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7 December 2009

 

2009-12-07

250th issue of the Signpost

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By Sage Ross and Ral315

Volume 5, Issue 49 marks the 250th issue of The Wikipedia Signpost. It's been an incredible honor to work with the talented group of Signpost editors this year, and I think that the enduring interest of readers and editors is powerful testimony (even without Erik Zachte's recent statistical demonstration) that the Wikipedia community remains strong. I offer my sincerest thanks to everyone—readers, writers, commenters, suggesters—who has participated in the Signpost over the past five years.

- Sage Ross
~ The Wikipedia Signpost ~


It seems incredible that it's been 250 issues. I started publishing the Signpost for Issue 32 in August 2005, after editor and founder Michael Snow took a brief break. Over the three-plus years that I was editor, I worked with a number of incredible Wikipedians. I want to thank a few of them (and this is by no means an exhaustive list, nor does it cover the many people who have helped since I left last December):

  • Flcelloguy wrote many articles throughout 2005 and 2006, including "Features and admins" and special reports on the 2005 Arbitration Committee elections and the 2006 Board elections. He helped me out immensely at a time when I didn't really know what I was doing. He was elected to the Arbitration Committee in December 2006, and left Wikipedia shortly therafter; wherever you are, I hope you're doing well.
  • Catherine Munro handled "In the news", and acted as the "mom" who kept us in check.
  • David Mestel wrote the Arbitration Report. I was a bit reluctant to give up writing the column myself, but David did a brilliant job, and improved the format of the column by explaining more about each case.
  • RoyBoy wrote "Features and admins", and was the first candidate I nominated for adminship. (As an aside, he passed with just 18 support votes - an interesting note for those who are concerned about the size of the Wikimedia community.)
  • Ian Manka wrote "Features and admins" and the "Interwiki report", a great feature where we allowed users from other language Wikipedias, and from other projects such as Wiktionary, to talk about their particular project.
  • Trödel wrote "In the news", and was a joy to work with. He also helped mentor a few users who were interested in helping out with the Signpost.
  • Arknascar44 wrote many of our WikiProject reports, which were among my favorite columns.
  • OhanaUnited wrote "Features and admins", and continues to contribute to the Signpost occasionally.
  • The Placebo Effect wrote "Features and admins", and helped with the short-lived Wikipedia tutorial series.
  • Simetrical helped with the Technology Report. I started the feature about a year into my tenure, but my lack of experience with MediaWiki made me a poor candidate for writing it permanently. Simetrical explained many of the new features and bug fixes that were introduced weekly.
  • ais523 also helped with the Technology Report regularly.
  • Enoch Lau wrote "In the news" for about a year, and also helped with the tutorial series.
  • Phoebe helped report on Wikimania, a subject which we had not covered very well prior to her assistance.
  • Greg Williams had a brilliant idea - to circulate a comic strip about the more unusual Wikipedia articles. Unfortunately, the strip never caught on outside Wikipedia, but his work was definitely appreciated by readers.
  • Michael Snow, who worked with me for a few years before he left for a bit more prestigious position as a member (and now Chair) of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. In addition to his great writing (which I missed greatly when he left), he was a frequent source of wisdom. As editor, I frequently had to decide how we should cover particularly delicate situations, and Michael always gave me great advice.
  • And, of course, Sage Ross, who is a great writer, and has served as an excellent editor over the last year. When in doubt, I turned to Sage just as I turned to Michael before him, and Sage always gave me – well, sage advice. I consider them both among my greatest friends.

Throughout my time within the Wikimedia community, I've seen numerous editors come and go. Just looking at a list of Signpost contributors first published in our 200th issue, I see so many names of friends and colleagues who no longer contribute regularly to Wikipedia. And my name is among them; I rarely edit the encyclopedia anymore (although I do moderate the foundation-l mailing list). But this doesn't mean that Wikipedia is dying. Like every other community, Wikipedia editors come and go regularly. Sure, some move on because they are disillusioned, or have a grievance with another community member. But the vast majority of those who leave are simply moving on to other things - something that is only natural in an environment like Wikipedia's.

While I miss working with you, my friends, who continue to edit, and I missed working with the colleagues who left before me, Wikipedia continues to move forward. The encyclopedia is stronger than it has ever been, and the Signpost is as well. I look forward to seeing the 500th issue in 2014. In the five years to come, know that whether you continue to edit Wikipedia, or whether you move on to bigger and better things, that your work is appreciated, and hopefully you've made a few friends along the way.

Thanks for reading the Signpost.

- Ral315

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2009-12-07

A digital restoration

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By Durova

During the second half of 2009 the Tropenmuseum of Amsterdam has undertaken a pioneering partnership with WMF Netherlands. The Tropenmuseum is an anthropological museum with a focus on former Dutch colonies. The museum staff collaborated with Wikimedian volunteers to hold a physical space exhibit about the cultural history of Suriname. President Ronald Venetiaan of Suriname attended the exhibit. More recently the Tropenmuseum donated 35,000 images about Indonesia to Wikimedia Commons.

