Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2011-07-18
WMF Annual plan; Article Feedback tool; university outreach; brief news
WMF Annual Plan, rollout of Article Feedback
The Wikimedia Foundation published the 2011–12 Annual Plan. Three of the seven stated goals for the year ahead relate to increasing editor numbers: overall, increasing active editors from 90,000 in March 2011 to 95,000 by June 2012. Over the same period, the Foundation seeks to increase the number of editors from the Global South from 15,700 to 19,000 and the number of female editors from 9,000 to 11,700. The plan includes a target to increase the number of page views from mobile devices from 726 million to two billion. Other planned improvements include increasing read uptime from 99.8% to 99.85%, creating a new development sandbox, and developing the visual editor for initial test deployment in December 2011. Full details are available on the Foundation wiki.
In unrelated news, the Foundation blogged about the new Article Feedback tool, advising that it is now in the process of being rolled out to all articles on English Wikipedia. The tool was first set up in September and has been slowly rolled out, being added to a total of 100,000 articles in May before the latest expansion. Now 370,000 articles will be added every day until all articles have been covered. According to research findings published in the blog post, one of the benefits of the tool is its increase in the number of people editing. The tool appears to provide a useful measure of quality for the criteria "completeness" and "trustworthiness", despite concerns that the system might be gamed by partisan editors or just misused by people to express their love or contempt for the topic rather than the quality of the article itself. Marshall Kirkpatrick at the technology blog ReadWriteWeb sums up the case for the change: "Rating articles looks like an even easier way for people to give feedback - and once you've started contributing that much, why not go a step further and improve the article you just rated?"
Wikipedia's emergence as an educational tool
In the aftermath of the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit held in Boston two weeks ago (see previous Signpost coverage), editor Adam Hyland (User:Protonk) wrote a retrospective on his experiences over the past year as an ambassador in the university outreach program. He highlighted the importance of the project in repairing the rift between the Wikimedia movement and the traditional educational establishment of libraries and universities, saying of the encyclopaedia's early days: "Wikipedia was a triple threat: a new technology, a potential competitor for traditional silos of information and a shorthand for what professors thought the web was doing to their new cohorts of students". Adam proposed that not only had Wikipedia become a complementary educational project to such institutions, but that with the outreach program had "engage[d] students with the production of knowledge itself ... [s]tudents who write these articles know that they face a critical audience and that quality matters." This was highlighted by one student's creation, the National Democratic Party of Egypt, a "homework assignment" which this year so far has drawn the attention of 100,000 pairs of eyes.
The week in GLAM: the stuffed pigeon of Derbyshire, gift packs for freedom, and a backstage pass to the secrets of the American arts
At the recent LocalGovCamp unconference in Birmingham, Wikipedia editor Andy Mabbett spoke about the GLAM-WIKI project, the relevance of Wikipedia for local government, his challenge to local councils to start articles about themselves, his interest in becoming a GLAM Ambassador or Wikipedian-in-residence (he's since been appointed Wikipedia Outreach Ambassador to ARKive) and a certain dead pigeon – The King of Rome, whose Wikipedia article he wrote as a result of a GLAMDerby backstage pass event in April. The King of Rome was a famous racing pigeon, the only one to survive a 1000 mile race; its skin is preserved in Derby Museum and the bird is also the subject of a folk song made famous by June Tabor. Tom Phillips, who attended the event, later wrote an impassioned account of the session in an Amazon book review. The Wright Challenge has two months to go, and it's hoped that the 800 articles about objects in Derby Museum can be far surpassed in that time.
The U.S. National Archives GLAM project has announced a featured content contest aimed at increasing the online profile of and educating the public about the Archives' core documents. Editors who succeed in getting to featured status any of the three articles relating to the Charters of Freedom: United States Declaration of Independence, United States Constitution, or United States Bill of Rights (in any language), will be rewarded with a gift package.
