Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2009-03-02
Books extension enabled
Make your own book with Wikiproject Wikipedia-Books
6 June 2011
ArbCom tally pending; Pediapress renderer; fundraiser update; unreferenced BLP drive
6 December 2010
Fundraisers start for Wikipedia and Citizendium; controversial content and leadership
15 November 2010
Wikipedia books launched worldwide
10 May 2010
Wikipedia-Books: Proposed deletion process extended, cleanup efforts
22 March 2010
New Book namespace created
11 January 2010
35k donated, WikiProject for Wikipedia-Books, 2M rated articles, and more
30 November 2009
Books extension enabled
2 March 2009
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Make your own book with Wikiproject Wikipedia-Books |
A new feature, the collection extension (also called "wiki-to-print" or the book tool) has been enabled on six more Wikipedias (French, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Simple English) and on the English Wikipedia for logged-in users, according to a post on the Wikimedia blog. The extension had previously been put into production on the German-language Wikipedia [1] and on Wikibooks and Wikisource.
The new extension means that for logged-in users on the English Wikipedia, there are three new links in the left-hand sidebar. The link in the toolbox labelled "PDF version" renders a pdf version on the fly of the article currently being viewed. The next two new links are in a new box called "create a book." These links enable creating collections of articles, or "books." The link "Add wiki page" adds the page currently being viewed to a new book, while "Books help" links to the help page with directions for producing books. Books that are created may be downloaded in pdf format or OpenDocument (.odf) format by clicking on the "show book" link once all the desired pages are added. This link leads to the Special:Book page, where a book title may be added and the order of pages changed. Books may also be shared with others, and there is a page to list books that are created at Wikipedia:Books.
Books can also be printed out for a fee by sending them to PediaPress, the developers of the new extension, which will create a printed book for any book produced using the extension. You can also go to the PediaPress collections site and develop a collection of content from any MediaWiki-based public wiki to be printed. Books printed by PediaPress vary in price depending on their size; a variety of existing books of Wikipedia content that have been collected may also be browsed and ordered on the PediaPress site.
Feedback and problems can be reported on Meta; there is also a bug tracking system for the PediaPress code here.
Reader comments
Stewards, Wikimania bids, and more
New stewards confirmed
After the 2009 steward elections, Cary Bass of the Wikimedia Foundation announced that nine new stewards have been confirmed: Meno25, Erwin, Kylu, Laaknor, Mike.lifeguard, Leinad, Dorgan, Alexanderps, and Mardetanha. The new stewards come from a variety of projects and languages, including Arabic, Dutch, English, Norwegian, Polish, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Persian.
Wikimania bids due
Bids for cities to host Wikimania 2010 are due on March 7. Further information may be added to bids after they are submitted (until March 30), but no new bids may be submitted after this date. Bids should be posted to the bid page, bearing in mind the judging criteria. Any questions may be directed to this year's Wikimania Jury or posted on the Wikimania-l mailing list.
Free content in Norwegian
The Store norske leksikon, the second-largest Norwegian-language encyclopedia (after the Norwegian Wikipedia), made its online version free from February 25. The encyclopedia will also begin to accept user-submitted content, which will be reviewed by experts and added as appropriate. See the official website and this Foundation-l post.
Wikipedia data sets available
Amazon released its new Public Data Sets, which include two different subsets of Wikipedia data: structured data from DBpedia and a processed English Wikipedia dump from Freebase. The data sets (computer files having a record organization) are hosted for free as part of Amazon EC2. (See related New York Times article.)
Briefly
- As part of the Wikimedia usability initiative, any user may nominate an extension to be considered as part of the usability initiative's survey of extensions. A software extension is a computer program designed to be incorporated into another piece of software in order to enhance, or extend, the functionalities of the latter.
- There is currently an open volunteer position for an OTRS coordinator; details are on the Wikimedia Foundation wiki.
- There is also an open position for a communications intern in the San Francisco WMF office.
Milestones
- The Ukrainian Wiktionary has reached 10,000 articles with uk:безвиглядний.
- The Limburgish Wikisource has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Chinese Wikipedia moved its main page from zh:首页 to zh:Wikipedia:首页.
- The Swahili Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
Reader comments
Wikipedia's role in journalism, Smarter Wikipedia, Skittles
Wikipedia's role in journalism
- Editor's note: this article was from last year and was included by mistake.
