start with the second part of the question, and that's retention. If we're encouraging women to come in and plug into the community, we need to make sure that we're giving them the environment that is comfortable and nurturing for them. If we don't do that, it doesn't matter how many new female subscribers we get. So that's by far the most important thing.
- And what we need to start understanding and measuring is the sentiment—how comfortable people are, and what makes people comfortable when they have become an editor. So I'll give you an example. I've made my first edit a while back, and after that, I got a few thank you notes, encouragement notes, and that felt really good and that made me want to do more. You can extrapolate and build on top of ... those thank-you notes, also encouragements to get involved and talk to other users, and to start collaborating on different projects and content. So this is an example of how we can continue to encourage users and especially women. Women are known to be much more social in communities like these. And pull them back and let them into conversation and editing, and encourage them to edit in the first place. Because women are so social, once that trend is reversed and women start contributing—kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy—once they start contributing, other women will join as well.
Are you saying there's a tipping point—there might be a tipping point in the future?
- I believe so. But in order to get there, there are changes that we need to make consciously and all together.
Let's talk about the community experience itself of being a female editor. You also said in Zurich, I quote, "Unfortunately the internet makes it really easy not to emphasize the person on the other side. You don't see their face, you don't hear their voice, and you don't feel like there's another human being there with thoughts and feeling and emotions." If we engineered easy ways for editors to interact more personally in real time on the sites—maybe through instant messages, even audio—would this create an environment that's less of a turn-off for women, or would it be seen by too many women as threatening?
- So I think there's two components to that. ... we need to be thinking of the environment and the user interaction holistically, which means how people want to interact—what you're talking about are *channels* of interaction—as well as well as the actual interactions themselves. So I think we need to be thinking about both pieces. And before we start really thinking about engaging as the beginning of the conversation, we need to be thinking about what the engagement actually looks like once it's happening. Because, as I mentioned earlier, it's actually fairly straightforward and easy for us to engage people. What's hard is once they're engaged, to keep them there. This is where we need to be looking very, very closely. Frankly, men or women will get turned off by the negative interactions. In fact it's scientifically shown that there need to be enough positive interactions, think by a factor of 5, to counteract the negative interactions that you've participated in, in order for you to still be willing to receive the information and participate.
Just a final question then. You've prospered in corporate IT and engineering, which is a professional world heavily dominated by male culture. If you could give women a few take-home messages now on how to overcome gender bias in the work place, what would they be?
- That's a great question. You know, I actually think that women are at an advantage there. But it's hard to take that first step and to have the courage to trust yourself and trust your instincts. So my biggest suggestion is to practice bravery. [Laughs] You know, Wikipedians say "be bold", actually find it is extremely hard for people to be bold. Bold doesn't mean rough or mean or angry or loud. Bold means having a lot of courage, sometimes the courage to be kind, sometimes the courage to be honest in a direct and straightforward way. So, gathering a lot of courage is a really important thing and what I've learned is when you show courage, people really respect you. And I think women have a lot of it. They just need to trust themselves to act on it.
So that's a well-honed view through many years dealing with mostly male cultures in the corporate sector.
- [Laughs] Well, thank you.
Well, it was more a question. Did you start that way?
- Oh gosh, no, no, I was extremely timid, and I had actually very great mentors and friends, both men and women who gave me some really tough advice, some really tough love, and that's really helped through the years. It helped me better understand who I was, and what my strengths were, and what my space in the room was—for the longest time I have been the only woman at the table—and how to stand on my own two feet. So it definitely took some time.
When you say mentors and friends, that stands out. We don't do that well on the Wikipedias, do we, mentoring and fostering specific friendships that are likely to, again, serve the readers best.
- I think it happens in some cases. It's just we're not—it's not a pattern, you know, it's not a culture. And I completely agree with you that having a culture of engagement and mentorship and feeling valuable because you've helped another person, because you've seen somebody else grow and succeed, I think that's an extremely powerful feeling, probably one of the most powerful feelings there are, and I would love to see more of that.
Lila Tretikov, thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions.
- Thank you so much; it was lovely.
Reader comments
Media Viewer, old HTML tags
This is mostly a list of non-article page requests for comment believed to be active on 26 June 2014 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC, recent watchlist notices and SiteNotices. The last two are in bold. Items that are new to this report are in italics even if they are not new discussions. If an item can be listed under more than one category it is usually listed once only in this report. Clarifications and corrections are appreciated; please leave them in this article's comment box at the bottom of the page.
Style and naming
Policies and guidelines
- On the topic of "Appearance and color" and line-height
- LUA modules
- A new section on state owned and/or operated news agencies
- Are newspaper headlines a reliable source per se?
- BLP PROD application outside of article space
WikiProjects and collaborations
- Listing a person's agency in the infobox
- Should Template:Geographic reference be split into separate templates for each source?
Technical issues and templates
Proposals
- Size of Archive pages
- Only one stub template per article
- Time to revisit schools?
- Should deprecated/invalid/unsupported HTML tags be discouraged?
English Wikipedia notable requests for permissions
- This section will include active RfAs, RfBs, CU/OS appointment requests, and Arbcom elections.
Showing our Wörth
Featured articles
Ten featured articles were promoted this week.
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- SMS Wörth (nominated by Parsecboy) SMS Wörth was one of four German pre-dreadnought battleships of the Brandenburg class, built in the early 1890s. The class also included Brandenburg, Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, and Weissenburg. The ships were the first ocean-going battleships built by the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy). Wörth was laid down in May 1890, launched on 6 August 1892 and commissioned into the fleet on 31 October 1893. She was named for the Battle of Wörth fought during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. Wörth served in the German fleet for the first decade of her career, participating in the normal peacetime routine of training cruises and exercises. She took part in the German naval expedition to China in 1900 to suppress the Boxer Rebellion, though by the time the fleet arrived the siege of Peking had already been lifted, and Wörth saw little direct action in China. She was placed in reserve in 1906 as newer, more powerful vessels had supplanted the Brandenburg class as front-line battleships. Obsolete by the start of World War I, Wörth and Brandenburg served in a limited capacity in the Imperial German Navy as coastal defense ships for the first two years of the war, though they did not see action. By 1916, Wörth was reduced to a barracks ship, a role in which she served until the end of hostilities. Despite plans to convert her into a freighter after the war, Wörth was scrapped in the port of Danzig in 1919.