In other GLAM news, the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art will be holding a special backstage pass event for a select group of 10 Wikimedians on July 29. The initiative, which is being coordinated by Wikimedian-in-Residence Sarah Stierch, will offer a behind-the-scenes insight into the original documents and untold stories housed by the world’s largest and most widely used research center dedicated to the history of visual arts in America. In Baltimore, Maryland, the Walters Art Museum and Baltimore Heritage are sponsoring a gathering of the Wiki and GLAM minds from July 22–23. The weekend will launch with the Young Preservationists Happy Hour where Sarah Stierch is presenting about GLAMWIKI, and is followed by an afternoon of talks by Sarah and Aude followed by break out sessions with GLAM representatives and Wikimedians.
Brief news
- Wikimedia in Higher Ed documentation: Various media from the Wikipedia in Higher Education Summit have been published online. They include videos of Sue Gardner's keynote, the student panel discussion and slides of the talks.
- Wikimedia UK seek chief executive: The British chapter of the Wikimedia movement have placed an advert for the organisation's first Chief Executive. The successful candidate should have "exceptional communication and relationship building abilities" and is expected to represent and promote the chapter to the wider world. The search was also declared on the wikimediauk mailing list; applications close on August 1.
- Israel anticipates Wikimania: The Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs issued a press release ahead of the annual Wikimania event, due to be held this year in Haifa from August 4-7. Describing the event as a coup for the city, the statement focused on the achievements of the Hebrew Wikipedia and Wikimedia Israel, as well as highlighting an initiative to donate to Cameroon and Benin computers preloaded with a static copy of the French Wikipedia for classrooms without Internet access.
- Plagiarists have to fear Wikipedians: An academic plagiarism case that was discovered in March by German Wikipedians while examining two medical dissertations as references for a Wikipedia article has now led the University of Münster to revoke a doctoral degree, as reported in the "Kurier" (the Signpost's sister publication on the German Wikipedia) and several local newspapers. In the university's press release, the dean of the medical faculty, professor Wilhelm Schmitz, expressed his gratitude for the Wikipedians' notice (to which he had replied personally within three hours), and observed that "in the Internet age, plagiarists now have to fear a new source of exposure". The case comes at a time where the doctoral titles of several high-profile German politicians including former defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg have been rescinded due to plagiarism documented via dedicated Wikia-hosted wikis (cf. previous Signpost coverage: "Citations needed in minister's thesis and elsewhere", "Jimmy Wales on wikis and plagiarism", see also VroniPlag Wiki).
- Wikimedia Research Index: Dario Taraborelli, a Senior Research Analyst for the Foundation, blogged about a new Wikimedia Research Index, designed to "centralize documentation on research of Wikimedia projects, but also to create a place for the community to discuss and learn about this research" (the index itself).
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Fine art; surreptitious sanitation; the politics of kyriarchic marginalization; brief news
Fine art and Wikimedia
This week, the Foundation's Jimmy Wales, Jay Walsh and Liam Wyatt were interviewed for FineArtViews, a blog that describes itself as covering "Selling Art, Marketing, Inspiration & Fine Living". The interview, led by blogger Brian Sherwin, touched on a number of topics, including the notability of artists, the difficulty of applying reliable source-based rules to cultures where artists have little or no access to the Internet, and the ever-present issue of copyright law. Many of Sherwin's questions focused on specific criticisms of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement, including references to "deletion debates" that Sherwin had personally observed.
Sherwin's other questions focused on Wikipedia's general role within the art world, to which Wales gave his view that "the art community should welcome the Wikipedia community ... [it] serves a major role in bringing art to the public". Wikipedia's co-founder was also asked to comment on criticisms that Wikipedia articles on artists were "dull", to which he replied that "Wikipedia is not an art magazine. It is a place for encyclopedic writing", but one that did "not prohibit nor inhibit interesting and lively writing". In his final statement, Wales added that he hoped readers of big name artists' articles "will be inspired to explore other artists who are not so famous".
Sumana Harihareswara on the kyriarchy inherent in the system
Wikimedia Foundation volunteer development coordinator Sumana Harihareswara was interviewed by independent feminist broadcaster Bitch Radio on issues concerning gender, reader engagement and social justice within Wikimedia and the broader open source community. Discussing the issues raised concerning the difficult environments Wikimedia communities can be for women, and for those with little technological fluency to contribute (see previous Signpost coverage), Harihareswara stressed the impact of unintentional barriers to participation as opposed to intentional hostility from established contributors.