In an article in American Journalism Review, Donna Shaw discusses the role of Wikipedia in today's society, specifically in the field of journalism. The article describes the vast spectrum of attitudes regarding the use of Wikipedia as a source in news articles. While some editors, authors, and teachers refuse to accept it as a source for any reason, others believe that "as a road map to reliable sources, Wikipedia seems valuable."
Smarter Wikipedia released
A new Wikipedia browsing Firefox add-on was released with the name Smarter Wikipedia. When browsing with Smarter Wikipedia, another box appears on the lefthand side of the screen labeled "related articles," which provides a series of links to articles which are relevant to the page that is currently being viewed. The add-on also allows highlighted terms to be searched for on Wikipedia or Google. Lifehacker writer Kevin Purdy describes Smarter Wikipedia as being a "helpful navigational tool".
Skittles ad campaign features Wikipedia
Product Placement News reports that a newly redesigned website and ad campaign for the candy Skittles features Wikipedia, Twitter and other social media content. The Wikipedia article is used directly in place of conventional product descriptions. As of writing, the site, skittles.com, does not function properly on all browsers.
Reader comments
WikiProject Ships Featured topic and Good topics
On February 20, 2009, a nine-article Featured topic nomination for the Iowa class battleships passed unanimously. The nomination encompassed the articles for the battleship class, all six individual battleships, their armament, and the 1989 turret explosion on Iowa. With this successful nomination, WikiProject Ships joined the growing number of WikiProjects with one or more Featured topics. There are also seven Good topics within the project's scope.
Featured and Good topics
A Featured topic is a collection of inter-related articles and lists which represents Wikipedia’s best work by thoroughly covering the topic with high-quality articles that share a similar structure (see related story). The concept was first proposed in August 2005 by Violetriga to encourage editors to write collections of quality articles across a whole topic. The articles within a Featured topic are grouped around a central article which ties them together. The articles should all be Featured articles, Featured lists, or Good articles. Articles which cannot attain FA, FL or GA status due to instability or limited available content may also be included if any major issues raised at a Peer review have been addressed. The Featured topic criteria require that a certain percentage of articles within the topic are Featured articles. Initially 20%, this percentage rose to 25%, and will become 33% as of April 1, 2009. Saffron was the first successful Featured topic nomination. As of February 2009, there are over 80 featured topics that encompass more than 600 articles.
In August 2008, Cirt suggested the creation of a Good topic process to recognize collections of high-quality articles that do not meet the Featured topic criteria. A Good topic must contain at least three inter-related articles, including a lead article central to the topic. At least three of the articles in the topic must be of Good article or Featured article quality. The first successful Good topic nomination was Gliese 876 in September 2008. As of February 2009, there are nearly 40 good topics that encompass nearly 300 articles.
WikiProject Ships achievements
WikiProject Ships did not have a Featured topic until the promotion of Iowa class battleships.
It took approximately three and a half years to get all of the articles up to Featured article status in preparation for the Featured topic nomination. The pathbreaking nomination was at times difficult, including one controversial Featured article candidacy, a long discussion concerning the use of "she" to informally refer to ships, multiple passes to check for spelling and grammar issues, breaking out information from the class page into subarticles to reduce the page size, and several Featured article reviews and WikiProject Peer reviews to ensure that the articles remained compliant with the Featured article criteria.
Although the nomination marks a milestone for WikiProject Ships, new additions to the Featured topic are already being considered. The nine-article nomination encompassed all core articles for the topic, but omitted at least one article pertaining to the battleships, which will be added at a later time. Possible future additions to the Featured topic include articles for the radar and electronic warfare systems, as well as an article about conversion proposals for the battleships.
Prior to the promotion of the Iowa class Featured topic, WikiProject Ships had several Good topics, the first three of which focused on Austro-Hungarian U-boats of the U-1, U-3, and U-5 classes and were promoted on December 18, 2008. These three topics encompassed a total of ten articles, all of which were brought to Good article status by Bellhalla. These three Good topics have since been joined by four more: Yamato class battleships, which was nominated by Cam, and U-20 class submarines, German Type U 66 submarines, and U-27 class submarines, which were the work of Bellhalla.
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WikiProject Norse History and Culture
The topic may seem an unusual one for a WikiProject to cover, but despite the seemingly narrow scope of the group, WikiProject Norse history and culture has still churned out ten featured articles and many more good articles. In mid-2008, Shoemaker's Holiday interviewed four active members, Bloodofox, Briangotts, Haukurth and Holt, to discover more about this exciting Project.
- 1. Before we begin, can you introduce yourselves, and attempt to give some idea of what sort of work you do in the WikiProject?