- New York Dolls (album) (nominated by Dan56) New York Dolls is the debut studio album by American hard rock band the New York Dolls, released on July 27, 1973, by Mercury Records. The band formed in 1971 and developed a following while playing regularly in lower Manhattan. They held little appeal for record companies because of their onstage cross-dressing and vulgarity, and most record producers were reluctant to work with them. After signing a two-album deal with Mercury, the New York Dolls recorded their first album at The Record Plant in New York City with producer Todd Rundgren, who was known for his sophisticated pop sound. The album features carefree rock and roll and Brill Building pop influences among its hard rock songs. Their lyrics were written by lead singer David Johansen and touch on themes such as urban youth, teen alienation, adolescent romance, and authenticity. For shock value, the band was photographed in exaggerated drag on the album cover. Upon its release, New York Dolls received very positive reviews from music critics, but sold poorly and only charted at number 116 on the Billboard 200. The band toured the US to promote the album, but were difficult to market and developed a reputation for excess. Despite its commercial failure, the album was an influential precursor to the 1970s punk rock movement and has since received acclaim from critics as one of the greatest debut albums in rock music.
- Vannevar Bush (nominated by Hawkeye7) Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, whose most important contribution was as head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during World War II, coordinating almost all wartime military R&D, including initiation and early administration of the Manhattan Project. He is also known in engineering for his work on analog computers, for founding Raytheon, and for the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer with a structure analogous to that of the World Wide Web. In 1945, Bush published As We May Think in which he predicted that "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified". The memex influenced generations of computer scientists, who drew inspiration from its vision of the future. Bush joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1919, and founded the company now known as Raytheon in 1922. Starting in 1927, Bush constructed a differential analyzer, an analog computer with some digital components that could solve differential equations with as many as 18 independent variables. An offshoot of the work at MIT by Bush and others was the beginning of digital circuit design theory. Bush became Vice President of MIT and Dean of the MIT School of Engineering in 1932, and president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1938. He was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1938, and soon became its chairman. Bush was a well-known policymaker and public intellectual during World War II, when he was in effect the first presidential science advisor.
- Kelpie (nominated by Sagaciousphil and Eric Corbett) Kelpie (or water kelpie) is the Lowland Scottish name given to a malevolent water spirit or demon inhabiting the lochs and pools of Scotland. It has usually been described as appearing as a horse, but is able to adopt human form. Some accounts state that the kelpie retains its hooves when appearing as a human, leading to its association with the Christian idea of Satan as alluded to by Robert Burns in his 1786 poem "Address to the Deil". Almost every sizeable body of water in Scotland has an associated kelpie story, but the most extensively reported is that of Loch Ness, first recorded in the 6th century. The kelpie has counterparts across the world, such as the wihwin of South America, the Scandinavian bäckahästen and the Australian bunyip. The origin of the belief in malevolent water horses may lie in the human sacrifices once made to appease the gods of water, but it also served a practical purpose in keeping children away from dangerous stretches of water, and warning young women to be wary of handsome strangers.
- Flotilla (video game) (nominated by Hahc21 ) Flotilla is a turn-based strategy space combat video game developed by Brendon Chung's studio, Blendo Games. It was released in March 2010 on Steam for Microsoft Windows and on Xbox Live Indie Games for the Xbox 360. The game was designed with Microsoft's XNA tools, and its development was influenced by animals as well as board games such as Axis and Allies and Arkham Horror. The game takes the player in an adventure through a randomly generated galaxy. Chung began developing Flotilla immediately after the closure of Pandemic Studios, where he had worked as a designer. The new game used assets imported from Chung's early space combat prototype, Space Piñata. Flotilla incorporates several pieces of classical music in its score, such as Chopin's "Raindrop" prelude. It received mixed reviews from video game media outlets, scoring 72 out of 100 on review aggregate website Metacritic, and was included in Mike Rose's book 250 Indie Games You Must Play.
- Paul Tibbets (nominated by Reedmalloy and Hawkeye7) Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. (1915–2007) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force, best known as the pilot of the Enola Gay, the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in the history of warfare. Code-named Little Boy, the bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Tibbets enlisted in the US Army in 1937 and qualified as a pilot in 1938. In February 1942, he became the commanding officer of the 340th Bombardment Squadron of the 97th Bombardment Group, which was equipped with the Boeing B-17. He flew the lead plane in the first American daylight heavy bomber mission against Occupied Europe on August 17, 1942, and the first American raid of more than 100 bombers in Europe on October 9, 1942. After flying 43 combat missions, he became the assistant for bomber operations on the staff of the Twelfth Air Force. Tibbets returned to the US in February 1943 to help with the development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. In September 1944, he was appointed the commander of the 509th Composite Group, which would conduct the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, he participated in the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946, and was involved in the development of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet in the early 1950s. He commanded the 308th Bombardment Wing and 6th Air Division in the late 1950s, and was military attaché in India from 1964 to 1966. After leaving the Air Force in 1966, he worked for Executive Jet Aviation, serving as its president from 1976 until his retirement in 1987.
- Royal baccarat scandal (nominated by SchroCat ) The royal baccarat scandal (also known as the Tranby Croft affair) was a British gambling scandal of the late 19th century involving the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. The scandal started during a house party in September 1890, when Sir William Gordon-Cumming, a decorated lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guards, was accused of cheating at baccarat. Edward had been invited to stay at Tranby Croft, Yorkshire, the home of Arthur Wilson and his family. Gordon-Cumming was seen to be acting in a suspicious manner, and was subsequently pressured into signing a document that stated he would never play cards again, in exchange for the silence of the guests. The secret was not kept for long, and Gordon-Cumming demanded a retraction from the Wilson family, who he considered to blame for divulging the news. They refused and he filed a writ for slander in February 1891. Despite the efforts of the prince's courtiers to have the matter dealt with by a military court, the case was heard in June 1891. The atmosphere at trial was described as being like a theatre, and Edward was called as a witness, the first time the heir to the throne had been compelled to appear in court since 1411. Gordon-Cumming was found guilty, dismissed from the army, and ostracised from society for the rest of his life. Public opinion was on his side, and the prince was at his most unpopular for several years afterwards.
