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21 August 2013

 

2013-08-21

Call for contributors

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By The ed17
... some assembly required

Contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do. The genre is refreshingly different from that of Wikipedia articles, and can allow writers to use a different range of skills. Our circulation is up to 2000 for some stories, and reaches far beyond the English Wikipedia, speaking to Wikimedians from many native languages and WMF projects. Page view counts show that readers still visit some pages up to months after publication. The need for an independent, volunteer-run Signpost continues to grow, given the increasing complexity and financial expenditures of the global Wikimedia movement.

Writing for the Signpost does require commitment. Although we've all become used to a weekly Signpost delivered on our talk pages, the number of contributors has decreased, and this week's and last week's editions came out very late. With this in mind, combined with the limited availability of our current editors—especially during the month of September—the Signpost is putting out a call for editors who are interested in contributing to:

  • "News and notes": in brief section
  • "In the media": support
  • "Discussion report": regular and support
  • "Featured content": regular and support
  • "Arbitration report": support
  • "Technology report": support

Editors normally contribute to their section on a regular basis or arrange weekly rotations depending on their circumstances. People willing to do only parts each week, such as adding a few "in brief" notes to "News and notes", are certainly welcome as well.

I look forward to hearing from interested editors, either on my talk page or through email.

— The ed17, Signpost editor-in-chief

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2013-08-21

Wikipedia's Manual of Style marches into Manning's coming out as transgender

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By Neotarf, Emily Temple-Wood and Jayen466

In one of the more surprising turns of events surrounding the WikiLeaks saga, after receiving a 35-year jail sentence for her role in disseminating classified documents to the organization, last Thursday U.S. soldier Bradley Manning announced a change in her sexual identity with a statement read by their attorney on the Today show:


Manning in 2012
As soon as the statement was read, the interviewer seamlessly referred to Manning as "she". "A few moments later," writes a Los Angeles Times reporter, "I looked up 'Bradley Manning' in Wikipedia, and was redirected to a page called 'Chelsea Manning'. All the pronouns had already been switched." Her Wikipedia entry now begins, "Chelsea E. Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is a United States Army soldier ..."

The media was quick to note Wikipedia's actions: Slate Wikipedia beats major news organizations, perfectly reflects Chelsea Manning's new gender, Buzzfeed, Truthdig ("How Wikipedia edited Pvt. Manning's gender without spectacle", New Statesman "Behind the Wikipedia wars: what happened when Bradley Manning became Chelsea", the Daily Dot, Market Watch ("Bradley Manning: 'I am a female'")—all took note of Wikipedia's lead.

Wikipedia's use of gender pronouns is straightforward. The choice of pronouns is governed by the identity section of Wikipedia's Manual of Style (MOS): "the term most commonly used for a person will be the one that person uses for himself or herself", and specifically, "pronouns, and possessive adjectives that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification".

After Manning's declaration, there was rapid editing on both the related article and the MOS. At the MOS, one editor tried to insert the same change four times and was reverted. A formal warning was threatened on the editor's talk page; but in the end, the page was merely protected, which allows editing only by administrators. The Manning article itself was moved from Chelsea Manning back to Bradley Manning, and then back again, after a cordial talk-page discussion revealed that the editor moving the article was not aware of the announcement. Eventually, that page was also protected.

Three blocks, then ANI

The earlier cordial editor behavior on the Chelsea Manning talk page quickly evaporated as administrator and arbitrator Risker blocked administrators Mark Arsten, Jimfbleak and Zzyzx11 for edit warring. The blocks were protested vigorously at the Administrator incidents noticeboard.

All three users were unblocked in short order. Black Kite, who unblocked Zzyzx11 and Jimfbleak, called the blocks "completely farcical": "Zzyzx11 was fixing a date formatting issue, Jimfbleak a MOS issue, and Mark Arsten reinstating a category that had previous[ly] been removed by mistake (and had been edit requested), ... That's one of the most ridiculous and bone-headed blocking actions I've ever seen on Wikipedia. … WP:PROTECT says that pages that are protected because of content disputes should not be edited except to make changes which are uncontroversial, or absent an edit-request. Two of the edits were the former, and one the latter."

Risker did not agree that the edits were uncontroversial: "I'd expect just about every admin to realise that date formatting remains a highly controversial area in just about every article where it is raised… there's hardly an edit that could be made to this article right now that will be completely uncontroversial, and that goes for categories, markup, MOS fixes and typos."

Editing through protection

2012 photo of Bradley Manning, now identifying as female.

It quickly became clear that there was a difference of opinion on editing through protection. "Doing maintenance edits like correcting typos, fixing categories and such are allowed by policy and any admin can feel free to do them on any protected page," explained Hahc21 (ΛΧΣ). "Terrible, terrible blocks," said tariqabjotu. "If absolutely zero editing on protected articles were allowed, we wouldn't have an {{editprotected}} template."