- Bloodofox: I mainly focus on things relating to Germanic paganism here on Wikipedia. This includes Norse paganism (and Norse mythology), easily the best attested form of Germanic paganism. Consequently, the work I do here generally falls under the header of this project or Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Germanic studies.
| “ | I think it allows members to focus on areas of particular interest to them. There's room for a very broad array of interests in the project. | ” |
| — Briangotts | ||
- Briangotts: I began the project and maintain the project's homepage (updating article requests and the like). I also attempt to sort the tagged articles by class and importance, and improve important articles by sourcing, and so on.
- Holt: My main contributions to this project are to the religious and cultural aspects of the Norse society. I also largely focus on the general pre-Christian Scandinavia and Europe, where the Norse period is the latest and one of the shortest periods of my area of interest. As with Bloodofox, nearly all the work I do here falls under the header of this project and the Ancient Germanic studies.
- 2. Tell us a bit about the project itself.
- Briangotts: The project is designed to organize efforts relating to improving articles on Norse history and culture, as well as providing a place for people to discuss relevant issues (such as uniform transliteration, presentation of conflicting sources).
- Bloodofox: I don't know if there's much to tell about the WikiProject as a whole. As has been stated elsewhere, it's basically something of a hub for a wide variety of subjects falling under the banner of "Norse".
- 3. Which recent achievements of this project are you most proud of?
- Briangotts: The project's members have managed to get a number of articles raised to GA and FA status, including Raven Banner, Gunnhild Mother of Kings, and Rus' Khaganate.
- Bloodofox: I was glad to bring up Ragnarök to WP:GA status after it had been featured here as a "collaboration of the week". I am also glad that Æsir-Vanir War is now GA status.
- 4. The scope of your project is rather broad, covering not just the history of the Viking period, but back to the Nordic Bronze Age and forward to the High Middle Ages, after the conversion of the Norse to Christianity, and then it adds Norse mythology, and literature as well. In addition, as the Norse had such a major effect on Europe in the Viking Age, the project's remit gets stretched even further, to places and people affected by the raiding Vikings. How does having such a broad remit affect the project's organisation?
- Briangotts: I think it allows members to focus on areas of particular interest to them. For example, User:Berig's special area of interest is the study of runestones and Norse sagas. User:Grimhelm and User:Berig tend to focus more on viking interaction with the east, particularly in early Russia. User:Leifern is a Norway-specialist, and User:Haukurth appears more oriented to Iceland. There's room for a very broad array of interests in the project.
- Bloodofox: There's always something to write about. I don't think there's any particular organisation here to speak of - as Haukur said, we're basically a loose bunch of individuals who may encounter one another on related articles from time to time that treat this WikiProject as something of a bulletin board now and then.
- Holt: I think the project's members are not as closely knit together when it comes to editing and discussing as with projects with a narrower range, and this makes this more of a general meetingplace and an organ for consultance rather than a direct organizer. There is much individual work, and people usally stick to what interests them, be it battles, important historic figures, saga literature or Norse mythology.
- 5. One noticeable thing about Wikipedia is the really wonderful depth of coverage for Norse mythology and culture here, at least in the Viking age. Though some of the articles are fairly short, and many could use more referencing, even the shortest article seems to be inevitably well-written and informative. Can you tell us about some of your working methods?
- Briangotts: I think this is a function of the excellent and intelligent people who work on the articles. I'm not sure that there is any one "working method" used by the project members. I generally get started on an article and then notify people who I think will be interested in working on it (both on the project talk and on user talk pages); we then collaborate on improving and expanding as we're able.
- Bloodofox: I have developed a system. I am currently compiling a guide to assist others that may want to start editing related articles that may not know how to approach it. There are a limited number of sources when it comes to Norse mythology. As for the status of the articles on Wikipedia falling under this header, they're usually free of the nonsense you'll find elsewhere on the internet (thanks largely to the efforts of the WikiProject Norse history and culture), but I find myself outright rewriting articles at times. These rewrites are not always due to the quality of the article as much as because they're just stubs, but every now and then you'll find an article within the scope that is just completely loaded with baseless nonsense or presenting a theory as fact - if it isn't well referenced, proceed with caution.
- Haukurth: The basic cookie-cutter method is to start by summarizing everything the primary sources say about the subject and then, in a separate section, covering scholarly interpretations and theories. For example, I've used this method at Four stags of Yggdrasill. Bloodofox now has it down to a science. The advantages are that this is almost always applicable and easy to set up. It also helps to provide a neutral perspective and separate speculative theories from facts (though of course there are always gray areas). The disadvantage is that this is not always the most readable representation for the casual reader.
