The Arbitration Committee elections have finished; however, Jimbo has not yet announced his picks for the position. When he announces his selection, we will update our article; until then, you can place the article on your watchlist. Users who receive the Signpost via e-mail, or on their talk page, via the spamlist will not be notified.

Also, something to note: because Christmas and New Year's Day fall on Mondays this year, the Signpost will be publishing its next two issues on Tuesday (26 December and 2 January).

Thanks for reading the Signpost, and have a happy holiday season.

— Ral315

The Wikimedia Foundation's three-week fundraiser began on Saturday, its first public fund drive in nearly a year. The Foundation hopes to exceed its record total from the previous fundraiser, held last year around the same time (a goal of US$1,500,000 was discussed in connection with possible matching donations, but the Board of Trustees decided not to set a formal goal). As of press time, over $83,000 had been raised.

The drive is the first to include matching gifts from participating corporations; the matching gift program has not yet begun, but reports indicate that it may begin on Wednesday. The Foundation is still soliciting corporations to participate in the program for this fundraising drive, and potentially, future drives; if you know a corporation who would be interested in participating in such a program, please contact Danny.

The drive also is the first to incorporate the new contribution system, Wikimedia Fundraising C.O.R.E. (Central Online Reporting Engine). The site provides real-time donation data, with optional comments from donors. It also allows for the easy statistical breakdown of data. During the first three days of the drive, for example, 58.4% of the money donated in the drive was made in American dollars, while 23.8% was made in Euros, and 7.2% was made in British pounds.

WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential.

Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Williams works as a visual journalist for the US-based The Tampa Tribune, a daily newspaper in Tampa, Florida. He also has worked as an illustrator and designer at newspapers in Dubuque, Iowa, and Dayton, Ohio.

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The steward elections concluded on Friday, 15 December; confirmation of current stewards also ended at the same time. At the end of the voting, all of the candidates had at least 30 support votes, and 13 of the 15 candidates had at least an 80 percent support ratio. In order to qualify, candidates must have met both criteria. The Board of Trustees will appoint stewards from the 13 qualifying candidates. Although the exact number of candidates that will be chosen is unclear, it is thought that approximately 10 to 20 new stewards will be added, and the Board appointed every qualified candidate in January's steward elections. It is also unclear how present stewards will be re-confirmed, as several of the stewards had garnered some concerns and opposition to re-confirmation.

Time magazine released its annual Person of the Year award this week, and you were featured as the chosen person. Citing the perceived Web 2.0, the magazine elaborated on how the year was marked with the "story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before", and how the power of the individual - you - was greater than ever before. "It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace," the magazine added. YouTube and MySpace are both popular sites driven by community-based contributions; the former is a video sharing site, and the latter is a social network service.

The magazine also featured Wikipedia editor Simon Pulsifer (known as SimonP) in one of its 15 stories about individuals who have made an impact on the "new digital democracy." Pulsifer, who is currently an Arbitrator, once had the most edits of any account, excluding bots, on the English Wikipedia.

• The Yoruba Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 1,500 articles.
• The Japanese Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.
• The Norwegian Wikipedia reached 30,000 registered users and 90,000 articles.
• The Welsh Wikipedia has reached 6000 articles.
• The Slovak Wikipedia has reached 5,000 registered users.
• The Volapük Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
• The Bishnupriya Manipuri Wikipedia has reached 8,000 articles.
• The Cebuano Wikipedia has reached 3,000 articles.
• The Korean Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles.
• The Latvian Wikipedia has reached 7,000 articles.
• The Persian Wikipedia has reached 25,000 registered users.
• The Javanese Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
• The Telugu Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles.
• The Serbian Wikipedia has reached 40,000 articles.
• The Turkish Wiktionary has reached 50,000 entries.
• The Dutch Wikipedia has reached 80,000 registered users.

Seven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: J.smith (nom), Davidruben (nom), Ceyockey (nom), Kchase02 (nom), Tonywalton (nom), Royalguard11 (nom), and Cbrown1023 (nom).

Eight articles were promoted to featured status last week: Brabham, Kitsune, Rus' Khaganate, 1995 Pacific hurricane season, Kinetoscope, Hero of Belarus, Bodyline, and Caspian expeditions of the Rus.

Six articles were de-featured last week: Bath, World War I, Lawrence v. Texas, Kitsch, Autism, and James II of England.

One portal reached featured status last week: Portal:Science.

Four lists were featured last week: List of Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, List of Nova Scotia general elections, List of Manitoba general elections, and List of British Columbia general elections.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Green and Golden Bell Frog, Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles and Fundamental Duties of India, History of the board game Monopoly, Mormon handcart pioneers, Enzyme inhibitor, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Sound film.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Bird flight, Bang Pa In, Cameoflage, Denver, Colorado, Petrified wood, Vibrissa, and DNA clamp.

Four pictures were featured last week:

• 
  Saint Isaac's Square
• 
  Mandelbrot set
• 
  Giraffe

• 
  Lesser Brown Blowfly

Note that a number of features were added recently that required database schema changes. They may not go live for a few days or even longer, until the databases can be updated, and neither will any other changes made since r18226.