Late last month Gerard Meijssen of Open Progress asked me to look at one of the Tropenmuseum's first Indonesian uploads. Open Progress is a nonprofit that improves access to online information for people from developing countries. There wasn't much to see in that first file: 700 × 544 pixels, 92 KB. The sort of restoration work I do usually starts with a TIFF format file of at least 10MB. A very tight crop and damaged edges made it less than ideal to work with. Yet it was a rare type of image: a megalith that was being transported by human beings without motor vehicles or draft animals.

A few days later Gerard provided a 25 MB TIFF version and said that the museum staff had gotten a professional photographer to redigitize at high resolution, and I gave it my best shot. It's rare for a museum to share its resources this openly; our hope is to make the collaboration successful so that other institutions will follow the Tropenmuseum's example. So this is a digital survey of that restoration project, which took about 18 hours to complete.

  • Indonesian megalith: digitally restored
  • Before restoration
    Before restoration
  • After restoration
    After restoration

This photograph was taken circa 1915 on the island of Nias. Reportedly, 525 people spent three days transporting the stone and erecting it in the village of Bawemataloeo to honor the passing of an important man.

Cropping

The right margin crop stopped at the shoulder of this man.

There was very little room to crop left and right, and no room at all to crop top or bottom. So only a small part of the most severe damage could be removed that way; the rest would have to be restored or reconstructed. A face at left and a shoulder at right made the most viable compromise points for these crops.

Dirt and scratch removal

Good dirt and scratch removal involves reconstructing musculature.

After cropping, this restoration went through several manual passes to remove dirt and scratches. I worked at 200% resolution and began with the smallest and simplest marks. Later passes recreated faces, musculature, and other complex structures. This work used the Photoshop healing tool at 100% hardness and clone stamp at 35% hardness. A free software program called GIMP has similar capabilities.

Correcting for physical retouching

Several parts of the print had been damaged by a not very successful attempt at physical retouching.

Before the days of digital editing someone had attempted a physical restoration on this print. Fading lines were inked in with black at the lower right quadrant of the photograph. At any sort of high resolution the effect is crude. In the example above it turns up as dark vertical lines that look like pen marks. This sort of alteration was performed some time during the early to mid-twentieth century.

Digital restoration on these features involved replacing the black marks with credible shapes and textures. The earlier attempt at physical restoration was occasionally useful for indicating features and contours, but generally created more difficulties than it solved.

The "before" half on this portion of the work is a good example of why some people are skeptical about physical restoration. Physical restoration has been known to damage rare historic material. One advantage of digital restoration is that it is nonintrusive.

Severe staining and fading

The lower left corner needed extensive work.

One of the most heavily damaged portions was the lower left corner. At left a man's hand remains visible. Context and comparison against other parts of the image suggest that the obstructed features include a log, a loincloth, and a thigh. I retained as much actual detail as possible and patched the rest.

The edges of this image were heavily faded. A large number of incremental adjustments were necessary to correct for uneven fading. In this closeup the man's hand changes brightness abruptly at his wrist and continues lightening until his fingertip appears nearly white. Good digital editing software can mask out parts of an image and apply changes locally. Successive masks darkened the hand and fingertips until they were compatible with the undamaged forearm. Finally a mask adjustment reduced contrast on the hand because its shaded areas had become nearly black. Both the contours and the shadows needed to harmonize in context.

Overall, about half the time of this restoration was spent on mask adjustments.

Restoring stone texture

Texture on the megalith surface, at right, could be restored with minimal change to other parts of the image.

The final edit was a relatively easy one. In order to recover texture on the overexposed surface I used the Photoshop shadow/highlight tool. The adjustment enhanced contrast in highlights while making minimal changes to midtones and dark areas.

The big picture

My aim was to use digital editing software like a time machine. As far as possible, I wanted to eliminate old, dead, unimportant from the viewer's first reaction so that attention is drawn to the subject. Diverse cultures from Ireland to Easter Island have constructed megaliths. Nias is one of the few places that retained a megalithic culture into the twentieth century.

The edits performed in process are documented in detail at the image hosting page along with cross links between restored and unrestored versions. Also an uncompressed partial restoration is available in TIFF format so that, in the spirit of wiki collaboration, anyone who wants to improve on the work has access to a version where the histogram has not been altered. Anyone who prefers the unaltered file has easy access to view it.

The longer-term plan is to scale up this endeavor by partnering with art schools. Instructors like to offer assignments that have real world significance. By developing more collaborative projects between WMF chapters, the Tropenmuseum, and other institutions the best student work could be exhibited in major museums. High quality digital restoration provides a motivating factor for cultural institutions to partner with WMF, which can yield large volume media donations of tens or hundreds of thousands of images.

And if we had 100 people each doing two restorations a week, Wikipedia could gain 10,000 featured pictures in one year.

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2009-12-07

ArbCom election in full swing

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By Tony1 and Hiding

The Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) is the peak body for resolving behavioural disputes on the English Wikipedia. Every December, the project holds elections to top up the ranks of the arbitrators, who are among the most experienced and respected Wikipedians. By the time of this publication, the annual ArbCom elections are at the halfway point, with another seven days to run until the close of voting at 23:59 UTC on 14 December. More than 670 Wikipedians have already cast their vote. An alphabetically sorted list of editors who have voted is maintained at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2009/Voter log. The 2009 election will select as many as nine new arbitrators, who will begin their terms on 1 January 2010.