- Holt: As Bloodofox and Haukur describe, there are ways of approaching an article that are extremely useful and present the information in a fair way. I have adopted these methods, and hope that more people will agree on applying this style to the articles they write or rewrite.
| “ | We are fortunate that there is a large amount of public domain paintings and drawings out there, particularly art inspired by Norse mythology. This is a big help when it comes to creating attractive articles. | ” |
| — Haukurth | ||
- 6. You also have plenty of featured and good articles. Are there any current drives for more such content?
- Bloodofox: Nothing organized, although from time to time a project member will organize colleagues to work on something or other. I can personally say that every article that I edit I intend to bring up to WP:GA status. I will soon have four articles pending for GA status at once, and there will be more to come.
- 7. What makes working on articles about Norse topics different from working on other articles?
- Haukurth: I think a good question to ask would be: What makes working on articles about Norse topics different from working on other articles? I think one important point is that the English-speaking world has been interested in medieval Norse culture for a long time so there is a lot of public domain material out there. Many of the important sources had already been translated to English by the early 20th century and have been made available on the Web by the various public domain projects. The originals in Old Norse are also widely available. Something similar may be said for artwork - we are fortunate that there is a large amount of public domain paintings and drawings out there, particularly art inspired by Norse mythology. This is a big help when it comes to creating attractive articles. In this way I think the success of Wikipedia in this area builds on the public domain and the efforts of various projects outside Wikipedia which aim at making public domain material available. That's not to say we don't make use of modern scholarship - we do, but the public domain materials often form a good starting point. Even when we don't have the latest interpretations and cutting edge theories we often have a good summary of what the primary sources say.
- Bloodofox: For me, it's just that I am particularly interested in the subject matter. Haukur also has a point in that there's a vast amount of material available out there to draw upon that falls into the realm of public domain, which is handy.
Reader comments
Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations
The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on and about the English Wikipedia and major discussions on its sister projects. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.
Surveys
- The Wikimedia Foundation has opened a survey among active English Wikipedia contributors regarding authorship credit. It is meant to inform discussions about potential clarifications of the terms of service and licensing model used by Wikimedia projects. The survey was advertised via a CentralNotice starting on 27 February. Questions are on topics regarding activities as a Wikipedia contributor; they range from I edit existing articles to I am involved in the organization, a chapter, or the Wikimedia movement. There is also a section asking which of a handful of models for giving credit to article authors are considered appropriate for Wikipedia text, asking that they be ranked in order from 1 to 6. The CentralNotice was disabled on 1 March 2009. A similar survey was opened for the German Wikipedia on 4 March.
Centralized discussions
- There is currently a discussion ongoing regarding how Wikipedia:Build the web should be tagged. The proposition has five choices consisting of using: {{essay}}, {{historical}},
{{former guideline|Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links)}}, {{guideline}}, or no template. This most recent discussion regarding WP:BUILD is the result of a merge from 11 January.
- Ryan Postlethwaite, the clerk for the date linking arbitration case, has opened a draft RfC and is requesting community input. The page states:
It is important that to get as many views as possible on the format of a request for comment regarding date linking articles, we get individual views about the process.
- Some questions he hopes contributors will address are: what issues the RfC should deal with, what format the RfC should take, and how each individual point should be put across. After the community has decided what form the RfC should take it will be listed in order to obtain a project-wide consensus.
- Also see last week's coverage.
- A straw poll is currently taking place on a proposal to give bureaucrats the ability to remove the administrator status of user accounts, something that only stewards can do currently. The straw poll currently shows a clear lack of consensus, with 51 editors supporting the proposal and 26 opposing it. Nine editors also noted concern that the poll is premature, and that they believe that more discussion needs to take place.
- A bot request for approval was initiated by Nn123645 on 26 February. The request states the bot would:
- Fix the removal of the speedy deletion template by the creator of the page as specified in policy while remaining 1RR complient so as not to edit war. In the event that the article creator removes the template again notify both the article creator and the person who placed the tag on the article.
- For users who repeatedly remove speedy deletion templates warn them with the {{uw-speedy#}} series (or a similar derivative template) and report them to WP:AIV where appropriate, being lax with this to target only users who are obviously abusing the system by repeadly removing templates.
- For articles that are incorrectly tagged with the wrong speedy template, either due to the article changing since it was placed or the person who requested deletion making a mistake, either change the template to be accurate or notify the person that placed the speedy deletion template that the article may not meet the speedy deletion criterion.