Others indicated that even if it is not spelled out in policy, that with the exception of BLP violations or copyvios, administrators should not make changes without full consensus on the talk page. While it "may not be an abuse of the letter of our protection policy," Kww said, "I sympathize with desire to block: it's apparently the only thing that will get some admins to respect full-protection." "I would support blocking," said ItsZippy. "They can and should be blocked" said Beeblebrox. "Even if it's not in the rules that they can't," said The Bushranger, they shouldn't edit, "because that's a good way of feeding the 'admins are more equal than others' arguments that we see so often." "If the protection policy doesn't make that clear, then I think we should fix it," wrote SlimVirgin. "I'd personally just say reblock," said Jamesofur, "it seems we have too many admins pissy about their 'rights'".

Hidden warnings

"Has the world gone mad? I didn't even read the talk page, and I find that I've been blocked for not doing so!" said Jimfbleak after being unblocked, pointing out that he had made "one unsuspecting edit to a page with a warning hidden on a talk page". The warning, against editing "absent a clear-cut edit request," was made on the Chelsea Manning talk page, and has now been automatically archived.

Risker's reply: "Jimfbleak. If you can't bother reading the talk page of a protected article and getting stuck in to understand why it's protected and what the issues are, you shouldn't be editing that page at all." Jauersock thought differently, though, writing "You can't put a warning on talk page like that and expect anyone to see it, it's now mixed up somewhere in the middle of the page like any other thread ... If a user who outright vandalizes an article is 'warned' like that and then gets reported to AIV, it would get declined in a heartbeat for insufficient warnings."

"If we don't axe single-edit anonymous vandals, we shouldn't do the same to other editors," said Joy [shallot], adding, "If this was my first block ever, as it appears to have been the case for Mark Arsten, I would actually find such a block to be an explicitly insensitive act of destroying a previously clean block log."

The role of talk pages

The one unanswered question is why no effort was made to engage any of the editors on their talk pages. "If you went to each of those admins," wrote tariqabjotu, "and said, 'hey, [link to discussion], that wasn't as uncontroversial as you thought,' I doubt any of them wouldn't have acceded to reverting." Zzyzx11 recommended that the protection policy be changed, "knowing that admins like me will less likely respond to {{edit protected}} or any other similar admin assistance requests for fear of getting blocked by other admins.", while another editor, UltraExactZZ, commented:


In brief

  • Gender diversity conference: Registration closes 20 September for the Wikimedia Diversity Conference, to be held in Berlin from 9–10 November 2013. The conference aims to facilitate dialogue between collaborators in Wikimedia Chapters, the Wikimedia Foundation and the international communities, and to frame initiatives for increasing gender and other types of diversity in Wikimedia.
  • Wikipedia Weekly rebooted: An ancient, in Wikipedia time, podcast is being resurrected by Andrew Lih. Wikipedia Weekly was, as its name suggests, a weekly podcast in 2006 and 2007 before dropping off; three have been published in the last month, with two focusing on Wikimania. The most recent is available in video.
  • Wikivoyage logo: The final selection of Wikivoyage logos is being done on Meta.
  • OTRS upgrade: The Wikimedia Blog has reported on the upgrades to the OTRS system.
  • Wikipedian in Residence opening: The medical evidence library Cochrane Collaboration is looking for experienced editors to become a Wikipedian in Residence—a paid and remote position with Cochrane's Infectious Disease Group. Active editors with a background in science or medicine are invited to apply.
  • Wikipedia Library redesigned: The Wikipedia Library, an open research hub to organize Wikipedian's collective library efforts, was redesigned. Its major goals are to improve access to local libraries, free resources, and paywalled sources while building community relationships with libraries and institutions, facilitating research on Wikipedia, and advancing open access broadly.
  • Wikipedia a poor tool for reputation management: Mike Wood, writing on Allbusiness.com, describes "why Wikipedia can be a dangerous reputation management tool". Wood explains that companies often try to relegate negative content to the second page of Google search results, which fewer than 2% of Google users access, and that in 99% of Google searches, Wikipedia appears on the first page of Google results. But he warns that while it may feel tempting to put a "gleaming positive article" in Wikipedia, taking the place of some other link on that first page, any negative content omitted from the article will probably be added at some time by another editor, and then remain forever lodged at the top of Google.
  • Is Google making us sick?: Readers Digest Canada published a piece on medical information in Wikipedia and other websites, highlighting the work of James Heilman (User:Jmh649) on Wikipedia.
  • Wikipedian barred from leaving China: Techinasia.com reported that Chinese Wikipedian Huang Zhisong has been banned from leaving China until 2016. Zhisong "believes the blockade has been put in place to put pressure on him, and stems from his frequent trips to Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan on Wikipedia editorial issues." The Daily Dot later clarified that Zhisong has actually been banned from travelling since 2009, and that the ban was unrelated to Jimmy Wales' recent statements about censorship in China.
  • Tory MP and estranged wife in "Wikipedia battle": A story broke this week that Mark Pritchard, a British politician, and his estranged wife allegedly edited his article under various usernames. They were taking a divorce dispute public. The story was reported in the Daily Mail and The Drum.
  • "Wikipédia, ce n'est pas l'Encyclopédie": France-Amérique opined on several issues facing French and English Wikipedia, including BLPs, scientific controversies, and historical spin.
  • Women contributors still face hurdles at Wikipedia: The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog covered the gender gap.
  • Wiki wormhole: List of films considered the worst was covered in AV Club with amusing commentary.
  • How Open-Access Scholarship Improves the Internet: The Atlantic published an article this week on open access initiatives mentioned the benefit that Wikipedia derives from free journals.
  • Canberra's Southside versus Northside 'war' hijacks Wikipedia : The Canberra Times reported on vandalism to the article North Canberra.