Requests for comment examining aspects of the overall ArbCom election process were closed on 25 November by UltraExactZZ, who posted this closing summary of the outcomes:

  • The Arbitration Committee shall consist of 18 Members elected to 2 Year Terms.
  • Arbitrators will be elected by Secret Ballot using the Securepoll extension.
  • Ballots will invite editors to Support or Oppose candidates.
  • Voters must have 150 mainspace edits before the election cycle to vote (Status Quo).

Election personnel

The election is a community-run event. Most of the on-wiki running of the election has been conducted by self-appointed coordinators. three WMF-identified election administrators – Mr.Z-man, Happy-melon and Tznkai – have been responsible for editing the voting interface and are ensuring the smooth running of the election. Six scrutineers – Mardetanha, Effeietsanders, Laaknor, Thogo, Millosh and Erwin – are monitoring the integrity of the election and will certify and announce the results. The scrutineers have been drawn from the ranks of stewards not active on the English Wikipedia.

Secret ballot

This is the first time the election has used SecurePoll, based on consensus at this RfC, and positive feedback on the use of the system in the October 2009 Audit Subcommittee election. SecurePoll allows voters to participate by accessing their personal ballot page and clicking on radio buttons for each candidate to indicate "Support", "Neutral" or "Oppose". Voters can link back and forth between their ballot page and each candidate's statement, responses to questions, and discussion pages. Voting needs to be done in a single sitting, and auto-acceptance can be verified at a real-time voting log. Voters can change their choices any time up to the close of voting, although this will require the completion of a fresh ballot page.

Withdrawal issues

Although Secret has withdrawn from the election on December 7, stating "[i]t's clear I don't have the support (nor the time) for this election", technical limitations have made it impossible to remove Secret's name from the ballot. Election administrator Mr.Z-man has struck Secret's name on the form and added a link to the withdrawal statement, although votes for the withdrawn candidate are still recorded. It is hoped that the technical limitations can be overcome to prevent a repeat if the same circumstances occur in next year's elections.

Meet the candidates

Candidate nomination page.

This year, 22 candidates are running (with the recent withdrawal of User:Secret), a smaller number than usual. A comprehensive overview of each candidate is set out at the General summary page.

Voting

To vote, you must have an account registered with at least 150 mainspace edits before 23:59 UTC on 1 November 2009. This total includes deleted edits. You may use this utility to check your eligibility. If you have questions about the voting process, or to have an administrator verify your deleted edits, please ask.

Your personal ballot page is here. Voting is open until 23:59 UTC on 14 December 2009.

Feedback page

A page for users to provide feedback on the election has been launched, inviting comment and discussion of ways to improve the 2010 ArbCom election. The topics thus far include "election personnel", "the SecurePoll system", "improving instructions to voters", "voting rules", "supplementary voting", and "questions to candidates".

Timeline

Here are the important dates for the 2009 ArbCom elections:

  • 10 November – Candidate nominations opened and the question period commenced
  • 17 November – Call for general questions closed
  • 24 November – Nominations closed
  • 1 December – Voting began
  • 14 December – Voting ends; scrutineers soon after certify and announce the results on the ACE talk page, and formally communicate them to Jimbo Wales
  • By 21 December – results announced by Jimbo Wales (expected date), after community consultation if necessary

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2009-12-07

Interview with David G. Post

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By Cryptic C62
David G. Post
David G. Post
I recently had the pleasure of reading In Search of Jefferson's Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace, a book which draws connections between Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, and the Internet as we know it today. David G. Post, the book's author, agreed to participate in a Signpost interview.


1. Thomas Jefferson was a staunch advocate of free public education, proclaiming that "No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government...The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny is to illuminate as far as possible the minds of the people." Do you believe that Jefferson would condemn Wikipedia as a corruption of the formal education system he sought to create, or that he would support it in its goal of providing free access to the sum of human knowledge?

It's difficult for me to envision Jefferson condemning Wikipedia as a corruption of formal education. Jefferson was himself a great "encyclopedist" – not only did he write Notes on the State of Virginia (which is, in effect, a very large encyclopedia entry on "The New World"), he also contributed an article on the New World (anonymously) to the great Diderot/D'Alembert "Encyclopédie," the first great encyclopedia in the West. So he would, surely, have been amazed and delighted by an encyclopedia that was available to pretty much everyone in the world at the click of a button. You're right that he was a staunch advocate of free public education – as I put it in the book, he practically invented the idea of free public education; but the "formal education system" he sought to create was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end he sought was an informed and engaged citizenry, and Wikipedia, though it has many flaws and problems, is without question a valuable step along that road.

2. Both Thomas Jefferson and Justice Hugo Black were First Amendment absolutists, meaning that they both believed that there should be little (if any) impermissible forms of speech. In November 2008, New York Times journalist David S. Rohde was kidnapped by members of the Taliban, but news of the kidnapping was kept secret for several months due to a 'media blackout' in which Wikipedia, the New York Times, and several other major publications participated. Do you think Jefferson and Black would disapprove of this manipulation of mass media, or would they agree that the freedom to publish includes the freedom not to publish?