- Liberty Head double eagle (nominated by Wehwalt ) The Liberty Head double eagle (or Coronet double eagle) is an American twenty-dollar gold piece struck as a pattern coin in 1849, and for commerce from 1850 to 1907. It was designed by Mint of the United States Chief Engraver James B. Longacre. The largest denomination of United States coin authorized by the Mint Act of 1792 was the eagle, or ten-dollar piece. The large amount of bullion being brought east after the discovery of gold in California in the 1840s caused Congress to consider new denominations of gold coinage. The gold dollar and double eagle were the result. After considerable infighting at the Philadelphia Mint, Chief Engraver James B. Longacre designed the double eagle, and it began to be issued for commerce in 1850. Only one 1849 double eagle is known to survive; it rests in the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian. The coin was immediately successful; merchants and banks used it in trade. It was struck until replaced by the Saint-Gaudens double eagle in 1907, and many were melted when President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled gold coins from the public in 1933. Millions of double eagles were sent overseas in international transactions throughout its run to be melted or placed in bank vaults. Many of the latter have now been repatriated to feed the demand from collectors and those who desire to hold gold.
- Israel the Grammarian (nominated by Dudley Miles ) Israel the Grammarian (c. 895 – c. 965) was one of the leading European scholars of the mid-tenth century. Probably a Breton, he was at the court of King Æthelstan of England in the 930s. After Æthelstan's death, Israel successfully sought the patronage of Archbishop Rotbert of Trier and became tutor to Bruno, later the Archbishop of Cologne. In the late 940s, he is recorded as a bishop, and at the end of his life he was a monk at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Maximin in Trier. An accomplished poet, Israel was a disciple of the ninth-century Irish philosopher John Scottus Eriugena and one of the few scholars of his time to understand Greek. He wrote theological and grammatical tracts, and commentaries on the works of other philosophers and theologians.
- 1988 Giro d'Italia (nominated by Disc Wheel) The 1988 Giro d'Italia was the 71st running of the Giro d'Italia, one of cycling's Grand Tour races. The Giro started in Urbino, on 23 May, with a 9 km (5.6 mi) individual time trial and concluded in Vittorio Veneto, on 12 June, with a 43 km (26.7 mi) individual time trial. A total of 180 riders from 20 teams entered the 21-stage race, which was won by American Andrew Hampsten of the 7-Eleven–Hoonved team. The second and third places were taken by Dutchman Erik Breukink and Swiss Urs Zimmermann, respectively. It was the third time – and second successive year – in the history of the Giro that the podium was occupied solely by non-Italian riders. Hampsten became the first American, and non-European, to win the Giro. He also won the secondary mountains and combination classifications, as well as the special sprints classification. In the other classifications, Fanini-Seven Up rider Stefano Tomasini of Italy placed ninth overall to finish as the best neo-professional in the general classification; Johan van der Velde of the GIS-Ecoflam-Jolly team was the winner of the points classification, and Carrera Jeans–Vagabond finished as the winners of the team classification.
Featured pictures
Eleven featured pictures were promoted this week.
- "Draco and Ursa Minor", "Hercules and Corona Borealis", "Camelopardalis, Tarandus and Custos Messium", and "Lacerta, Cygnus, Lyra, Vulpecula and Anser" (created by Sidney Hall and Richard Rouse Bloxam, after Alexander Jamieson, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) The images from Urania's Mirror were widely used in articles on constellations, but were in terrible condition, or only available in very small scans. This completes an attempt by the restorationist (and one of the authors of this report) to restore all the plates available on the Library of Congress, and to source substitutes for those that weren't.
- The Red Cross rescue efforts after the 2013 Dar es Salaam building collapse (created and nominated by Muhammad Mahdi Karim) Some excellent photojournalism by Muhammad Mahdi Karim of the rescue efforts after the 2013 Dar es Salaam building collapse, in which a building with planning permission for ten floors was increased to sixteen floors during construction, and a further three floors were being built when the building collapsed onto a nearby mosque.
- New Kensington, Pennsylvania in 1896 (created by Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) New Kensington, Pennsylvania is a small town on the Allegheny River, near where the restorationist and author of this sentence grew up. Unfortunately, most of the historical buildings have now been lost.
- Francis B. Spinola (created by the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing, prepared, restored and nominated by Godot13) Francis B. Spinola was a United States Representative for the State of New York's 10th district from 1887 to 1891.
- Corpus Christi College, Oxford (created and nominated by Godot13) Corpus Christi College is one of the many colleges that make up Oxford University, one of the most respected and ancient universities in the world. The "Pelican Sundial" visible in this image dates to 1581, and the college itself was founded in 1517.
- Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1895 (created by Thaddeus Mortimer Fowler, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) Altoona, Pennsylvania was the site of the Pennsylvania Railroad's car shops, or "car shop's" as this panoramic map, rather unfortunately, spells it.
- Kuwait Towers (created by Richard Bartz, nominated by Armbrust) The Kuwait Towers is a group of three towers of rather unusual design (pictured below) that serve as a mix of water towers, café, and nationally-recognized landmark.
- Samyang 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC Aspherical lens (created and nominated by David Iliff) This is a really well-shot image of the lens. We actually have an entire article on this lens, so it's a particularly valuable image of photographic equipment.
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Corpus Christi College, Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford founded in 1517, is a new featured picture. -
The Kuwait Towers is a symbol of modern Kuwait, and a new featured picture.
Reader comments
The world where dreams come true
This week, the Signpost visited the land of Disney, blockbusters, explosions, dream sequences, and cultural masterpieces: film. WikiProject Film was first created in September 2003, though the project's homepage wasn't filled out until the following year. With around 500 members, it is one of the largest wikiprojects on the site. It boasts over 225 pieces of featured content, 626 good articles, and still has three A-class articles from a long-shuttered review process. We talked with Erik, Favre1fan93, Corvoe, NinjaRobotPirate, and Lugnuts.
- What motivated you to join WikiProject Film? Who is your favorite director?
- Erik: I joined WikiProject Film because as a moviegoer, I like to follow movie news, especially for upcoming releases. When I made small edits around the winter of 2005-06, I realized how easy it was to edit, and I learned to contribute details about films to their articles. I also found films to be an uncontroversial set of topics that was fairly easy to research.
- Favre1fan93: I believe WikiProject Film was one of the first WikiProjects I joined on Wikipedia. I tended to gravitate towards the media areas of the encyclopedia (films, television, video games and comics) so once I started edited and began to understand it better, I began to gravitate to certain articles under the project that I thought I could contribute to.