The Foundation's intention to extend the movement's coverage in the Global South was highlighted as an important social justice initiative, stressing the need to empower local communities to develop the content relevant to their culture in their own languages. Harihareswara tied the Foundation's work in usability improvements and facilitating the reading and editing of Wikimedia projects on mobile phones as a key step in advancing the Global South initiative, pointing out that computer-based broadband access, so common in the Western world, was far rarer in places like Africa and the Indian subcontinent relative to Internet-accessible mobile phones.
I think it’s fairly obvious that these are generally good things: truthfulness, meritocracy. But when practiced by people unaware of their own privileges, race privilege, class privilege, male privilege, and so on, you run into situations like a person practicing a kind of bluntness and insensitivity and misreading it to themselves as honesty. You see honesty unleavened by sensitivity, compassion, or mentorship. And you might see people defining merit very narrowly, because the things they’re good at specifically may be the thing that they value, and they would find any other kind of contribution scornworthy and find themselves dismissive of it without even realizing what they’re doing.
— Sumana Harihareswara
The interview progressed to a discussion of the prevalence in open source communities of kyriarchy, a concept in feminist theory which extends the analysis of oppression of women in patriarchy to all forms of oppression of marginalized people. While praising many values of open source communities such as honesty and openness, Harihareswara maintained that lack of diversity often leads to a "layer of blindness and privilege" that proves an obstacle to broader participation. Harihareswara stressed the necessity of an open platform inviting all to contribute, a technologically facilitated meritocracy, saying that "an attitude of hospitality and accessibility in the way that you do things; if the default is open rather than closed, is welcoming rather than intimidating, then it makes a different world". The interview ended on an upbeat note, with Harihareswara asked to give advice to a Wikipedia newcomer and re-iterating in response the virtue of the open meritocratic model: "Be bold, and know that because Wikipedia is about individuals, you have as much right to be there as any jerk who you might run into. And if you make useful edits and contribute, you will gain reputation, and you will have made the world a better place."
BBC warns staff off whitewashing
In their newly released social media guidelines (PDF), the British Broadcasting Corporation counselled staff not to "surreptitiously sanitise Wikipedia pages about the BBC". British newspaper The Telegraph noted that the new guidelines follow revelations that BBC employees had anonymously edited the Criticism of the BBC article in order to remove references to an internal report in which the corporation was described as being thought of as "out of touch with large swathes of the population".
Despite not being a for-profit, the broadcaster had also made headlines in 2005 for appearing to have attempted to use the encyclopaedia as part of a marketing campaign for an alternate reality game (see previous Signpost coverage). The new rules come at a time when the BBC is looking to restore a perception of trust among the British public after it was hit by damaging revelations over the amount it pays its big name stars.
In brief
- Tennessee offers free rival encyclopaedia: The Memphis Business Journal reports that the Tennessee Electronic Library, a state-funded website offering free access to digital resources to Tennesseans, has expanded its repertoire to include a virtual set of World Book Encyclopedias, in part motivated by the perceived unreliability of existing free resources such as Wikipedia. The World Book is a professionally edited, family-oriented encyclopaedia that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is famously said to have spent much of his youth absorbing.
- Psychologist hails Wikipedia: In an article for the Psychology Today blog, professor of psychology at University of Michigan Christopher Peterson chronicled the evolution of his attitude towards the crowdsourced encyclopaedia from academic scepticism at its launch to open appreciation after having begun using it in researching a book chapter he was contributing on a positive psychology approach to comic book superheroes.
- Quadriga Award withdrawn: After pressure from a number of Germans, including German Wikipedians, the Quadriga Award was withdrawn from former Russian President Vladimir Putin (source: New York Times). The award, dedicated to recognising those who have increased freedoms, was previously awarded to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales (see last week's Signpost for context).
- Potter actor amicable: In a week which saw the release of the final film in the Harry Potter franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, American radio station WBEZ caught up with actor Matthew Lewis, who plays Neville Longbottom, for another instalment of their "Wikipedia Files" series, in which celebrities fact-check their Wikipedia entries. Despite prompting from the host, Lewis said that he found the article about him broadly accurate, while wishing that the portrait was of higher quality.