That's a hard one. Nobody would be in favor of "manipulation of mass media" – the question is who is doing the manipulating. For First Amendment absolutists (like Black and Jefferson), that makes a great deal of difference – government interference with the press is qualitatively different from any other kind of interference with the press (ultimately, because the government has the monopoly on legitimate use of force, and can impose its will in a way that others cannot). The freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment's press clause is freedom from government interference. To the extent the decisions here – to publish the stories or not to publish them – was made without that interference, the First Amendment has done its job.

3. Both Wikipedia and the early inter-networks greatly benefited from the free exchange and competition of concepts, as is true for many real-world markets. Both Wikipedia and what we have come to know as the internet also share a feature that seems to have been lost in real-world society: non-representative forms of government whose powers are derived directly from the consensus of the governed. If representative governments were created to overcome the difficulty of holding discussions and evaluating consensus in a spread-out and diverse society, and if online communities have adequately shown that it is possible to establish consensus in equally spread-out and diverse communities, do you think there will be a shift in the way "real-world" societies are governed? Could we, as John Blossom puts it in Content Nation, find ourselves going back to the ice age?

This is a profoundly important question, going forward. Whether there will, or will not, be some sort of shift in the way realspace societies are governed is not the sort of question I'm ever comfortable answering – the future is fundamentally and irrevocably unpredictable, and people who pretend otherwise strike me as fools. But "Is there something important we can learn from 'governance' efforts on the Net that could be applied to ordinary governance questions in realspace?" and "Can you imagine a world in which those lessons were learned and implemented?" and "Can you imagine a transition path leading to that world from the world we live in today?" – my answers to those are "yes." The Net is proof of an idea that virtually nobody would have believed, 25 years ago: consensus governance can scale, it can work in enormous, "anonymous" communities. You would have been laughed out of the room, 25 years ago, were you to have suggested that. I don't even think the early IETF folks would have been able to say, with certainty, that it would work; remember, they weren't sitting down to design "the Internet," they were designing a good network that was, at the time, quite small. They thought it could scale, and they tried to design it to scale – not just as a technical matter, but as an administrative, governance matter – but they didn't know, for sure that it would work – they couldn't know, for sure, that it would work, because it had never worked before. But it did.
It is, as I say in the book, an extraordinary, even breath-taking, achievement: the most successful international engineering project of all time – by far! – run entirely by self-appointed volunteers in an organization with no legal status whatsoever, one that anyone who was interested could join, and which operated entirely by "rough consensus." Call it "project management," or call it "governance," I don't much care which you choose – there's something to learn here about how group decisions can be made.
I'm not sure I'd call this a move "back to the ice age." I get the metaphor – but to some extent, at least, it obscures rather than illuminates the central point about scale. At this scale, it's a new phenomenon; government by consensus among millions of people couldn't work in the ice age, but it might work now.

4. The Wikipedia model also challenges the principle that incentive is the mother of creation, a principle which is discussed in Jefferson's Moose specifically with regards to patent law. Is there a lesson to be learned for "real-world" invention? Or do the elements of massive-scale collaboration and anonymity prevent this type of creation from occurring in the real world?

There are a number of issues raised by your question. The success of the Wikipedia model – "peer production" – surely has many important lessons for realspace inventive activity, although I do not believe that they can be replicated wholesale without the assistance provided by the technological underpinnings that allow large numbers of people to collaborate on single works. That is, I don't think we see the same kind of peer production experiments in realspace as we do on the Net, for the simple reason that the constraints of time and space and physicality that operate in realspace make such large-scale collaboration prohibitively difficult, in most circumstances. This, in my opinion, is one of those places where "the Net is different" applies – the relative ease with which such projects can occur in cyberspace needs to be taken into account in designing cyberspace-specific legal rules that will foster the kinds of creative activity that cyberspace enables; there's little reason to think that realspace law will be adequate for this task.
The second point you raise involves the question of incentives. Our copyright (and patent) laws are based on the fundamental premise that providing property protection for intellectual creations is necessary to provide authors and inventors with the incentives necessary to induce them to devote the time and effort required to create useful and aesthetically-pleasing works. That assumption, to the extent it holds in cyberspace, covers a much narrower range of works than in realspace, as the success of the Wikipedia model (and indeed the existence of so much creative content on the Net) testifies. We don't need copyright law, and shouldn't have copyright law, to incentivize authors to create things that they'd create anyway, in the absence of copyright protection; the existence of so much creative content on the Net illustrates quite clearly that copyright protection is not necessary for many, many creative works, and, to the extent that's true, copyright is just functioning as what the economists call "deadweight loss" – a net negative, a restriction on dissemination and distribution with no quid pro quo benefits.

5. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to share with us?

I do have a few final thoughts to share. I'm getting ready for a symposium tomorrow, up at Fordham Law School, which is focused on my book and Jonathan Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It." [Zittrain's book was previously reviewed in the Signpost.] While I was preparing my remarks, I couldn't help but notice the significant role that Wikipedia plays in both books – it's my candidate, at the end of the book, for cyberspace's "moose" (although to be candid, in the course of discussions since my book was published, I think that Larry Lessig has come up with a better candidate: see REMIX: buy the remix), and Zittrain uses it throughout as an example of new kind of social system emerging on the Net. So to the Wikipedia community, I'd say – you're up to something damned important. Don't lose sight of that. Those of us who may be on the "outside" of your work care deeply about your work, and want to learn more about it – what works, what doesn't, and how online communities like yours can be made stronger and more sustaining.