- Corvoe: I joined the project close to a year ago, and it's the first one I've dived in to. Though I'd worked on music articles for a considerable amount of time beforehand, I've never felt more at home than at WikiProject Film. Its collaborations far outweight its solo ventures, and there are a large amount of us just wanting to improve as many articles as much as we can. As a film lover, I recreationally look up large amounts of information regarding films, and I'm a sucker for featurettes and commentaries, so I have the information in my head already. I want others like me to have any amount of information that we can find at their fingertips, so that those as curious as I am have one centralized hub for any films they might be interested in. Favourite director: David Fincher.
- NinjaRobotPirate: I joined a little over year ago. I had already been casually editing film-related articles off-and-on for several years, so it seemed like a good idea. I was primarily drawn by the wealth of information: a list of reliable sources, detailed manual of style and notability pages, a lively talk page, and many help pages. I feel very comfortable editing film-related articles now, and my time spent in WikiProject Film has given me the experience and confidence to create my own articles.
- Lugnuts: I joined in 2006 after working to populate the category Category:Black-and-white films. I saw the category from the article for Eraserhead and noticed it only had a handful of articles within it. I was shocked at the time that there wasn't much coverage on silent films, so I started to work on them starting with Charlie Chaplin's filmography. My favourite directors are David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman and Michael Haneke, amongst others.
- It has been five years since our last interview with WikiProject Film. Has the project seen many changes in that time? Has the project reached any significant milestones? What challenges does the project face today that weren't on the radar in 2009?
- Erik: I think the biggest change to WikiProject Film is that we no longer have coordinators. At the time, we wanted to emulate WikiProject Military history in how it organized itself, but we were not able to collaborate that formally. My feeling is that many editors like to work on their own topics of interest and to have their own schedules to follow. However, I think WikiProject Film's talk page is one of Wikipedia's most active. It is a good place to ask for input. As for challenges, I do not think we have any major ones. The Manual of Style for film is occasionally revised to help resolve disputes. I would say a perennial challenge is how to identify the key countries related to a film. There are more and more multinational collaborations, and it can be difficult to ping down the degree of countries' involvement. Even reliable sources can differ.
- Lugnuts: I think we agree a consensus quicker than other projects on Wikipedia and update the relevant manual of style to reflect that. More challenges from 2009 include editors adding in copyright material, esp. plots, into articles and spotting them quicker.
- Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured or Good Articles? Are article promotions becoming easier or more difficult to accomplish? What unique challenges does the project face in getting its articles to FA or GA status?
- Erik: I wrote the Featured Article Fight Club and contributed a bit to American Beauty and Changeling. I have also written a few Good Articles, both on my own and in collaboration. However, I have not actively pursued promotions for a few years. The GA nominations were pretty frequently backlogged, and I fell out the habit of striving for GA promotions. As for FA promotions, I think it takes a lot of work to truly research a film. Older Featured Articles about films were usually based on online sources and did not often incorporate books as references. It's a challenge to go that above and beyond since resources can be hard to access and since we have only so much time to devote to what is essentially a hobby for most of us. Aside from that, I would say that a challenge in getting more promotions is that we do not review each other enough. I think it's easy to contribute incrementally, but it's hard to review others' articles in the same manner, especially if it is very detailed.
- Favre1fan93: I have contributed to multiple featured content. My main area of work for the WikiProject is working on all of the articles related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Myself and a few other editors really started to make a strong push once I started becoming a main contributor, continuing some of their work from before I started. Since I've joined the project, I've contributed to Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and the main Marvel Cinematic Universe pages to becoming Good Articles. In addition, we are preparing to get Captain America: The Winter Soldier to become a GA probably in the next month or two, in further advancement of attempting to make the film articles of the MCU a Good Topic. Some challenges that the project faces is that, in reality, all of the articles can not get to Featured or Good status. In my opinion, it takes a good amount of teamwork to get an article up to that status, or a very ambitious editor to do it themselves. It also depends on the amount of information one can get to help fill out the article.
- Corvoe: I have contributed to several film articles that either gained good/featured status or already were good/featured status. I created and wrote The FP from scratch, mostly on my own. It is currently a good article under consideration for featured status. After my work with that article has wrapped up (or at least slowed down), I'm wanting to work on more established articles and get their statuses up to good or featured, particularly Children of Men (a film I believe to be one of the best).
- NinjaRobotPirate: No. I have contributed in a minor fashion to one article that is definitely headed toward Featured, but my contributions were limited mostly to advice, copy editing, and other support roles. My biggest accomplishment so far is cult film, which I rewrote from scratch and greatly expanded. I believe it to be nearly ready for GAN or even FAC, so we'll see how that goes. Most of the film-related articles that I edit are obscure art-house or cult films, barely notable horror films (I have created about 30-40 articles on zombie films alone), or independent films with limited releases. I consider it a major victory to get these articles up to C class, but there are a few that have possibilities. The kinds of films that I edit go quietly to direct-to-video hell, and I'm frequently the only thing standing between a vandal and Dolph Lundgren's being described as fighting waves of banana-men in a tutu.
- Lugnuts: No. I create stubs. Lots of stubs. I tried promoting a filmography for an actress to FL, using an existing FL as a guide, but it got shot down quicker than a Ukrainian jet-fighter.
- Have you participated in any of WikiProject Film's task forces? What can be done to bolster the work of efforts by closer-knit groups?
- Erik: I helped set up the comic book films task force since I liked to contribute to such articles early on, but I've since moved on. As I stated earlier, I think many editors are usually content to work on their own projects, so collaboration does not come so readily. I would say an exception to that rule is the Indian films task force because of the growing film industry in the country and a growing number of Indian editors who write articles about these films. As for general bolstering, I do not think there is much to be done on a task force level, but I think we can try to encourage pairings or mentorships since two editors can collaborate easily enough.
- Favre1fan93: I am a part of the comic book films task force. The members of that group all have a similar work ethic and I can look to many of them to be adding content to these pages to help make it a simple process to nominate it for GA status. In my opinion, this is the genre of film right now, so I try to take pride in have fulfilling articles for these very popular films.