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2013-08-21

Proposed decision posted in Infoboxes case; Tea Party movement case continues

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By Neotarf

A proposed decision has been posted in the Infoboxes case that includes statements on metadata and microformat issues. The Tea Party movement case continues, following a stalemate over the proposed decision.

Open cases

Infoboxes

A proposed decision has been posted in the Infoboxes case. Arbitrators were quick to agree on the principle that global consensus “cannot be overruled by a local consensus” and a finding of fact that “the use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited” and therefore to be determined by local consensus at each individual article. Agreement on metadata was less quick. (See the extensive discussion of metadata issues at the evidence and evidence talk pages; see also microformat).

While there was general agreement that “Anyone may edit, use, modify and distribute the content for any purpose and the re-use of the information should be facilitated, where it is not detrimental to the encyclopedia,” a more narrowly tailored statement that “metadata aligns with the goals of the encyclopedia where it is not detrimental to our content or our scope” found less agreement, with concerns expressed over whether there had been sufficient community discussion to establish clear consensus, best practices, or guidelines for its use.

The case, brought by Ched, involves the issue of who should make the decision to include an infobox in an article and to determine its formatting, as well as what is perceived to be some editors' aggressive addition or reverting of infoboxes to articles without discussion.

Tea Party movement

The committee has now posted a “more traditional decision including specific findings and remedies against specific editors” after failing to reach an agreement on the original proposed decision and on a controversial “motion for final decision” that would have imposed a 6-month article/page ban on 14 editors from “editing the Tea Party movement article, the article talk page, and all subpages of the article and talk page”. (See the August 7 and August 14 arbitration reports). Findings of fact have been proposed for 9 editors (not including the proposer of the case). Remedies, including topic bans or restrictions, and two interaction bans, have been proposed for 11 editors. Two editors who have been proposed for sanctions have not yet had findings of fact posted.

Other requests and committee action

  • Clarification and amendment request: Argentine History (August 2013): A clarification and amendment request made by Lecen was closed with an interaction ban between Cambalachero and Lecen, and MarshalN20 and Lecen.
  • Clarification request: Argentine History (August 2013): A request made by Cambalachero for a clarification of whether a topic ban on pages related to the history of Latin America applies to articles about recent politics or a brief mention of historical context in non-historical articles was closed with the clarification that events after and including 1983 should not be an issue.

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2013-08-21

Today's article for improvement

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By Mabeenot
Your source for
WikiProject News
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

This week, we spent some time with the folks behind Today's Article for Improvement, commonly shortened to TAFI, which Coin945 notes is pronounced "taffy". The initiative began in July 2012 as an attempt to "use widespread collaborative editing to improve articles... over a short time frame." Two of the project's touted accomplishments are improving the articles for Sea and Entertainment from start-class to Good Article status. In addition to drawing veteran editor attention with a Community Portal widget and weekly announcements posted to subscribed talk pages, TAFI briefly appeared as a box on Wikipedia's main page welcoming new editors to contribute. Plans are ongoing to return TAFI to the main page. We interviewed AutomaticStrikeout, Coin945, NickPenguin, TheOriginalSoni, and TonyTheTiger.