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2009-12-07

Report on Wikipedia decline is countered; fundraiser, usability, new Criterion for Speedy Deletion, and more

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By Phoebe, Spiritia, Tilman Bayer, ChildofMidnight, Hiding, Pretzels, and Sage Ross

Editors still leaving, or still joining?

Statistics on English Wikipedia editors, from Erik Zachte

In the wake of the Wall Street Journal story on editors leaving Wikipedia (see previous stories: 11-30, 11-23), Erik Zachte, data analyst for the Wikimedia Foundation, ran another analysis of the numbers and concluded that the survival analysis methodology used in Felipe Ortega's research was flawed. In a blog post, Zachte concludes that in fact the number of new contributors on the English Wikipedia may have been growing, not declining at all, and the number of editors who edit regularly every month has basically been holding steady. While new editor growth peaked in late 2006, Zachte's graphs show the Journal's report on the loss of Wikipedians in recent months as being greatly exaggerated.

The widely covered statistic from the Wall Street Journal, taken from followup research to Ortega's dissertation, was that Wikipedia had lost 49,000 editors in the early months of 2009, a dramatic drop-off compared to earlier periods. However, Zachte shows that this high number is in part the result of over-counting recent editor departures, since many occasional editors who go long periods without editing will eventually return. In a second blog post, Zachte emphasizes the uncertainty inherent in correcting for this over-counting; he states that "It is hard to tell whether this line [estimating net change in active editors] will cross from negative to positive after successive corrections as per my analysis."

As another followup to the many recent media stories about their work, the latest episode of Wikipedia Weekly features an interview with Ed Chi and Felipe Ortega about their research into the possible decline of Wikipedia's contributor base.

Fundraiser update

Rand Montoya, head of Community Giving for the WMF, blogged about the annual fundraiser (see launch coverage: 11-23, 11-16, 11-09), highlighting the many new things that the fundraising team has implemented for this year's fundraiser.

The fundraising sitenotices continue to be switched out based on how well they are performing. According to Montoya, the current sitenotices running are:

  • On the English Wikipedia:
  • "Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you." (#30 -- running 20% of the time)
  • "Wikipedia is a non-profit project: please donate today." (#36 -- 20%)
  • "A small price to pay for the value received." [donor comment] (#22 -- 20%)
  • "My amount is little, but my support is sincere." [donor comment] (#18 -- 20%)
  • "Thanks, Wikipedia." (#40 -- 20%)
  • Running globally:
  • "Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you." (#30 -- running 40% of the time)
  • "Wikipedia is a non-profit project: please donate today." (#36_G -- 20%)
  • "There is never a day without Wikipedia." (#17_G -- 20%)
  • "My amount is little, but my support is sincere." [donor comment] (#18 -- 20%)

Statistics for how this year's fundraiser compares to the previous two years can be seen here (the orange bar represents 2009).

Vector skin nears 300,000 users

Naoko Komura from the Usability Initiative has posted some statistics on how many people have tried out their beta tools, including the new Vector skin and the new editing toolbars. There are now almost 300,000 users of the Vector skin, with 79% of those who tried it choosing to keep the new design. The retention rate is highest on the English Wikipedia at 83%. On the Japanese Wikipedia, where editors have expressed problems with reading the smaller font size, it is only 60%.

The usability team found that users of the new skin were more likely to be using Mozilla Firefox, perhaps indicating issues with the code in Internet Explorer (which usually enjoys higher usage across Wikimedia projects).

In addition to sharing these quantitative statistics, they have also published the comments from their surveys which provide more specific use cases and issues. They are now discussing the timing for the new settings to become default on all Wikipedias.

The multimedia usability project is also asking for help with their domain research -- looking at how other websites accomplish tasks like uploading photos.

Finally, another report on November's multimedia usability meeting in Paris is available.

New CSD

There is a new Criterion for Speedy Deletion, A10: "'Recently created article that duplicates an existing topic." The text of the criterion reads:

"A recently created article with no relevant page history that duplicates an existing topic, and that does not aim to expand upon, detail or improve information within any existing article(s) on the subject, and where the title is not a plausible redirect. This does not include content forks, split pages or any article that aims at expanding or reorganizing an existing one or that contains referenced, mergeable material."

The criterion was added on November 28 by Backslash Forwardslash, the same user having proposed it over two weeks earlier, on November 12. Both the proposal and the adoption have proven controversial, with discussion occurring here. Internet emerges was one of the first articles to be deleted under the criterion. A template has been created at {{Uw-csd-a10}}, and the criterion is also available through the editing tool Twinkle.

Diet of champions

Two food-related writing challenges are currently ongoing: Bacon Challenge 2010 and Doughnut Days 2009.

This is the second year for the Bacon Challenge. This year's results include Snake 'n' Bacon, Stegt Flæsk, National Pig Day, bacon vodka, Mitch Morgan, and the peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich. For the 2010 event participants are competing to win the much coveted Bacon WikiCup.

For Doughnut Days, which finishes up at the end of this month, articles including mandazi, potato doughnut/ "spudnut", Dutchie (pastry), adhirasam, zippuli, and quesito have been added. According to ChildofMidnight, "Both events have a distinctly international aspect and are meant to be fun as they don't deal with the most hard-hitting of article issues. Still, there's something to be said for the importance and significance of bacon and doughnuts... although I'm not sure just what that something is."