- Corvoe: I am a member of the comic book films task force, though I don't contribute there as often as I'd like to. Due to my tendency to only work full force on one article, I haven't done much more than grammar fixes, copy-editing, and reverting vandalism. I'm hoping to get more involved with this task force as I am able.
- Lugnuts: Yes. Mainly the ones around various elements of world cinema. I think others should be setup too (Polish cinema, for example). Although not many people are involved directly with them, lots of editors cross-over them with their work and they can be useful. I recently updated the scope of the Film Festival task force (can I do that? Yes, I Cannes).
- Are some genres, time periods, or geographic areas better represented than others in Wikipedia articles? What can be done to improve the coverage of neglected film topics?
- Erik: Franchise films tend to be well-represented. These films tend to be the most visible and also have the most ongoing news coverage. For example, a franchise film's development process is followed much more closely than an independent film's filming process. Box office performance is also commonly reported. In addition, I think franchise films are well-served by the "average Wikipedian" demographic, as defined here. As for improving the coverage of neglected film topics, we can watch such articles and help new editors contribute to them. If a film with a neglected article makes headlines for whatever reason, we can use that as an opportunity to add content about films to educate visitors who will likely stop by.
- Corvoe: I agree with Erik. The more popular, big-budget franchises are almost always the ones with the most information, as they draw the largest audience. Even in the same basic genre, you have huge differences, like in comedy. You're never going to see films like The Grand Budapest Hotel or Chef get as much coverage as 22 Jump Street or This Is the End, unless you dedicate your own time to it or work with other editors. Independent films, especially those that don't win awards, get the short end of the stick, which is why I personally like to work there more than on big-budget films. As far as what there is to be done for this, all we can do is ask. If you're working on an article that you think needs some love from more than just you, go to WikiProject Film's talk page and ask someone for assistance. We're nice here.
- NinjaRobotPirate: You'd be surprised what isn't represented. Or maybe not. We all know that Wikipedia has certain biases. I have recently begun to create articles on contemporary South American horror films, and even the biggest blockbusters frequently have no article. I have also begun work on independent Canadian horror films, and I've crossed off about a dozen articles on that list. British, American, French, Italian, and Australian films are all well-represented, but we need a lot of work on even the most prestigious German films. We desperately need people who can translate articles from the German Wikipedia. As a direct-to-video connoisseur, I try to make sure that those films are create, updated, and kept free of vandalism. But we need more people to spend time on these obscure films. Surf Nazis Must Die has been a stub (of less than 250 words) for almost nine years. Rabid Grannies hasn't even hit 200 words yet in seven years.
- Lugnuts: When I first joined, I was shocked at the gaps in Ingmar Bergman's filmography, so I created all the missing articles. I thought this was because it was Swedish films on the English-language WP, but was even more shocked to find similar gaps in John Wayne's filmography! Most modern-day US/UK cinema is now very well covered on WP (by that, I mean at least having a stub). Step outside of that, and there are some big holes. The work I've done on the big film festivals crosses over lots of areas of world cinema and the coverage has increased alot since I've been here (you can thank me later). Maybe some work directly with the various over-arching WP projects (eg, WP:Poland, WP:Peru, etc) to focus on these under-represented sections.
- How are forthcoming film releases treated? Are they required to meet the same sourcing and notability requirements of other film articles? Do deleted or merged articles about forthcoming films tend to be recreated after the film's release?
- Erik: The general rule of thumb is to only have a stand-alone article about a film once filming has begun. In the late 2000s, it was common to see articles created for films solely based on news reports that rights had been bought by a studio. In reality, that is a long way from validating the production of an actual film. We wrote guidelines for future films to address such articles, though there are interesting exceptions where a film languishes in development long enough to basically warrant writing the history of its struggles. It's hard to say what percentage of articles are recreated, but it does happen. What can happen is that news of development can be summarized in a broader article, such as the director's article or the source material's article, and when filming begins, the coverage can be put into a "Production" section of the new article to serve as background.
- Favre1fan93: This information has to be handled with care. Per WP:NFF, it is generally desired that films do not receive articles once they have started production. However, recently we have flirted with the idea of special exceptions, creating "Development of" articles. For example, before Star Wars Episode VII began its filming process, information regarding the film was at Development of Star Wars Episode VII. Especially on the articles I work on, there is such a strong desire for information, that we have to work really hard to make sure all information comes from reliable sources, and if the information is merely rumor or perhaps an exclusive news item. As for deleted or merged articles, it again goes back to WP:NFF. If once it has started production and still meets notability, a page may be recreated. I have also been drawn to the new Draft space, and encourage editors to use it, or use it as an alternative to deleting. It is also an area where we are crafting new MCU film articles, as we know that they will exist, but they do not warrant an article, just pertinent info in a section on another article.
- Corvoe: Upcoming films are a tricky area, since they are often surrounded with rumours. Like Favre1fan93 said, editors who mean well often add information that boils down to hearsay, and those editors get reverted unless they provide reliable sources. I actually think sourcing and information for upcoming films might be under stricter surveillance than films that are already released, as we try our best not to report any falsehoods. There is also an increasingly prevalent issue involving plagiarism, as many editors will quote an official synopsis (usually filled with weasel words) and pass it off as Wikipedia's own writing. Overall, though, I would say upcoming film articles are among the best-monitored.
- Lugnuts: Working on the film festival side of the project, I do create a fair few future films (f-f-f-f...). A small minority of these have been proded by other editors or taken to AfD. They all end in keep. WP:GNG > WP:NFF. The deletion discussion goes along the lines of "but the film hasn't even been released!" To which I reply, "no it hasn't, but it's been selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in 2 weeks time!" A quick Google search will find a ton of coverage on even the most obscure films in competition.
- How often do the project's members deal with disruptive edits by fans, publicists, or detractors of a particular director, performer, or film series? What are the best ways to respond to these individuals? Have you seen any become productive members of the Wikipedia community?
- Erik: In my experience, disruption tends to happen with non-notable films. Once in a while, a filmmaker will try to create an article about their film. We editors have to explain the notability guidelines, and it's rare to convert the filmmaker into an editor since their goal on Wikipedia was to have their article for the film. As for detractors, we are usually able to go through the dispute resolution process and figure out a solution. Since controversies are usually rooted in reality, the solutions are just a matter of structuring content. WP:STRUCTURE says, "Try to achieve a more neutral text by folding debates into the narrative, rather than isolating them into sections that ignore or fight against each other," and that's what we try to do.