- Maintain a noticeboard similar to Suspected Copyright Violations of all articles that have had the speedy deletion template removed by the creator to allow administrators and other users to easily check up on which articles have had the speedy deletion tag removed by the creator.
- There is overall support for points 1 and 2; while point 3 is currently under scrutiny.
Proposals
- Also see last week's coverage.
- There is currently a proposal to give Members of the Bot Approvals Group the ability to grant and remove the "bot" flag from accounts. The flag, which can currently only be removed and applied by bureaucrats, flags all edits made by the flagged account as "bot" edits. Bot edits are not shown in the recent changes feed by default, and can be removed from watch lists. Bots that edit more than a few times per minute require this flag to avoid clogging Special:RecentChanges. The proposal is almost unanimously opposed—many editors feel that the current system provides essential oversight of the bot approvals process.
- There is a proposal to allow speedy deletion of the userspaces of non-contributing editors. In order to qualify for deletion, the user must have no non-deleted edits in a namespace other than User: , have not edited in the last year, and the page can not indicate that the user is a sock account or an alternate account. A new guideline, with shortcut WP:NONCON, would be created that would cite the aforementioned criteria. While there is currently no consensus for the change either way, it has been mentioned that this might work best if codified into CSD.
- It has been proposed to tag and delete all 469 images which are currently tagged with {{GFDL-presumed}}. The proposal would use a bot to tag all of the images in the category with {{nld}}, with a specifically written message put on the User's talk page. The message would describe the issue and tell them to re-upload the image if they missed the grace period and their image was deleted. While there is general support, it was mentioned that between 19 September 2004 and 18 May 2005 MediaWiki:Uploadtext stated:
By uploading a file here to which you hold the copyright, you agree to licence it under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
- A proposal to hand-check certain entries based off of set criteria has met general support.
- Following a post at the Administrators' noticeboard it has been proposed to modify the Criteria for speedy deletion to include a G13 criterion for the new books feature. The proposed amendment states it would include:
any book whose contents would be subject to speedy deletion as an article.
- Currently the proposal has been met with minimal discussion. Following this proposal a second proposal was created to give Wikipedia:Books their own criteria section. A WikiProject Wikipedia Books has been proposed to the WikiProject Council which should help keep the amount of vandalism through books down.
- Following a discussion at the Administrators' noticeboard it has been proposed to disable the ability to create books in the project space via Special:Book in an effort to reduce test pages and vandalism. Due to arguments against this move it was proposed to create a new namespace specifically for books. This proposition has been met with general support. It has also been proposed to modify {{saved book}} to allow the use of a
|confirmed=parameter. This parameter would categorize books after they had been reviewed. This proposition has also been met with general approval.
Sister projects
- Users at the Wikimedia Commons are currently discussing a proposal to enable the rollback feature. The current proposal states that the feature would be granted automatically if the user met certain specifications, and the right could also be granted under administrator discretion if the user did not meet the autopromotion criteria. Current discussion has revolved around automatically enabling rollback for users. Opponents specifically state that if the right is granted automatically that it cannot be removed, and that the right should be revocable.
Reader comments
Approved this week
Administrators
Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Mfield (nom) and Msgj (nom).
Bots
Ten bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Thehelpfulbot (task request), MPUploadBot (task request), SoxBot V (task request), Thehelpfulbot (task request), Sambot (task request), BorgardeBot (task request), Addbot (task request), LucienBOT (task request), SoxBot VI (task request) and AnomieBOT (task request).
Featured pages
Ten articles were promoted to featured status this week: The Million Dollar Homepage (nom), Sebastian Shaw (actor) (nom), Sam & Max: Freelance Police (nom), Edmund Herring (nom), Hurricane Daniel (2006) (nom), Jupiter Trojan (nom), Deinosuchus (nom), Sunderland A.F.C. (nom), Ælfheah of Canterbury (nom) and Saxbe fix (nom).
Twenty lists were promoted to featured status this week: Gaylactic Spectrum Awards (nom), Willowtip Records discography (nom), Bauhaus discography (nom), List of Australian George Cross recipients (nom), List of African American United States Cabinet Secretaries (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Adele (nom), Copley Medal (nom), List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2007 (U.S.) (nom), List of current NHL captains and alternate captains (nom), NHL Foundation Player Award (nom), List of Metroid media (nom), BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year (nom), Sigur Rós discography (nom), Gabor Medal (nom), List of Philadelphia Phillies first-round draft picks (nom), List of New York Yankees team records (nom), Rihanna discography (nom), List of Adventures of Mini-Goddess episodes (nom), List of Bleach chapters (nom) and List of Olympic medalists in ice hockey (nom).