Where did the idea for "Today's article for improvement" come from? How is it different from the collaborations of the week/fortnight/month held by individual WikiProjects?
AutomaticStrikeout: I can recall proposing the idea for the project that became TAFI at one of the village pumps. However, I can't remember specifically what prompted me to come up with the concept. I guess the major difference between TAFI and some of individual WikiProject collaborations is that TAFI seeks to improve articles covering many different topics, whereas an individual WikiProject has a much more defined scope and will focus on improving articles within its scope.
Coin945: There have always been aims to get a project like this going ahead, in some form or another. I know I have personally made at least two separate proposals for something along these lines to be put into place. I think TAFI is actually the conglomeration of two different ideas that have delightfully merged into one: the will to bring new editors to Wikipedia by editing bare articles on topics they know and love, and then an article drive that takes place every day. For me, when wanting to edit a random article, it takes forever just choosing an article from the many millions, and that is a huge time burden on me. So having 10 already-chosen articles right there, I think is a great asset. In short, the reason why this one succeeded while the other ones failed is merely due to hard work and persistence. We have an incredibly devoted team at TAFI who are not overly bureaucratic and who are open to any suggestions and improvements which I think is great (for example if the requirements for nominations became much more strict we would discourage users from taking part).
NickPenguin: The idea was originally posed here at the Village Pump: Proposals by User:AutomaticStrikeout. It started just as an idea to create a general collaboration WikiProject, but it started to gain more traction when it was proposed to put it on the Main Page and use it as a means to attract new editors. These two goals, while both possible, has led to an ideological tension in TAFI; is it a collaboration project first, or is it an editor recruitment project first?
The thing that makes this different from other collaboration projects is that it has a much wider scope. The consequence of this is that one weeks worth of articles can appeal to a wide audience of editors. The down side is that editors might not see an article they find interesting every week.
TheOriginalSoni: As Nick here said, one of the prime reasons TAFI is different is because of our scope. While most of the "Collaboration of the Day" programs in other WikiProjects are very focused on certain topics or a certain group of editors, TAFI has no such constraint. That allows us a much more wider scope and a larger group to focus on, both in terms of the articles and the editors in focus. We try and choose everyday articles which will be of interest to a large number of people and at the same time, we try to make sure that those articles are not so good that any new editor will not be able to help around to edit it. In the same way, we try and maximize our target audience, and we hope to get editors from all fields and interests, with a special focus on having newer editors.
Coin945: I always thought that TAFI should be about the articles on obvious topics (i.e. topics that if you were to theoretically create a new encyclopedia today, would probably be created within the week) that amazingly have very underdeveloped articles. It is to refute the notion passed around quite a bit these days that "all the good topics have already been written about".
This week's article for improvement is
Ancient Egyptian architecture
Papyriform columns in the Luxor Temple
Please be bold and help improve it!
How are articles selected for TAFI? Is there a reason for the order in which articles appear on the TAFI template? How is the template's image chosen?
Coin945: Anyone can nominate articles for TAFI, via the 'nominations' subpage. While the aim is to select start or stub-class articles on rather important topics that shockingly are still in a bad state, more obscure or developed articled articles are also welcomed. There is no hard and fast rule to what gets accepted or not. Essentially whatever gets 3 or more Supports, and little to no opposition, gets accepted. Which is a fairly good system considering we have 10 TAFI articles per week (we need a LOT of successful nominations). Also, Opposes tend to veto nominations, regardless of how many supports they have. At the moment, nominations have slowed down a tad, so we would encourage all Wikipedians to nominate and support the articles there. Once they have been selected, they are not discussed any further, and are moved into the Holding Area, and later put into the Schedule page when their TAFI week has been arranged. There is no secret meaning behind the order the articles are placed in the template. Sometimes (as we have 10 different categories and want to take one article from each), the articles are merely in the order of how the categories are listed in the Holding Area page. Haha maybe we should be sending subliminal messages, like the first letters of each spelling E D I T P L E A S E :D. As far as I'm aware, the template image is chosen by basically looking at the images in each of the 10 articles, and then choosing the most aesthetically pleasing of the bunch.
TheOriginalSoni: Our nominations page is where all the real action happens. Anyone can nominate any article and if it gets 3 supports within a reasonable amount of time, it gets placed in our Holding Area, which essentially is just a place for the articles to stay for some time. After that, a bot simply makes the schedule from the oldest of the articles, taking care to try and balance the various sections. One manual addition of the picture later, our articles are ready to be TAFI :)
Coin945: It wasn't always like that, mind you. The very first TAFI article (back when it stood for "today's article for improvement" - note the lack of plurality) was Culture. The discussion is located here. I remember being highly opposed to it due to it being way too developed in my opinion; my assumption was (informed by personal experience mind you) that it was much easier to add to an article than copyedit it. So for a day-only improvement drive, we would have much better results that by working on short articles than by rearranging/fixing/etc long articles. The philosophy regarding stub/start articles came into being soon after.
How successful has TAFI been at engaging editors and improving articles? Does TAFI's format result in some highlighted articles receiving greater prominence than others? Do some articles pose greater difficulties in attracting editors?
NickPenguin: There have been some strong successes, such as the improvement of Writer (before), Entertainment (before) and Sea (before). Not all of the weeks nominations attract a great deal of interest, but there are some winners. The tricky bit is finding articles that have both a wide appeal and ease of editing.