- Favre1fan93: Again for the articles that I work on, there are constantly rumors and other information released on unreliable sources. So editors or IP who come to the article having seen that info on those sites, and don't see it on the article, add it. So in those cases, it is generally a good faith edit, not knowing our policies. Other times, you will find someone really persistent that takes more of the community to deal with, but that does not happen a lot. Many of these disruptive edits come once the film has released. And sometimes, these edits create more work for regular editors of the page to fix, that it has to warrant protection to keep it under control. I don't believe I have ever experienced a director or performer trying to edit on one of their films.
- NinjaRobotPirate: I agree with Erik. Every once in a while, I'll check my watchlist and find that an IP editor replaced a fully-developed reception with, "It was met with critical acclaim. Only people who misunderstood the director's intent disliked it." It's a simple job to revert this. It's rare that I find a completely unresponsive vandal. Most people are reasonable when I contact them on their talk page, and a few have been downright friendly and helpful once I politely explained my issues with their edits. However, I have run into publicists, filmmakers, and vandals who were immensely frustrating to clean up after. Page protection seems to be the only way to stop them.
- Lugnuts: Revert all IP edits and treat them with the disdain they deserve. But what about WP:AGF? Well after the 876th IP vandalism edit, it doesn't wash. I had one IP claiming to be the film's director and demanding I stop removing his edits. They weren't constructive and less than biased. Attention insects, the foot of reckoning is here.
- What are the most urgent needs of WikiProject Film? How can a new contributor help today?
- Erik: I would say that we could always use more content. While it is great to see new editors make adjustments to the film infoboxes or the plot summaries, the reality is that changes can go back and forth, and that plot summaries are constantly rewritten. In contrast, if you can add real-world coverage about a film, such as its production or critical reception, it is very likely to have an enduring place in the article. If you're new and want to contribute, be bold and be willing to ask questions!
- Corvoe: A lot of films that meet our notability guidelines are nowhere to be found in our article space, and that issue will likely exist indefinitely. That said, users are welcomed and encouraged to make articles with reliable sources. Experienced editors are almost always willing to lend a helping hand, and are always polite when informing an article's creator that the subject matter may not meet the notability requirements. Often, newer editors struggle with finding good sources, but there is a surplus of editors who are more than capable of helping with that. I would say that new contributors should do what I did, and dive straight in. Worst case scenario, you do some stuff wrong and you learn from it. If you mean well, there will always be people there to help you out, so ask away!
- NinjaRobotPirate: Plot summaries. Anyone can write a plot summary. Don't worry about length or grammar. I'll be around eventually to clean it up. Try the template {{Rotten Tomatoes score}}. It uses a bot to retrieve Rotten Tomatoes scores.
- Lugnuts: Better coverage of non-US films.
- Anything else you'd like to add?
- Erik: One of the reasons I enjoy working on film articles is that it is an opportunity to tell the story of a film to a global audience. Coverage of a film can be scattered, and Wikipedia is a great tool to bring together all that coverage. If you work to make a film article comprehensive, you are basically making that web page the best place anywhere to read about a film. It's a satisfying feeling to put together all these details and see the article traffic statistics and know how many readers learned new things about the film.
- NinjaRobotPirate: If you see a plot summary that ends with a question mark, it's probably a copyright violation. Normal people don't end a plot summary with a question mark or teaser. If you see something like "95 min." in the infobox, then everything in the infobox was probably copypasted from the IMDb. Double check the data in a reliable source to make sure that the values are correct. If you see a link to Rotten Tomatoes in the External links, but there's no reception section, the film probably received a negative reception. I guess that's just a sardonic observation.
- Lugnuts: Whoever brings me the head of Tim Burton will get a shiny new donkey.
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Power users and diversity in WikiProjects; the "network of cultures" in multilingual Wikipedia biographies
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
New book: Global Wikipedia
| Author | Pnina Fichman and Noriko Hara |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Wikipedia |
| Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield |
Publication date | 2014 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 178 |
| ISBN | 978-0810891012 |
An edited volume[1] by Pnina Fichman and Noriko Hara from Indiana University, Bloomington was released on May 23, 2014, subtitled "International and Cross-cultural Issues in Online Collaboration". The book description states that "dozens of books about Wikipedia are available, but they all focus on the English Wikipedia and assume an Anglo-Saxon perspective, while disregarding cultural and language variability or multi-cultural collaborative efforts". The description claims that this is "the first book to address this gap by focusing attention on the global, multilingual, and multicultural aspects of Wikipedia." The book contains nine chapters authored by 16 Wikipedia researchers (including a chapter authored by the volume editors). Among the topics covered are international and cross-cultural conflict and collaboration, case studies in the Chinese, Finnish, French, and Greek Wikipedias, and Wikipedia gender gaps in different language sites.
"Interactions of cultures and top people of Wikipedia from ranking of 24 language editions"
Review by Maximilianklein (talk)
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This research by Eom et al.[2] is an exploratory data analysis of figures (roughly, "people") from a mining of date and place of birth and gender in biography articles. Presenting novel ideas based on the infamous Google PageRank algorithm, this paper is a sort of computational history. The methods used are standard – if not a bit dated – compared with more contemporary research using Wikidata. This is a shame because newer techniques would have allowed the claims of a quantified cultural influence factor to rest on firmer grounds.
Their method is for each of their 24 Wikipedia languages (approximately the top 24 largest ones) to construct the network where nodes are biography articles, and links are intrawiki-links. Then they rank each node by both PageRank and 2DRank. PageRank says your importance is a recursive function of your incoming links, weighted by the page rank of each incoming linker; CheiRank is the same as PageRank, but using outgoing links instead. 2DRank is a mixture of PageRank and CheiRank. Some of the authors have coauthored earlier papers that similarly examined PageRank and CheiRank for biographical and other Wikipedia articles (see our previous coverage: "How Wikipedia's Google matrix differs for politicians and artists" and "Multilingual ranking analysis: Napoleon and Michael Jackson as Wikipedia's 'global heroes'").
However, the input to these algorithms is the weak part. The base set consists of all of the articles that are in a subcategory of Biographies of Living People, Births by Year, or Deaths by Year. Obtaining 1.1 million biography articles, they acknowledge that this isn't a full set because it is based off English Wikipedia, but then make an anecdotal claim that it's only 2% off. However, with the latest Wikidata information we know of at least 2.08 million "people" with Wikipedia articles[3].