- Best of Wikipedia celebrates 1000 posts: Best of Wikipedia, a tumblog showcasing the most interesting of Wikipedia articles, this week celebrated its 1000th post, paying tribute to the Wikipedia community: "A decade of the free exchange of the greatest collection of human knowledge on earth is not something to be taken lightly." Recent articles highlighted include Trichotillomania, butter lamb, challenge coin, Knismesis and Gargalesis and Beat Up a White Kid Day.
- Focus on Connecticut: In a wide-ranging overview of the state of the encyclopaedia, the Hartford Advocate interviewed local Bridgeport man and Wikipedia editor Markvs88 about his experiences contributing to Connecticut-related content. The article also touched on Wikipedia's Lamest Edit Wars, the recent wiki adventures of Sarah Palin acolytes (see previous Signpost coverage), the reliability of Wikipedia, deletion politics, student outreach, the sophistication of the Wikipedia epistemological process, and Ryan Kaldari's WikiLove extension.
- Scientific American recommends Wikipedia as "fairly trustworthy": A guest blog entry for Scientific American about "Finding good information on the internet" recommended scientific papers as the best source of such information, but went on to state that "Wikipedia can also be very valuable. Although Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, it has a large group of active moderators/editors. ... Wikipedia now flags pages that have fewer citations or might have poorer quality information with warning messages at the top of the page. Multiple approaches work together to ensure the overall accuracy of Wikipedia pages. ... In its current form, Wikipedia is a fairly trustworthy source of information. Some individual pages may still need caution, but for these, you will get a warning right at the top." In January, Scientific American's editor-in chief Mariette DiChristina had called Wikipedia "not without flaws, but ... generally helpful".
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 | This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously. |
- WikiProject Bacon has begun Bacon Challenge 2012, an effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of bacon in time for National Pig Day at the beginning of March 2012. The Bacon WikiCup is being held concurrently. Join in the deliciously fun competition and earn an award for your efforts.
- The July 2011 Copyedit Backlog Elimination Drive is underway. Join in the fun, meet nice people, and earn a barnstar for your efforts.
- These projects could use new members to help improve articles and increase activity on the projects' talk pages: WikiProject Australian Music, WikiProject Connecticut, WikiProject Geology, and WikiProject World's Oldest People.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Spam. The project describes itself as a "voluntary Spam-fighting brigade" which seeks to eliminate the three types of Wikispam: advertisements masquerading as articles, external link spam, and references that serve primarily to promote the author or the work being referenced. WikiProject Spam applies policies regarding what Wikipedia is not and guidelines for external links. The project received some help in February 2007 when the English Wikipedia tagged external links as "NOFOLLOW", preventing search engines from indexing external links and limiting the incentive for many spammers to use Wikipedia as a search engine optimization tool. The project maintains outreach strategies, detailed steps for identifying and removing spam, a variety of search tools, several bots for detecting spam, and a big red button to report spam and spammers. The project was started by Jdavidb in September 2005 and has grown to include 371 members. One of the project's most active members, MER-C, agreed to show us around.
How much time do you typically devote each week to fighting spam?
- I find the time commitment required for anti-spam work to be extremely variable. Monitoring the IRC feed isn't particularly taxing; and it isn't too difficult to clean up a few possible copyright problems, edit a few articles or perform non-WP related work or leisure concurrently.
WikiProject Spam is the most active project by edits (including bots) and the second most watched project on Wikipedia. What accounts for this high activity and interest by the Wikipedia community?
- This is an illusion. 98% of those edits are from User:COIBot, a spam reporting bot. The remaining 2% are to the project's talk page, which serves as a noticeboard for reporting spam campaigns. A good chunk of the edits to the talk page are from a handful of anti-spam specialists. I can't explain the number of watchers though.
What type of wikispam do you come across most often? Do you use any special tools to detect spam or do you simply remove spam you notice while reading and editing articles?