Wikipedians photographing the finance minister of Lower Saxony

German state parliament photographed by Wikipedians

A Wikipedian and his subject: User Ticketautomat (right) and the representative whose article he had created and maintained

German Wikipedians recently completed a successful initiative to create freely licensed photos of politicians in the German state of Lower Saxony, as reported by the "Kurier", the Signpost's German sister publication. Members of a local Wikipedia meetup visited the state's parliament (the Landtag in Hanover), and, supported by the office of its president, invited all the current members of parliament to be portrayed. During two days they took photos of 136 of the 152 members, including the state's head of government and almost the entire cabinet. On the occasion, the Wikipedians had many conversations with the politicians about Wikipedia and free content, fielded some reports of small errors in their Wikipedia biographies, and gave live demos of editing Wikipedia.

Briefly

  • Wikimedia is looking for a full-time (unpaid) communications intern over the winter break. The successful applicant is set to "gain unique skills in social media, massive publicly collaborated web projects, research, and writing for global audiences, and will meet and interact with pioneers in the Web 2.0 movement."
  • Delphine Ménard (user:Notafish), the treasurer of Wikimédia France, was in Rome in November to attend a conference at the Vatican about IT and the Church. An interview with her is posted here.
  • After a two-day petition, the Bulgarian Wikipedia successfully obtained the cybersquatted domain wikipedia.bg that had been used for advertising purposes since March 12, 2008. The petition accompanied an appeal to the Bulgarian top-level domain administrator, Register.bg, to reconsider the case with the domain. The denouement, however, came from the registrant himself, who redirected the domain to the homepage of BG WP. (Previous story about cybersquatting of Wikipedia-related domains: 2009-08-17)
  • Second Wikimeetup in Karachi between the editors of Wikipedia canceled.
  • The Foundation-l List Summary for November 16-30 has been published.

This week in history

2009-12-07

Ron Livingston sues vandal, disclosure of IP address ordered, brief headlines

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By Cryptic C62, Pretzels, Sage Ross, AxelBoldt, Tilman Bayer, and KnightLago

Ron Livingston sues vandal

Actor Ron Livingston is suing a Wikipedia vandal because his article incorrectly claimed that he is homosexual and in a relationship with Lee Dennison. Livingston claimed that the offending material was inserted by the vandal, and his later attempts to remove the misinformation were reverted by the same person. Livingston is suing for libel, invasion of privacy, and for the use of his name and likeness without his permission.[1][2][3]

Wikimedia ordered to disclose IP address of user in the UK

A judge at the High Court in London ordered the Wikimedia Foundation to disclose the IP address of an editor who had added some sensitive information to the article of a business woman, also involving the woman's young child. The information has since been removed from the article. The woman, who cannot be named in relation to this case, had previously received threatening anonymous letters.

The Wikimedia Foundation said it would reveal the IP address if it received an order to do so.[4] Its Privacy policy restricts the disclosure of such data to some very limited circumstances, one of them being "a valid subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement". In a policy update last year, it had committed to notifying (if possible) community members when their personal data, such as IP addresses, has been sought by legal processes (see previous story).

Wikipedia cabal examined

In an article for The Daily Beast titled The Myth of Wikipedia Democracy, Nicholas Ciarelli asserts that "[d]espite its reputation for openness, the online encyclopedia has long been ruled by a tight clique of aggressive editors who drive out amateurs and newcomers". Among others, the article cites Jimmy Wales, User:Wikimachine (who had been banned for one year in the Liancourt Rocks arbitration case), independent physics researcher Eric Lerner (an advocate of plasma cosmology; a theory contradicting the current scientific consensus in cosmology), and Internet expert Clay Shirky (member of the Wikimedia Foundation's advisory board) who offered the following to explain the fact that Wikipedia regulars are "reflexively suspicious of everyone from watching people attack Wikipedia over all the years":

"If everyone who works at Britannica were fired, the encyclopedia would become out of date and less useful over time as new articles weren't added, and old ones weren't updated, and would become considerably less valuable over time. But if everyone who really cares about defending Wikipedia didn't log in this week, it would be gone by Thursday."

References

  1. ^ "Actor Livingston suing over Wikipedia post". UPI.com. 2009-12-05.
  2. ^ "'Office Space' Star: Yo Wikipedia, I'm Not Gay!". TMZ.com. 2009-12-05.
  3. ^ Gardner, Eriq (2009-12-07). "Why Ron Livingston Didn't Sue Wikipedia". THR, Esq.
  4. ^ Wikipedia ordered by judge to break confidentiality of contributor Telegraph.co.uk, 2 December 2009

Briefly

2009-12-07

Discussion Report And Miscellaneous Articulations

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By Hiding, Dank, and Pretzels

Nothing to see here

The arbitration committee have suppressed a recent statement regarding UK press contact and former arbitrator David Gerard. The hidden revisions were related to the removal of David Gerard's access to the Checkuser and Oversight tools, after he was accused of posting private content obtained using Checkuser to his public blog. Gerard's talk page has also seen some revisions oversighted. The suppressions provoked a strong reaction from Wikipedians.