The rest of their method consists of finding the top 100 articles in each of the 24 languages using both PageRank and 2DRank. Then they get birth place, birthdate and gender from DBpedia if available, and if not they look up this information manually. They pigeonhole each article into one of the 24 target cultures based on birth place, and use a "World" category if none applies. Simplifying assumptions are also made during these processes: modern borders are used, and each country is assumed to speak only a single language. So Kant is Russian and all Belgians speak Dutch in this research.
There is an exploratory analysis of these top 100 by geography, time, and gender. The results confirm a long-told story: the biographies that the English Wikipedia knows about are heavily skewed towards being Western/European, modern, and male. They make points of showing local favour, e.g. Hindi has many in their top 100 who are born in India. With regard to history, the authors note that the Arabic Wikipedia is more interested in history than what world growth would suppose. Another measure is defined to look at the localness factor by decade – that is, what percentage of top figures in this decade were born in this language-place? Of course it's Greeks early on, and the US dominating later.
On gender, their results indicate 5.1% or 10.1% by PageRank and 2DRank, respectively, are female of the top 100s, averaged. The authors make mention that maleness does decrease over time as well. This reported figure is more severe than the overlap with any single language, so the authors show some "wisdom of the crowds" effect.
The final analysis tries to quantify cultural influence. A "network of cultures" is made, where nodes are each of the 24 languages-cum-cultures, and the directed, weighted edges are the number of foreigners in their top 100. For instance, in the English Wikipedia's top 100, five people were born in France; so England connects to France with a weight of 5. With this "network of cultures" in hand, they apply the PageRank and 2DRank algorithms to rank each culture. This is a novel approach to making statistical what we all often guess at. Even despite the fact that Jesus is considered Arabic through their simplifications, PageRank turns up English and German as top and runner-up, respectively. Using 2DRank, Greek, French and Russian get more due.
In summary, although this cultural research suffers from biased data, some clever ideas are implemented – particularly the "network of cultures". The implication is that statistical history somewhat corroborates the opinions of manually conducted history.
"Recommending reference materials in context to facilitate editing Wikipedia"
This article[4] describes IntelWiki, a set of MediaWiki tools designed to facilitate new editor's engagement by making research easier. The tool "automatically generates resource recommendations, ranks the references based on the occurrence of salient keywords, and allows users to interact with the recommended references within the Wikipedia editor." The researchers find that volunteers using this tool were more productive, contributing more high-quality text. The studied group was composed of 16 editors with no Wikipedia editing experience, who completed two editing tasks in a sandbox wiki, one using a mockup Wikipedia editing interface and Google search engine, and using the IntelWiki interface and reference search engine. The author's reference suggestion tool seems valuable, unfortunately this reviewer was unable to locate any proof that the developer engaged the Wikipedia community, or made his code or the tool publicly available for further testing. The research and the thesis does not discuss the differences between their MediaWiki clone and Wikipedia in any significant details. Based on the limited description, the study's overall conclusions may not be reliable, since the mockup Wikipedia interface used for the comparison seems to be a default MediaWiki clone, lacking many Wikipedia-specific tools; therefore the theme of comparing IntelWiki to Wikipedia is a bit misleading.
While the study is interesting, it is disappointing that the main purpose appears to be completing a thesis,[5] with little thought to actually improving Wikipedia (by developing public tools and/or releasing open code). (See also: related webpage, YouTube video)
"What do Chinese-language microblog users do with Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia?"
This paper [6] (accepted for presentation at OpenSym 2014, and subtitled "A case study of information engagement") explores the use of the Chinese Wikipedia and Baidu Baike encyclopedia by Chinese microblog (Twitter, Sina Weibo) users through qualitative and quantitative analyses of Chinese microblog postings. Both encyclopedias are often cited by microblog users, and are very popular in China to the extent that the words "wiki" and "baidu" have become verbs meaning to look up content on the respective websites, analogous to "to google" in English.
One of the study's major focuses is the impact of Internet censorship in China; particularly since Wikipedia is not censored – but access to it, and its discussion in most Chinese websites may be. Baidu Baike is both censored and more likely to host copyright violating content. Despite Baidu Baike's copyright violating content, many users still prefer the uncensored and more reliable Chinese Wikipedia, though they can become frustrated by not being able to access it due to censorship. Whether some Wikipedia content is censored or not is seen by some as a measure of the topic's political sensitivity. The author suggests that a distinguishing characteristic can be observed between groups that prefer one encyclopedia over the other, but does not discuss this in detail, suggesting a very interesting research avenue.
Content or people? Achieving critical mass to promote growth in WikiProjects
Review by Kimaus
In a recent paper[7], Jacob Solomon and Rick Wash investigate the question of sustainability in online communities by analysing trends in the growth of WikiProjects. Solomon and Wash track revisions and membership in over one thousand WikiProjects over a period of five years to examine how the concept of a critical mass can influence a community’s development. The key question being, as the title of the paper states: “Critical mass of what?” Is it achieving a certain number of contributions or a certain number of members that will ensure the future sustainability of an online group?
Using critical mass theory, which describes groups as having an accelerating, linear or decelerating production function, the authors modelled a growth curve for each community. They found that the majority of WikiProjects had an accelerating growth regarding the number of revisions, however a decelerating growth in accruing members which suggests that existing editors are increasing individual contributions to the projects. In further examining this trend Solomon and Wash focus on the early years of projects’ existence to determine whether amassing content or editors in this formative period influences future production functions.
Their modelling shows that a greater number and diversity of editors within a project positively affects the number of revisions accumulated after five years (where diversity is calculated through membership in other WikiProjects). Interestingly, the modelling showed contributions by infrequent participants helped a project grow, but this can be offset by "overparticipation from a project’s power users." They attribute this to members' feeling that they can make a difference to projects that have diverse and sparse contributions. They do note, however, that increased contributions from power users may simply be an attempt to keep a project afloat, and that this effort is ultimately futile in certain cases. In sum, the authors find that it is a critical mass of people (who hold a variety of skills and knowledge) contributing small amounts in the early stages that positively affects a project’s growth and future sustainability.