Coin945: Fun fact: NickPenguin nominated Writer, while I nominated the other two. NickPenguin has raised a very important point. TAFI is successful, yes, but we can't put that down to a community coming together to make Wikipedia great. It is because of a small collection of dedicated editors who find these articles and completely rewrite them. Often by themselves. For example, Entertainment was turned into a GA by essentially one extraordinary editor (User:Whiteghost.ink). Of course, bringing many new Wikipedians to the project comes with some issues, like different visions of what the article should be, or edit conflicts. Perhaps some guidelines should be put into place on how the articles are overseen/handled during their time at TAFI...
It always surprises me what articles get the most attention each week. General topics always tend to outweigh more niche ones. But even so, you can never tell what will see significant improvements by the week's end. It all comes down to what our TAFI followers personally are interested in. Which is why we specifically aim to have as wide a reach topic-wise as possible. I remember one article gaining significant attention on the Wikipedia Facebook page: Islamic Golden Age. Much of the discussion was essentially on the Islamaphobic topic of "this is a lie. Islam has never had a golden age", while the rest of it was reasoned analysis of the era, the debunking of myths, and the general denoobification of the ignorant public. It was glorious to read. So perhaps that is TAFI's greatest achievement so far.
TAFI briefly appeared on Wikipedia's main page. How was this accomplished? Why is TAFI no longer on the main page? Are there plans for TAFI to return?
Coin945: My vision for TAFI was always a banner across the top of the page proudly proclaiming: "___ is today's article for improvement. [enter short quip about it that engages viewer and encourages them to edit]". The problem is that the main page serves two different purposes in Wikipedians' minds. Which comes down to what Wikipedians' views on Wikipedia actually are. If you see it as a work in progress, then you want the main page to be a portal to all the ways you can help improve it. If you see it as a work that must have a facade of excellence and perfection, then you want to shower it with FA and other well written content. That is the issue with my original proposal. So we went with something a lot more subtle. Others will no doubt go into a lot more detail, but essentially there were issues with having both halves of the main page the same length, which meant On this Day or DYK had to alter the number of selections they have per week, and then we thought we could have a whole bar to ourselves alleviating that problem, and then it all got kinda confusing and the next thing I knew we were off the main page.
NickPenguin: It was put on the Main Page after months of communication with the rest of the community, through talk page messages, RFCs and other avenues. It was taken off the main page because the schedule was not updated in advance of the next week's cycle. That part of the weekly process has now been automated, but there was other underlying issues that has yet to be resolved. For starters, there has been endless and unresolved debate about the format and placement on the Main Page. Also, the outside participation was just not as great as expected, as roughly 50% of article improvement came from project members. It hasn't been determined if this is because of article choice, publicity, the format on the main page, or another factor. But it certainly didn't attract as many new editors as we had imagined it might.
Coin945: The fact that an essentially dead project was completely invigorated after the WMF started having TAFI-based posts is enough proof to me that the main problem was the dullness of the design. I remember saying in one of the discussions something along the lines: you can have the best product in the world, but if you market it incorrectly, it will fail miserably. Now in not sure how good our product is, but I can certainly vouch for it being marketed in the complete wrong way. Boring, impersonal, and miniscule. I always have Horrible Histories in the back of my head when thinking about TAFI marketing. How do you make something traditionally seen as dull into something exciting and fun..?
TheOriginalSoni: We've had several CENT-listed RFCs on the village pump to add TAFI to the main page. That was done in-order to try and attract our newer editors and convert them to active editing. After months of deliberations and painstakingly moving forward with it, we hit a major wall with the design. We had several ideas for adding the new section, but the admins and editors most involved with the Main Page said we could not try to add that because of issues with balancing the left and right columns of the page, which was apparently a major problem already. Because of that, we had to implement a relatively worse option without these issues, but which also failed to be noticeable or clear enough to make some real impact. Because of this lack of impact, and other (now resolved) automation issues, we were removed off the Main Page.
There are already plans in motion for returning us to the main page. Currently, Technical 13 and I have been working on a possible full-width layout which would supersede all the other concerns. Progress on this has been slow, and would require plenty of input and update from others. But it's a start, with with luck, we can try and get a layout which is agreeable to all, and get TAFI and the bar approved through an RFC soon enough.
TonyTheTiger: On August 5 User:NickPenguin opened discussion of returning to the main page with a Full Width bar on the TAFI talk page. In order to move things along, on August 14, I proposed a final call and vote regarding possible formats. On August 17, consideration and voting on 6 formats began.
There has been considerable discussion about linking TAFI to social media platforms. What would be the goals of integrating social media into a project on Wikipedia? How would this be implemented? Are there any downsides to attracting attention from social media?
Coin945: I am heavily involved in the social media aspect of TAFI, along with User: Tbayer (WMF) and User: Matthew (WMF), so I suppose I should answer this one. Essentially the social media aspect of TAFI is a 3-pronged attack: facebook, twitter, and google plus. I try to write short, snappy statuses that are creative, original, interesting, and eye-catching so skimmers will perhaps stop, think, giggle, and then want to explore further. For example, as a huge fan of Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, I wrote this status update: "'What makes a monster and what makes a man?' asks Clopin. Well, perhaps a monster is someone who doesn't want to help improve 'Notre Dame,' today's English Wikipedia article for improvement ‪#‎TAFI‬", to which a Facebook user who I will keep anonymous said "Hmmm. I don't know who writes these little blurbs....but that was a really interesting and original introduction to TAFI". So I must be doing something right. :). A downside is obviously that you get trolls, but they are often ignored so that is not that big of a deal. Sometimes other Facebook Wikipedians request the issues to be looked into further, but then the trolls dismiss the issue, leading one to believe that they have no substance behind their criticism. Questions have been raised in regard to a heightened risk of vandalism on TAFI pages, but the simple response is that with more exposure, the pages will have any more watchers, which means vandalism should be reverted as a rapid pace. And even then, how can you oppose change and improvement just because there is a risk that some bias will come along with the huge amount of good? The same thing have happened throughout history. What if a caveman said: "no. we cannot invent the wheel because maybe someone will make large machines with wheels on the bottom and then run over someone killing them". When you get down to it, those sorts of hypothetical criticisms, regardless of how factual they may be, cannot take away the positives that come from the change. Or at least that's how I see it..