A discussion was initiated at the Audit Subcommittee by MZMcBride on December 2 at 00:22 UTC. MzMcBride was unable to "imagine the levels of stupidity required to think this was a good idea to try to un-ring such a loud bell". Dragons flight speculated: "The announcement they suppressed contained an HTML link to an off-wiki page containing an email apparently published without its sender's permission and the IP details of the specific identified sender. It was the off-wiki posting of that information which motivated stripping David Gerard of his rights."

Gerard wrote on his talk page at 10:20 UTC that "anyone participating in that thread at the arbitration committee's noticeboard has way more interest in drama than writing an encyclopedia. I've started adding bits of video, it's fun!" Attempting to draw the heat from the discussion, serving arbitrator Coren, writing in a personal capacity at 15:57 UTC, stated:


The suppression was formally announced on the committee's noticeboard by serving arbitrator Roger Davies later that day at 20:22 UTC. The statement made clear that "this suppression was the desire of David Gerard, who felt defamed by the comments, and it is proper under the oversight policy". The new statement has the approval of both David Gerard and Mike Godwin. Arbitrator John Vandenberg, poster of the original statement, resigned his seat from the committee, stating "This situation was avoidable, and I apologise for the way that I handled this." The vast majority of respondents have urged Vandenberg to reconsider, although the former arbitrator shows no signs of acceding to those wishes. Arbitrator Carcharoth, whose recusal from the incident had also been suppressed, reiterated their position in an addendum. When asked to clarify the original nature of the recusal, now lost due to the suppression, Carcharoth stated: "I recused myself from the original motion that was voted on, and chose not [to] give on-wiki my reasons for recusal."

Wikimedia's general counsel Mike Godwin sent several emails to the ArbCom mailing list, expressing concern with the committee's decision on legal grounds: "My strong suggestion is that ArbCom reconsider its decisions, which seem more like arbitrariness than arbitration." Explaining his involvement, Godwin noted he "came across a process that seemed to me to have gone off the rails, at least in some respects, and at nobody's request but my own, I spoke out about it, and ultimately was asked to try to mediate a resolution, which I then did. The goal was not to erase history (I'm not as stupid as I look), but simply to remove Arbcom's seal of approval on some problematic statements while at the same time preserving Arbcom's prerogatives and authority". However, some users took issue with his possible interference with the committee; Barberio felt that "This holding up hands and saying 'Hey, I was just sending emails, it was nothing official.' doesn't wash since there was no way for the ArbCom to determine that you were not giving them official direction."

The controversial blog post remains fully available on Gerard's personal website; he believes "ArbCom's original issue appears to have been my tweet as quoted within the blog post." However, posting of a link to Gerard's post by Privatemusings led to a request for a clerk review and discussion at the administrator's noticeboard as to whether the posting of the link violated policies regarding copyright, an assertion made by Durova. Consensus during the debate at the Clerk's sub-page was that the link was not in violation of the policy, although Gerard had previously observed that a "claim of copyright violation is not something that is determined by consensus".

Gerard has resigned his Checkuser and Oversight permissions. He issued a statement on the afternoon of 3 December, reading simply: "I love everyone. I suggest you all go write something. Assume better faith too. Be excellent to one another."

See also: In the news

Policy Report

This month and next, the Policy Report will cover Wikipedia's Conduct policies. There are eight conduct policies left after last month's re-categorization discussions, and most of these policies have become more stable over time: Consensus and Edit warring largely concern basic principles of editing that are hard to disagree with, and the formerly heated arguments at Editing policy have cooled down (although without consensus on how to edit policies and guidelines themselves). Consensus was largely forged at No personal attacks in late November 2007 (thanks to Risker for pointing out the discussions); the page has had surprisingly few changes since then. Although Ownership of articles tends to gain and then lose examples of "ownership" in cycles, the basic proscriptions have remained stable. A previous Policy Report detailed the recent resolution of a number of issues at Sock puppetry, while our Username policy has been stable since a reshuffling of the material in July.

The Civility page is another story. Three-quarters of the respondents in August's Civility Poll felt that the policy was "unenforceable", and three-quarters also believed the policy to be "too lenient" (and the relevant language has changed very little since then). To gauge whether those sentiments have changed, recent contributors to the Civility talk page were asked about their reactions to our current policy, and their responses are revealing.

NuclearWarfare pointed to the August poll as evidence that a small minority of editors completely ignore our civility policy while continuing to make useful contributions, and there is no easy fix for this problem. Tryptofish feels that the good editors are usually not very good at dealing with the bullies, and that we need to expect more professionalism from every contributor as Wikipedia matures. Proofreader77 points to a potential reason the Civility policy has been slow to change: objections might be regarded as uncivil. Johnuniq draws a distinction between our Civility policy, which might be confusing and unexpected for people used to the anything-goes culture prevalent on the internet, and our Harassment and No personal attacks policies, which probably don't come as a surprise. Camelbinky, on the other hand, deplores the "politeness police" who fail to recognize the benefits of the kinds of free speech guaranteed by most modern industrialized nations.

After we cover all the conduct policy pages in the coming weeks, perhaps techniques used to enlighten and resolve conflict on those talk pages, which have been surprisingly successful, can be applied when we take another look at Civility in late January. Next week's Policy Report will include discussions from the Username policy talk page.