- While reading articles and cleaning out the spam contained within haphazardly works, it doesn't address the cause of the problem. I target the spammers themselves, i.e. identifying domains owned by the spammer and systematically removing spammed links to said domains. To do it properly requires heavy use of tools beyond the usual contribution analysis:
- Special:Linksearch and its cross-wiki counterpart
- Cross-wiki contributions
- User:Versageek and User:Beetstra maintain a database of link additions to all Wikimedia projects. New links are reported to the IRC channel
wikipedia-en-spam(don't go there yet, it's not currently working) and others. User:XLinkBot, a spam reversion bot, and User:COIBot use this channel as their source of link additions. Reports are triggered when a small group of users are responsible for a large fraction of link additions to a particular site or can be requested through IRC or User:COIBot/Poke (administrators and trusted users only). - Various external tools, including Whois, reverse DNS lookups, HTML analysis, Google AdSense and Google Analytics databases and a bit of Google-fu.
- The Firefox extensions NoScript and RequestPolicy to detect redirects to other domains and protect against the mystery meat nature of spammed sites.
- A text editor that has fuzzy find and replace functionality, usually implemented using regular expressions.
- I target external link additions, so I encounter vanilla external link spam most frequently. The most annoying and widespread spam campaigns, however, involve multiple spam tactics. That said, I've noticed the following recent spam trends -- note the tendency towards avoiding scrutiny from RC patrollers:
- The spreading of spam edits over multiple IP addresses and user accounts; one spam link per IP address/account isn't uncommon.
- Spam masquerading as citations. This typically involves the repeated addition of a certain "reference" by a given person, the spammy nature isn't apparent until you look at the big picture.
- Replacement of existing links and/or citations
- Inline spamming, the insertion of external links into article prose purely for search engine optimization
- Misleading edit summaries
Have you had any heated conversations with spammers after removing spam from an article? What are some strategies you've used to resolve these conflicts?
- Personal attacks, edit warring and vandalism are surefire ways to expedite blacklisting of the spammer's sites. A couple of months ago, I dealt with a spammer who edit warred to include links to his website. He responded by vandalising my userpage, and so the relevant sites were promptly blacklisted. Apart from a bad faith delisting request, we haven't heard from them since. This is typical; blacklisting is a very effective way of removing spammers from Wikipedia. (Unlike blocks, blacklisting requires money to evade—the spammer needs to purchase new Internet domains.)
Has your experience fighting spam resulted in any humorous stories? Have you heard any amusing excuses and special pleading from spammers trying to defend their edits?
- See Wikipedia:Grief for details on the usual routine of spammers.
Next week, we'll look at the social construct of naming a rose a "rose". Until then, think deep thoughts in the archive.
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Historic last launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour; Teddy Roosevelt's threat to behead official; 18th-century London sex directory
Featured articles
- Indian Head eagle (nom), the sixth in a projected ten-article series about the Great Redesign of US coinage between 1907 and 1921. This article includes coverage of the initial battles between sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Mint Chief Engraver Charles E. Barber and President Theodore Roosevelt, who went so far as to threaten Barber with decapitation. (Nominated by Wehwalt)
- Gumbo (nom), a stew or soup that originated in southern Louisiana during the 18th century. (Nominated by Karanacs)
- "Indian Camp" (nom), the first short story Ernest Hemingway published. Some critics consider that it shows the genesis of many of his themes in subsequent stories and novels. (Truthkeeper88)
- White-bellied Sea Eagle (nom), this WikiProject Birds collaboration for April 2011 concerns a large diurnal bird of prey that is resident from India and Sri Lanka through southeast Asia to Australia on coasts and major waterways. It issues a loud goose-like honk. (Casliber)
- Anfield (nom), an association football stadium in Anfield, Liverpool, UK, with a seating capacity of 45,276. It has been the home of Liverpool F.C. since their formation in 1892. (NapHit)
- Cirrus cloud (nom), which are characterised by thin, wispy strands, often bunched into tufts. The word cirrus is Latin for curl. They range in colour from white to a faint grey and form when water vapour undergoes deposition at altitudes above 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) in temperate regions and above 6,100 metres (20,000 ft) in tropical regions. (Reaper Eternal)
- SMS Friedrich der Grosse (1911) (nom), the flagship of the German Imperial Navy's High Seas Fleet for most of World War I. The ship saw heavy service, including the Battle of Jutland, and was ultimately scuttled in Scapa Flow at the end of the war and later raised for scrapping. (Parsecboy)
- Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri (nom), a relatively unknown game by Looking Glass Studios. The poorly planned development and massive commercial failure of the game helped put an early end to the company's self-publishing venture. (JimmyBlackwing)
- Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (nom). Nominator Parrot of Doom says, "Forget what you've read about stuffy old-fashioned Georgian social values—the truth was that if you wanted a bit of how's-your-father, London, specifically Covent Garden, was the place to go."