TheOriginalSoni: One of the main priorities Wikipedia and its editors must look forward to today is to get good newer editors. TAFI's linkage to social media platforms is one of the ways we can try and actively search for editors. Websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus could be one of the best ways for us to get more editors, and TAFI is one among several sections which get a post from the Wikimedia Foundation/Wikipedia accounts on these sites. This is a small step for Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects to get involved with the rest of the Internet, and attract more and newer editors; but it could be significant if implemented properly. As the situation currently stands, we get a handful of replies for every post that is made, and we're hoping it increases in the next few days with consistently creative blurbs from Coin, Matthew and others.
Coin945: Also wanted to point out that it was my idea to establish a "#TAFI" handle for both Facebook and Twitter, in an attempt to built up the brand further. It's short, concise, and memorable. Now all we need is a jingle.. :P.
Are there any ways that the various WikiProjects toiling away in distant corners of Wikipedia can become involved in TAFI? Have there been any proposals to pick a theme for a particular week's TAFI selections?
AutomaticStrikeout: I believe the idea of a theme has been discussed in the past, perhaps for special occasions such as major holidays.
NickPenguin: If there are active WikiProjects that would like to have a theme week, that would just be awesome. Ideas like that could certainly be brought up on the TAFI talk page, I'm sure they would be met with open arms.
TheOriginalSoni: There have been no such plans for TAFI to have a theme, but we absolutely welcome any editors and projects to try and collaborate to nominate and improve any articles for TAFI. As long as the articles nominated fall under our nomination guidelines (Should not be developed and preferably should be of general interest), we would love to have newer editors join our wings, and help in nomination or editing, whether it be for a category of articles, or for all articles. One of our previous TAFIs on Australian Aboriginal sacred sites was chosen when an editor was conducting a Wikipedia workshop for newer editors. The TAFI, being a topic of interest for those in the workshop, was improved by a number of them. If more of such collaborations between TAFI and Wikipedia workshops could be done, it would be excellent for all of us.
Coin945: The most important thing WikiProjects can do in my opinion (besides the great "theme" idea), is to keep a lookout for TAFI articles that fall under their jurisdiction, and then see if they can help out. Perhaps by copyediting, or by collecting sources, or by locating users who would be the most interested in the topic, or even just by raising awareness of the project through the relevant article. Wikiprojects seem such distant, individual entities these days. Why not bring us all together through our shared love for knowledge - the philosophy that I'm sure is the reason we all came here in the first place?
What are the greatest challenges facing TAFI? How do you foresee the project growing? What tasks can editors undertake that would support and improve TAFI?
AutomaticStrikeout: The greatest challenge may be finding an article that is workable as a collaborative target for multiple editors. It's great if an article targeted by TAFI receives major improvement from one person, but the ideal goal is for multiple editors to work together on the chosen articles. This requires the project members to find articles that are relevant to a large enough group of people.
NickPenguin: Right now the greatest threat to the project, or any other project really, is participation. It is operating right now, but the project needs a fresh new perspective from some new editors. The same problems, ideas and objections keep coming up when it comes to getting the project back on the Main Page, and the way forward is not clear. The unfortunate reality is that if the standstill does not come to a close, then the project will simply die out.
TheOriginalSoni: The most important need for the project is for a few dedicated editors to pick up from where TAFI's been left out and help us carve out a plan to decide and implement a full width main page section. Until then, we have an active Social media reach-out too, which should, hopefully, convert a few editors every week. Any editors are welcome to nominate and support suitable articles for TAFI and help improve the articles. You could also join us in improving the project and helping it get back to the main page.
Coin945: The greatest challenge is just getting a design everyone's happy with and running with it. This is an extremely important project in my opinion. I think Wikipedia needs to return its roots about the world coming together to collect knowledge and fix knowledge gaps. Not about a niche series of editors showing off their glossy perfect information for others to read and admire. This project will hopefully make Wikipedia more friendly and accessible. There was a time (after we were taken off the main page) that I seriously just thought we were done for. That despite all our hard work the project had been abandoned. But then the social media angle was our second wind, and we've been more successful that way than we ever were with our imperfect main page trial. So it's just a matter of people understanding the importance of what a project like this represents in regard to Wikipedia's "anybody can edit" vision (it's worth stating the quote from the critic in Ratatouille: "Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist *can* come from *anywhere*"), and giving people the courage to say "yes, i can do this if i really want to. i do not need to be afraid of a hostile environment of established users griping because newbies can't get simple things right". This is a helping hand to new editors. And also a great way for old editors to quickly and easily find great collaboration opportunities. The greatest challenge is to get people to understand this.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Coin945: It's interesting to note that this interview (at least I assume so) is wholly responsible for the recent push to get TAFI back on the main page. Which is very exciting to see by the way :).
TonyTheTiger: We would appreciate it if the community would give us feedback on the format that they would most like to see on the main page at Wikipedia_talk:Today's articles for improvement#Calling for a vote on the format that we propose.