Deletion round-up

After the deletion of Wikipedia Watch on November 27, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Google Watch (4th nomination) sees a fifth deletion discussion regarding the website Google Watch. The debate hinges on the notability of the site itself, with editors discussing the relevance of previous outcomes regarding this article.

Briefly

Requests for comment

Twenty-three Requests for comment have been made in the week of 30 November to 06 December:



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2009-12-07

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

No editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week.

Featured pages

Six articles were promoted to featured status this week: Bale Out (nom), Attachment theory (nom), Fourth Test, 1948 Ashes series (nom), Castle (nom), Tender Mercies (nom) and Gunpowder Plot (nom).

Seven lists were promoted to featured status this week: Mexican National Welterweight Championship (nom), List of Dancing with the Stars (U.S.) competitors (nom), List of Oregon state symbols (nom), List of members of the Basketball Hall of Fame (nom), Shaw Prize (nom), List of South Africa women Test cricketers (nom) and List of international cricket centuries by Rahul Dravid (nom).

No topics were promoted to featured status this week.

One portal was promoted to featured status this week: Portal:Nevada (nom).

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: 2008 Monaco Grand Prix, Eadbald of Kent, William Speirs Bruce, Blade Runner, Tawny Owl, George H. D. Gossip and Remain in Light.

Former featured pages

Two articles were delisted this week: Data Encryption Standard (nom) and Xanadu Houses (nom).

Two lists were delisted this week: List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2005 (U.S.) (nom) and List of Canadian provinces and territories by population (nom).

No topics were delisted this week.

Featured media

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Craticulina fly, The Coronation of Napoleon, Laughing Kookaburra, a scene from Layla and Majnun, 1847 lithograph of Chapultepec Castle, Frauenkirche and USS West Virginia.

No featured sounds were promoted this week.

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

No pictures were promoted to featured status this week.

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2009-12-07

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By Kirill Lokshin

The Arbitration Committee did not open or close any cases this week, leaving five cases open.

Open cases

Tothwolf

The Tothwolf case has entered its fourth week of deliberations. The case, which concerns a long-standing dispute between Tothwolf and several other editors, was filed by third party Jehochman. Some preliminary workshop drafting has taken place, though no arbitrators have yet responded to any of the proposals; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Wizardman, is expected by 13 December.

Ottava Rima restrictions

The Ottava Rima restrictions case has entered its fourth week of deliberations. The case was filed by Ottava Rima to appeal an editing restriction imposed following a community discussion on the administrators' noticeboard. A large number of proposals have already been made on the workshop page; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Wizardman, is expected by 7 December.

Asmahan

The Asmahan case has entered its 12th week of deliberations, and its first week of voting. The filing editor, Supreme Deliciousness, alleges that Arab Cowboy has engaged in a variety of disruptive behavior on the "Asmahan" article; Arab Cowboy denies the allegations, and claims that Supreme Deliciousness is pursuing a disruptive agenda of his own.

The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Wizardman, would impose topic bans and editing restrictions on both Supreme Deliciousness and Arab Cowboy, as well as placing the "Asmahan" article on probation. No other arbitrators have voted on the proposed remedies.

Socionics

The Socionics case has entered its ninth week of deliberations, and its second week of voting. The case was filed by rmcnew, who alleged that Tcaudilllg has engaged in edit-warring and personal attacks. Tcaudilllg has denied the allegations, calling them "ad hominem attacks on [his] character".

The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Carcharoth, would ban both rmcnew and Tcaudilllg for one year, as well as indefinitely banning them from all Socionics-related topics, pages, and discussions. The remedies are currently passing unanimously, and the case is expected to close in the near future.

Eastern European mailing list

The Eastern European mailing list case has entered its 12th week of deliberations, and its eighth week of voting. The case concerns a set of leaked mailing list archives which are alleged to show an extensive history of collusion among numerous editors of Eastern European topics. Standard workshop procedures have been suspended for the case, so normal drafting of proposals by the parties and other editors has not taken place.

The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Coren, would strip Piotrus of his administrator status, ban him for three months, and place him under a topic ban for one year; ban Digwuren and Martintg for three months and also place them under year-long topic bans; and issue a number of admonishments and reminders, as well as an amnesty for all participants of the mailing list not otherwise sanctioned. Additional proposals made by other arbitrators include bans for Tymek, Jacurek, and Radeksz, as well as more nuanced topic bans for Piotrus and Digwuren. Voting on the proposals remains divided.

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2009-12-07

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Aude

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.3 (b671e57), 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.

Bots approved

Four new bot tasks were approved this past week:

  • Andrea105Bot (task 3) – To work on tagging article talk pages with WikiProject banners, using AutoWikiBrowser (AWB).
  • Alph Bot - To add interwiki links, using pywikipedia.
  • Andrea105Bot - To add AfricaProject banners to talk pages of certain Angola-related articles, using AWB.
  • Ripchip Bot - To add interwiki links.

Bug fixes

  • PDF, djvu, and other files that can have multiple pages now will show the page selector only if there are multiple pages, and not if there is just one page. (r59727, bug 21523)

New features

If articles have been updated, you may need to refresh the single-page edition.
Want the latest Signpost delivered to your talk page each month?
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