- Astonishing Stories (nom), a minor American pulp science-fiction magazine in the early 1940s that managed to publish early fiction by some of the biggest names in the field, such as Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. (Mike Christie)
- Resident Evil 2 (nom), a survival horror video game originally released for the PlayStation in 1998. (Prime Blue)
- No. 79 Squadron RAAF (nom), the history and current role of one of the Royal Australian Air Force's most interesting squadrons. No. 79 Squadron saw combat in World War II between 1943 and 1945, was reformed to be deployed to Thailand for six years during the Cold War, was briefly active as a fighter unit based in Malaysia in the late 1980s and has provided initial jet aircraft training to new RAAF pilots since 1998. (Nick-D)
- London Necropolis Company (nom). Nominator Iridescent says, "Depending on your point of view, the LNC was either a visionary attempt to use new technology to solve a public health crisis and to introduce the concept of dignity to funerals for the poor, or it ranks alongside Mirabel Airport and the Atmospheric Railway as one of the great examples of harebrained overengineering schemes."
- Javan slow loris (nom), a primate native to the western and central portions of the island of Java in Indonesia. (Visionholder)
One featured article was delisted:
- Economy of India (nom: [style, referencing, comprehensiveness])
Featured lists
Six lists were promoted:
- List of Croatian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (nom) (Nominated by GregorB and Timbouctou.)
- List of National Treasures of Japan (writings: Chinese books) (nom) (Bamse.)
- 1972 Summer Paralympics medal table (nom) (Basement12.)
- Grammy Award for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance (nom) (Crystal Clear x3.)
- List of Victoria Cross recipients (G–M) (nom) (Woody.)
- List of TNA World Heavyweight Champions (nom) (Wrestlinglover.)
Featured pictures
Four images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
- ORP Grom (nom; related article), a fast attack craft of the Polish Navy (created by User:Airwolf).
- Fumihiko Maki (nom; related article), the notable Japanese architect who is currently designing Tower 4 at the former World Trade Center site, scheduled to open in 2013 (created by jeanbaptisteparis).
- Hayley McFarland (nom; related article), who played a key role in the 2011 US police procedural comedy-drama TV series Lie to Me (created by Aaron Delani).
- STS-134 launch (nom; related article), the historic last launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour this past May from the Kennedy Space Center (created by NASA).
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Motion passed to amend 2008 case: topic ban and reminder
This week, the Arbitration Committee opened no new cases, and closed one case. One case is currently open.
Open case
MickMacNee (Week 5)
(See earlier Signpost coverage for the background to this case.) An additional 4 kilobytes was submitted in on-wiki evidence.
Closed case
Tree shaping (Week 12)
See last week's Signpost coverage for a summary of the case, the effect of the decision, and what it tells us.
Motion
- Betacommand 2: at the conclusion of this case in 2008, a remedy was passed noting that the Committee expected that the disputes and disruption underlying the case would cease. The remedy also noted that in the event of non-compliance, or a continued pattern of disputes, the Committee would feel it necessary to impose sanctions. Pursuant to the remedy, and mindful of the recent and current disputes surrounding the user in many fora, the committee indefinitely topic-banned Δ (formerly known as Betacommand) from making any edit enforcing the non-free content criteria, broadly construed. User:Δ was also formally reminded of the civility restriction and other terms of the provisional suspension of the user's community ban, which remain in force.
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Code Review backlog almost zero; What is: Subversion?; brief news
Code Review push nears zero
The process of reviewing all those revisions set to be part of the latest version of MediaWiki, 1.18, is drawing to a close, at least numerically. Data published this week show that the number of unchecked and potentially problematic revisions has fallen from a high of 1500 to under 100. Given that these are likely to be large, difficult to check revisions, a new page has been created on MediaWiki.org to list those that still need to be checked for errors. As of time of writing, some 90 revisions are listed, divided into several categories based on priority.