Three topics were promoted to featured status this week: Washington Park, Chicago (nom), U-27 class submarines (nom) and Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 (nom).
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Meshuggah, Yes Minister, Hours of service, Caspar David Friedrich, Scene7, Edgar Speyer and King Vulture.
Former featured pages
Two articles were delisted this week: Warsaw Uprising (nom) and Paracetamol (nom).
No lists were delisted this week.
One topic was delisted this week: Halo trilogy (nom).
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Alexander's Church, Tawny frogmouth, Glow water lily, Stitched panorama of Los Angeles, Painted Tiger Moth, Florida box turtle and Ursa Major.
Ten media files were featured this week:
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| Rigoletto - Bella figlia dell'amore | (nom) |
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| Carmen - Toréador | (nom) |
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| Gerald Ford Vietnam clemency remarks | (nom) |
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| Tear Down This Wall | (nom) |
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| 2002 State of the Union Address | (nom) |
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| Il trovatore: "Stride la vampa" | (nom) |
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| Battle Hymn of the Republic | (nom) |
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| Handel's Fitzwilliam Sonata 1 | (nom) |
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| Handel's Fitzwilliam Sonata 2 | (nom) |
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| Handel's Fitzwilliam Sonata 3 | (nom) |
One featured picture was demoted this week: Dust Storm in Texas (nom).
Seventeen pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
Reader comments
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that some changes described here have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.2 (ce9d259), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
Fixed bugs
- DISPLAYTITLE should allow Arabic and Persian harakats (r47755, bug 16899)
- When reuploading a file, the destination field appears as plain text. (r47872, bug 17707)
- The Main Page now renders correctly on the iPhone. (bug 17609)
New features
- PDF file generation has been enabled for English Wikipedia articles (see related story).
- The CommunityVoice extension is now enabled on the Usability wiki; it enables users to rate items on a 1-5 star scale. (See the Wikimedia blog post).
- Diffs can now be fetched using the API. (r47890, bug 13209)
- The current user's email address can be retrieved by uiprop=email in meta=userinfo. (r47705, bug 17626)
Reader comments
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
In a private discussion and vote during the past week, the Committee blocked Chergles as a sockpuppet of a banned user. They also announced their current agenda. Major changes from the previous agenda include: integrating several previous points into the overhaul of the Arbitration Policy — the release date for which has been delayed. They also intend to focus on creating a ban appeal process, as reviewing bans is "preventing the Committee from dealing with other matters".
The Arbitration Committee opened two cases and closed one during the past week, leaving seven cases open.
Evidence phase
- West Bank - Judea and Samaria: A dispute about editor behavior in discussions about naming conventions for certain Israel- and Palestine-related locations.
- MZMcBride: A case brought after administrator MZMcBride deleted numerous "secret pages". This case is reviewing administrator conduct by MZMcBride only, and is not ruling on the appropriateness of the pages themselves. MZMcBride was admonished for his administrator actions in a previous Request for Arbitration.
- Prem Rawat 2: A case concerning the continued behavioral problems on the pages about Prem Rawat, and related articles. A previous case, Prem Rawat, was closed in May of last year.
- Ayn Rand: A case about editorial behavior, such as alleged POV-pushing and bad faith, in relation to the Ayn Rand article. The Arbitration Committee accepted the case as they found that all other avenues of dispute resolution had failed to resolve the dispute.
- Date delinking: A case regarding the behavior of editors in the ongoing dispute relating to policy on linking dates in articles. An injunction has been issued prohibiting large-scale linking or delinking of dates until the case is resolved.
- Scientology: A case regarding behavioral problems in Scientology-related articles; the case is related to the prior case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS.
Voting
- SemBubenny: A case about the communication behavior of SemBubenny (formerly Mikkalai), and his use of administrator tools in disputed deletions. Arbitrator voting is divided on remedies proposing the desysopping/suspension of SemBubenny.
Closed
- Fringe science: A case initially filed about the behavior of ScienceApologist, but opened to look at editing in the entire area of fringe science, and the behavior of editors who are involved in the area of dispute. ScienceApologist was banned from editing articles related to fringe science, Pcarbonn was admonished, and general warnings to behave and seek mediation were issued. Martinphi, who was a party to this case, was community banned while the case was underway.
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