Next week's article should provide a variety of amusements. Until then, queue for your next ride in the archive.

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2013-08-21

Skyscrapers, Gibraltar DYKs, Four Award, Secure login, and more

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By Pine


20th century Brazilian theater director and writer Augusto Boal (1931–2009) was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Here he is seen presenting Theatre of the Oppressed. A new post in the WMF blog describes Assistant Professor Amy E. Hughes' experience in the Wikimedia Education Program with a two term graduate class on Western theater history.

This is mostly a list of Non-article page requests for comment believed to be active on 21 August 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC, recent watchlist notices and SiteNotices. The latter 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

The International Commerce Centre is the tallest building in Hong Kong and the 5th tallest building in the world. The welcome party for Wikimania 2013 was held at the Sky100 observation deck in the building. Two RFCs about tall buildings are currently active on English Wikipedia.

WikiProjects and collaborations

Technical issues and templates

Proposals

  • All proposal RfCs are listed in other sections of this report

English Wikipedia notable requests for permissions

(This section will include active RfAs, RfBs, CU/OS appointment requests, and Arbcom elections)

Meta

Upcoming online meetings

Wikimedia blog posts

The Frecce Tricolori ("Tricolour Arrows"), the aerobatic demonstration team of the Italian Air Force, seen in a featured picture by Commons contributor Airwolf from www.konflikty.pl. Airwolf is profiled in this post on the WMF Blog.


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2013-08-21

Bad Cat

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By Serendipodous


Summary: The arrival of the final season of Breaking Bad, arguably the most critically acclaimed TV series since The Wire, has spurred interest across the board, with two entries in the top 10. A Google Doodle to celebrate the birthday of physicist Erwin Schrödinger gave entries for both the man and his ill-used cat. This week was also another banner week for Indian viewers, with four India-related topics in the list, including no. 1, no doubt aided by the celebration of that country's Independence Day on August 15.

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25

For the week of August 11 - 17, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Draw (chess) B-class 950,240
The stalemate in chess became a topic of discussion in India when Chess Grandmasters Baskaran Adhiban and Parimarjan Negi both drew during the 2013 Chess World Cup in Norway.
2 Breaking Bad B-class 881,759
The final season of this acclaimed chemistry teacher-turned-Scarface TV series began on August 11.
3 Erwin Schrödinger Start-class 871,286 The Austrian physicist, founder of quantum mechanics and originator of the somewhat disturbing thought experiment that bears his name got a Google Doodle to celebrate his 126th birthday on August 12.
4 Chennai Express C-class 822,516 This Bollywood action-romance has broken records at the Indian box office, becoming the first film to make ₹1 billion ($16.3 million) in four days.
5 Facebook B-class 720,633
A perennially popular article
6 Schrödinger's cat C-class 685,484
The world's least fortunate and most perplexing hypothetical kitty bent many minds and continued to stump the human race in his simultaneous existence and lack thereof, thanks to the honor paid to his creator by Google.
7 Independence Day (India) Good Article 485,948
The 66th anniversary of Indian independence in 1947 was celebrated on August 15.
8 List of Bollywood films of 2013 List 459,693
An established staple of the top 25 makes a reappearance in the top 10.
9 The Conjuring (film) C-class 446,658 James Wan's latest ghost story (reportedly based on true events) stormed the US, taking $70 million in its first week, and is now closing in on $200 million worldwide.
10 Breaking Bad (season 5) List 440,418
People will want to keep up with the show, which means this won't be the last time we see this here.


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2013-08-21

Afrobeat

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By Pine, Hahc21 and Tony1
A market in Lagos, Nigeria. Nigerian Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti describes the city's conditions, including a multilingual trading market, in his widely praised 1975 album Confusion. The album is the subject of a new featured article.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from August 11, 2013 through August 17, 2013.


Featured articles

A scene from The Bayeux Tapestry (French Tapisserie de Bayeux, Norman La telle du conquest) showing Normans at the Battle of Hastings
Aleeta curvicosta, a species of cicada, is commonly known as the floury baker or floury miller. This photo was promoted to Featured picture in 2012.

Sixteen featured articles were promoted this week.

  • The Diary of a Nobody (nom) nominated by Brianboulton – a seminal work in comic English fiction, much imitated over the years in terms of format and characterisation. The nominator says: "It's comedy without malice; the book has never been out of print, and if you haven't read it before I hope this article might inspire you to do so (free, online of course)."
  • Old Church of St Nidan, Llanidan (nom) nominated by Bencherlite – a church that was mostly demolished in 1844 when a new church in a "debased barbarous style" was built to replace it.
  • Aleeta curvicosta (nom) nominated by Casliber and 99of9 – a loud species of cicada native to the eastern coastline of the Australian continent.
  • Wordless novel (nom) nominated by Curly Turkey – a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story.
  • X-Cops (The X-Files) (nom) nominated by Gen. Quon – "The X-Files meets COPS episode of the series", says the nominator, "particularly well-loved by the fanbase. I feel that this episode able to both balance the humor and scariness, both of which were facets that The X-Files was famous for."
  • Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (nom) nominated by Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs – a first-person shooter video game set in the Halo universe. The game reached "gold status" and was released in 2011.
  • Batman: Arkham Asylum (nom) nominated by Darkwarriorblake – a 2009 action-adventure video game based on the DC Comics superhero, Batman.
  • Robert Howe (Continental Army officer) (nom) nominated by Cdtew – a controversial commander, a failed tactician, a duelist, and possibly an attempted spy for the British. The nominator says: "All around, that makes for a fascinating character, whose story I believe I've captured fully."
  • Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar (nom) nominated by Wehwalt – one of the stranger stories of commemorative half dollars, involving an eccentric sculptor, a drive to remember the Confederacy, and the KKK.
  • Boenga Roos dari Tjikembang (novel) (nom) nominated by Crisco 1492 – The Rose of Cikembang is "the most beautiful work of Chinese Malay literature I've read yet", in the nominator's opinion. "It's the only one I know of which has been translated to English"
  • Battle of Hastings (nom) nominated by Ealdgyth – the decisive battle in 1066 that assured Norman control of England.
  • Quagga (nom) nominated by FunkMonk and LittleJerry – an extinct subspecies of the plains zebra that lived in South Africa.
  • Diamonds (Rihanna song) (nom) nominated by Tomica – recorded by the Barbadian singer for her seventh studio album.
  • A Song Flung Up to Heaven (nom) nominated by Figureskatingfan – the sixth book in author Maya Angelou's series of autobiographies, set between 1965 and 1968.
  • Confusion (album) (nom) nominated by Dan56 – a studio album by Nigerian Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti and his band the Africa 70, released in 1975.
  • Jesus (nom) nominated by FutureTrillionaire – the central figure of Christianity, whom the teachings of most Christian denominations hold to be the Son of God.
The quagga (Equus quagga quagga) seen in an early 1800s painting by Swiss artist Jacques-Laurent Agasse