Despite this prioritisation of reviewing, developer Robert Lanphier emphasised in a post to the wikitech-l mailing list that zero remained the target, writing that "we want to get through everything anyway... we're all looking forward to seeing this list shrink to zero". After the code review backlog is substantially reduced, 1.18 will undergo a period of being tested for bugs, before being pushed live to Wikimedia wikis. It is unlikely to be made available to external sites in packaged form until it has demonstrated its stability on Wikimedia wikis.
What is: Subversion?
Wikimedia Labs: soon to be at the cutting edge of MediaWiki development?
23 April 2012
MediaWiki 1.20wmf01 hits first WMF wiki, understanding 20% time, and why this report cannot yet be a draft
16 April 2012
What is: agile development? and new mobile site goes live
12 September 2011
The bugosphere, new mobile site and MediaWiki 1.18 close in on deployment
29 August 2011
Code Review backlog almost zero; What is: Subversion?; brief news
18 July 2011
Wikimedia down for an hour; What is: Wikipedia Offline?
30 May 2011
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
25 April 2011
What is: localisation?; the proposed "personal image filter" explained; and more in brief
21 March 2011
Subversion (full name Apache Subversion but usually shortened to simply "SVN") is the software that handles the collaborative development of MediaWiki. By and large, it handles this in much the same way as contributing to a wiki; developers grab copies of the files they want to edit from a central repository, change them, and then "commit" their changes back to the central repository. (Developers can also get edit conflicts; Subversion provides only basic protection against them and this is one of the reasons why a move to software seen as more conflict friendly, such as Git, has been suggested in the past—for context, see previous Signpost coverage: 1, 2.)
The nature of Subversion ultimately defines the current development workflow for MediaWiki in many key respects. The majority of coding is done on local copies of the bleeding edge "trunk" code, but Subversion also allows for a process known as "branching", where elements within the repository are duplicated, allowing for a developer to choose to which copy his or her changes are applied. As a general rule, new features will continue to be added to trunk, whilst bug fixes will end up in both branch and trunk code. This process allows for the branch to "bake": that is, to become free of bugs by maintaining a fixed feature set. These branches, when stable, then form MediaWiki releases.
As of time of writing, 1.18 is currently baking; on 18 July it was re-branched from trunk, whilst a branch made some three months was renamed and put on hold. 1.18 will therefore take advantage of the ongoing improvements in the stability of trunk code; if 1.19 is still to be branched soon, it would therefore be more of a stability rather than a feature-oriented release. A second strategy would be to delay 1.19 to allow for new features to be incorporated before release.
In brief
- Wikimedia Commons and other projects have been hit by a series of problems relating to the caching of thumbnails. Filed as bug #28613, the problems have left thumbnails appearing out of date, even those provided on file description pages themselves.
- The Wikimedia Foundation blog carried a post to coincide with the start of the rollout of the ArticleFeedback extension to all articles on the English Wikipedia, as noted by the Signpost last week. It looked at some early findings and recent developments in the available functions.
- WMF contractor Sumana Harihareswara proposed installing the "Splinter" Bugzilla extension to allow proposed patches to be reviewed more easily (wikitech-l mailing list). The Volunteer Development Coordinator also posted about the talks she had attended during her WMF-funded trip to the Open Source Bridge conference held in Oregon, United States. A more comprehensive list was given on her blog.
- With the resolution of bug #29938, the MediaWiki API will now return the correct user groups for a given user, rather than assuming they are, for example, autoconfirmed.
- Lead Software Architect Brion Vibber blogged about some early stage development work he is doing on a new MediaWiki parser and its technical demands.
- The MoodBar extension will be trialled with new users this week. It will allow them to submit short statements whenever Wikipedia makes them "Happy" or "Sad", explaining what caused their change in mood. Its current prototype is similar to that of a button provided to testers of Mozilla Firefox, but expected to develop over time (more software deployments).
- MediaWiki's packaged version of the jQuery JavaScript library was upgraded from 1.6.1 to 1.6.2 to take advantage of a number of bugfixes and performance issues (bug #29773).
- The Foundation's Annual Plan included a commitment to increase read-uptime from 99.8% to 99.85% within the next year. Both figures are substantially lower than the informal targets referred to in the past by outgoing CTO Danese Cooper, but the change nonetheless represents 25% less downtime for readers.
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