"Prediction of Foreign Box Office Revenues Based on Wikipedia Page Activity"
In a paper[8] presented at the ChASM Workshop of WebSci'14, Bloomington, Indiana, this month, de Silva and Compton, have generalised a method, previously introduced by Mestyán, Yasseri, and Kertész (see the newsletter review) to predict the box office revenues of movies based on the Wikipedia edits and page-view counts. Of these two metrics, the new paper considers only the page-view statistics of articles about the movies, but extends the sample of movies to include non-American movies as well. Samples of movies in the US, Japan, Australia, the UK, and Germany are studied. The authors concluded: "although the method proposed by Mestyán et al. predicts films’ opening weekend box office revenues in the United States and Australia with reasonable accuracy, its performance drops significantly when applied to various foreign markets. ... we used the model to predict the opening weekend box office revenues generated by films in British, Japanese, and German theatres, [and] found its accuracy to be far from satisfactory."
Briefly
- "Building academic literacy and research skills by contributing to Wikipedia": A survey[9] of research skills of a group of students at an Australian institution showed that purposeful engaging with Wikipedia, including contributing to it, improved their academic skillset.
Map indicating the language areas and provinces of Belgium: - "Google and Bing reintroduce national boundaries more so than Wikipedia does": In a blog post titled "How does Wikipedia cover the world differently than Google (or Bing)?",[10] researcher Han-Teng Liao examines this question by looking at the case of Belgium, which has several language areas. While the two search engines offer a national portal page (google.be / be.bing.com) in different language options, "Wikipedia organizes its users and information less along the lines of national differences and more along the lines of language differences. According to various traffic reports provided by the Wikimedia foundation, users from Belgium contribute to viewing and editing activities mostly in its Dutch, French and English versions."
Other recent publications
A list of other recent publications that could not be covered in time for this issue – contributions are always welcome for reviewing or summarizing newly published research.
- "Inferring Semantic Facets of a Music Folksonomy with Wikipedia"[11]
- "Towards linking libraries and Wikipedia: automatic subject indexing of library records with Wikipedia concepts"[12]
- Pandemic page views in online news media and Wikipedia: From the English abstract of this German-language paper[13]: "... a time-series analysis is done comparing the amount of the coverage of eleven online media on the EHEC pandemic in summer 2011 and the amount of page requests for articles in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia relevant to EHEC. Overall, analyses show strong correlations but also temporary discrepancies, appearing because page requests do not only depict the public agenda but also existing uncertainty about an issue."
- "What makes a good team of Wikipedia editors? A preliminary statistical analysis"[14]. From the abstract: "The paper concerns studying the quality of teams of Wikipedia authors with statistical approach. ... The analysis confirmed that the key issue significantly influencing article’s quality are discussions between teem [sic] members. The second part of the paper successfully uses machine learning models to predict good articles based on features of the teams that created them."
- "A computational linguistic approach towards understanding Wikipedia’s article for deletion (AfD) discussions"[15]. From the abstract: "In this thesis we aim to solve two main problems: 1) how to help new users effectively participate in the [deletion] discussion; and 2) how to make it efficient for administrators to make decision based on the discussion. To solve the first problem, we obtain a knowledge repository for new users by recognizing imperatives. We propose a method to detect imperatives based on syntactic analysis of the texts. And the result shows a good precision and reasonable recall. To solve the second problem, we propose a decision making support system that provides administrators with an reorganized overview of a discussion."
References
- ^ Fichman, Pnina (2014). Global Wikipedia : international and cross-cultural issues in online collaboration. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780810891012.
- ^ Eom, Young-Ho; Pablo Aragón; David Laniado; Andreas Kaltenbrunner; Sebastiano Vigna; Dima L. Shepelyansky (2014-05-28). "Interactions of cultures and top people of Wikipedia from ranking of 24 language editions". arXiv:1405.7183.
- ^ Klein, Max. "Sex Ratios in Wikidata".
- ^ Mohammad Noor Nawaz and Andrea Bunt (2014) IntelWiki: recommending resources to help users contribute to Wikipedia. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP 2014), 12 pp., forthcoming. PDF
- ^ [1]
- ^ Liao, Han-Teng (2014-06-17). "What do Chinese-language microblog users do with Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia?".
- ^ Solomon, Jacob; Rick Wash (2014-05-16). "Critical mass of what? Exploring community growth in WikiProjects". Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.
- ^ de Silva, Brian; Ryan Compton (2014-05-22). "Prediction of foreign box office revenues based on wikipedia page activity". arXiv:1405.5924.
- ^ Miller, Julia (2014-06-13). "Building academic literacy and research skills by contributing to Wikipedia: A case study at an Australian university". Journal of Academic Language and Learning. 8 (2): A72–A86. ISSN 1835-5196.
- ^ Liao, Han-Teng (2014-05-13). "How does Wikipedia cover the world differently than Google (or Bing)?".
- ^
Sordo, Mohamed; Fabien Gouyon; Luís Sarmento; Òscar Celma; Xavier Serra (2013). "Inferring semantic facets of a music folksonomy with Wikipedia". Journal of New Music Research. 42 (4): 346–363. doi:10.1080/09298215.2013.848904. ISSN 0929-8215. Retrieved 2014-06-28.
- ^ Joorabchi, Arash; Abdulhussain E. Mahdi (2014-04-01). "Towards linking libraries and Wikipedia: automatic subject indexing of library records with Wikipedia concepts" (PDF). Journal of Information Science. 40 (2): 211–221. doi:10.1177/0165551513514932. ISSN 0165-5515. Retrieved 2014-06-28.
- ^ Holbach, Thomas; Marcus Maurer. "Wissenswerte Nachrichten". Publizistik: 1–17. doi:10.1007/s11616-013-0191-z. ISSN 0033-4006.
- ^
Bukowski, Leszek; Michał Jankowski-Lorek; Szymon Jaroszewicz; Marcin Sydow (2014-01-01). "What makes a good team of Wikipedia editors? A preliminary statistical analysis". In Akiyo Nadamoto; Adam Jatowt; Adam Wierzbicki; Jochen L. Leidner (eds.). Social Informatics. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 14–28. ISBN 978-3-642-55284-7.
- ^ Mao, Wanting. A computational linguistic approach towards understanding Wikipedia’s article for deletion (AfD) discussions. Master's thesis The University of Western Ontario, 2014. PDF
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