Featured lists

The discography of American singer-songwriter Beyoncé is now featured
Irish cricketer Eoin Morgan is one of only 22 cricketers who have represented two countries during their careers in international cricket.

Three featured lists were promoted this week.

  • Characters of God of War (nom) by JDC808. Video game franchise God of War has included a wide variety of characters since its introduction in 2005. Most of them are loosely based on Greek mythology, including Olympian Gods, Titans, and Greek heroes, among others. Other minor fictional characters also appear in the games, such as the family of the protagonist, Kratos, who is also fictional.
  • Beyoncé Knowles discography (nom) by JennKR. American recording artist Beyoncé Knowles has sold more than 118 million records worldwide as a solo artist, and is among the best-selling music artists of all time. Her musical career began at a young age and she rocketed to fame as a member of girl group Destiny's Child. She later developed a successful solo career, including four studio albums and five Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits.
  • List of cricketers who have played for two international teams (nom) by The Rambling Man. Twenty-two cricketers have represented two countries during their international careers. Fourteen have played Test cricket for two nations, while seven have played One Day International cricket for two countries.

Featured pictures

Malayalam–language poet and folk-song writer Kalathil Makki Divakaran, commonly known as Chandiroor Divakaran

Three featured pictures were promoted this week.

An Albanian water frog in Montenegro


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2013-08-21

Generating musical scores with LilyPond

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By Adam Cuerden and Kirill Lokshin

Thanks to a new MediaWiki extension, editors can now use the popular LilyPond format to embed musical scores in articles. The "Score" extension, created by Alexander Klauer (GrafZahl), renders musical scores in LilyPond score notation as PNG images, and can also transform those scores into audio and MIDI files automatically. An example of the extension's output, together with the corresponding LilyPond markup, is shown below:

\relative c'' { \time 4/4 \key c \major c4 g8 g a4 g r b^> c^> r \bar "|." } \addlyrics { Shave and a hair -- cut: two bits. }
<score midi="1">\relative c'' { \time 4/4 \key c \major 
c4 g8 g a4 g r b^> c^> r \bar "|." } 
\addlyrics { Shave and a hair -- cut: two bits. }</score>

More details on the options provided by the extension can be found on its help page and MediaWiki description page. The LilyPond project also offers a variety of useful documentation, including an FAQ that explains how to use a keyboard or one of several score-based editors to create LilyPond markup that can be imported into Wikipedia articles.

In brief

  • VisualEditor continues to improve: Several new features have been added to VisualEditor, including automatic display of both "edit source" and "edit beta" links on sections, the ability to edit reference content directly from a list of footnotes, and support for Opera browsers. Soon to be supported are strikethrough and <code> markup, with mathematical markup to follow.
  • Support for new fonts: Several new fonts have recently been added to the default set available on Wikimedia projects; these include Gentium, a font meant to support Latin-script languages which use multiple diacritics; Shapour, which supports the Pahlavi script; and Old Persian, which supports, unsurprisingly, Old Persian. The fonts are not yet available on the English Wikipedia, and no date for their release has been given.
  • Innovative uses for Wikidata: Gerard Meijssen has written a series of blog posts highlighting innovative uses of Wikidata. The selected projects include automatically creating family trees, automatically filling out infoboxes, using Wikidata to identify people in pictures and even automatically-generated multilingual factsheets.
  • Tech news: As always, tech-related posts are also located on Meta.
  • PNG thumbnailing improved: The thumbnailing of PNG files larger than 35 megapixels has been improved, helping to address an issue where uploading a lossless copy of a large image would result in a failure to create a thumbnail, giving the unfortunate impression that the file was corrupted.
  • MIME search tool enabled: The MIME search tool (Special:MIMESearch), which allows users to generate lists of files according to their MIME type, has been enabled on all Wikimedia projects following a series of performance improvements.

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