Edit counts are now finally available directly from the database. There is not yet a software interface to display them, but they should soon be usable for many heuristics where they were previously not efficient enough to use (such as for when a user becomes "autoconfirmed" and is able to move pages). They will also likely be viewable somehow through the wiki interface. (Brion Vibber, r18325)

Users whose passwords were reset can now only log in using their temporary e-mailed passwords. The password entered by the resetting sysop will not be valid. Also, their e-mail addresses will no longer revert to being unconfirmed. (Brion Vibber, bug 6394 and bug 2259, r18307, r18319, r18320)

Users who have newly registered on a wiki with e-mail confirmation enabled (such as the English Wikipedia), if they have provided an e-mail address, will be notified of the confirmation e-mail once it has been sent. Users attempting to confirm their e-mail addresses will also now be warned if a confirmation e-mail was sent for their account recently. (Brion Vibber, r18320)

<nowiki> now works inside poems on wikis with that extension installed, such as Wikisource. (Steve Sanbeg, bug 7503, r18340) It also now works in the site notice. (Rob Church, bug 8153, r18390)

On wikis with the ConfirmEdit extension enabled, anonymous users can no longer avoid CAPTCHAs for inserting URLs by inserting an HTML comment (<!-- -->) or other simple obfuscation. Also, a bug that in some cases stopped the extension from working entirely was fixed. (Brion Vibber, bug 4823 and bug 8268, r18349)

Special:Booksources will now have a URL that can be copied and pasted for links. (Previously it used HTTP POST, and now uses GET.) (Rob Church, bug 8164, r18372)

A new extension, UserImages, dynamically creates a gallery of all images uploaded by a user. It is not enabled on any Wikimedia Foundation wiki. (Rob Church, r18376)

A few interface changes were made:

• The undo link in edit histories now appears even on the current revision. It had previously been omitted there because its effect was essentially the same as clicking the "edit" link on the left-hand revision. (Andrew Garrett, r18254)
• Special:Allpages now displays a link to allow users to navigate to the previous page. (Ashar Voultoiz, bug 4673, r18263)
• When a user is blocked, the block message can now include a block ID (parameter $5). This will allow users to get unblocked more easily by administrators. If the message has been customized, it must be manually updated to display the added parameter. (Andrew Garrett, r18302)
• The count showing how many characters changed in an edit now appears for page moves, page creations, and log entries. It also now works correctly in "enhanced" recent changes. (Leon Weber, r18313)
• When viewing a user's contributions, "next 50" will actually get the next 50 contributions. Previously it retrieved only the next 49 revisions, with the last revision of the current page as the 50th. (Ashar Voultoiz, bug 8239, r18314)
• Using a new extension, it is now possible for logged-in users to dismiss site notices. (Tim Starling and Brion Vibber, r18353 and r18357)
• The message name filter on Special:Allmessages should now work somewhat more smoothly. (Ilmari Karonen, bug 7925, r18373
• It is now possible for a sysop, when deleting a page, to check a box to watch it. The box may be checked by default as a user preference. (Rob Church, bug 4488, r18381)
• Edit summaries now treat wikilinks beginning with a colon the same way as they're treated in ordinary wikitext (i.e., the colon suppresses special behavior but is otherwise ignored). (Rob Church, bug 2785, r18428)
• "You can view and copy the source of this page" is no longer displayed on protected pages if the page has no text. (Rob Church, r18429–30)

Incorrect behavior for user pages in a corner case where users might have names ending in .js or .css (thus tricking the software into treating their user page as a CSS/JS subpage) was fixed. (Mark Haidar/Fyren, bug 8241, r18300)

Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:

• Basque (thanks to Arkaitz Zubiaga)
• Cantonese (thanks to Shinjiman)
• Finnish (thanks to Ilmari Karonen
• Hebrew (thanks to Rotem Liss)
• Japanese (thanks to kaikkd)
• Kongo (thanks to kaikkd)
• Russian (thanks to Alexander Sigachov)
• Serbian (thanks to rainman)

Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.

The Arbitration Committee opened two cases this week, and closed one case, leaving only seven still in arbitration.

• Seabhcan: Various parties, principally MONGO, allege that Seabhcan has engaged in repeated incivility, but he claims that the incidents occurred such a long time ago as to be moot, and that MONGO and others have acted aggressively in the course of the dispute, alleging that "what they want is blood". As a result of the case, both MONGO and Seabhcan were desysopped, and Seabhcan was placed on personal attack parole.

• Midnight Syndicate: A case brought by Durova, involving an edit war on the Midnight Syndicate article. Dionyseus and Skinny McGee allege that GuardianZ has engaged in sockpuppetry and general disruption on the article. He denies the allegations, and argues that Dionyseus and Skinny McGee have engaged in similar behaviour. A temporary injunction has been granted placing Dionyseus, Skinny McGee and GuardianZ on revert parole.

• Naming Conventions: A case regarding a dispute over whether articles without alternative meanings should be disambiguated for the sake of clarity - for example, Never Kill a Boy on the First Date (Buffy episode). While about 80% of editors said that it should not be disambiguated in a straw poll, both sides allege that editors on the other have behaved disruptively.

• Brahma Kumaris: A case involving the actions of avyakt7 and 195.82.106.244 (.244) on the Brahma Kumaris article. Avyakt alleges that .244 has defamed Brahma Kumaris in the article, but .244 claims that avyakt has misinterpreted the reliable sources policy.

• Sex Tourism: A case involving a revert war on the Sex tourism article.

• Iran-Iraq War: A case referred by the mediation committee regarding a dispute on the Iran-Iraq War page. Arbitrator Fred Bauder has proposed a motion dismissing the case for lack of evidence.

• Waldorf education: A case on Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf education and related pages. Fred Bauder has proposed a remedy placing the articles on article probation.

• RPJ: Various users allege that RPJ edits disruptively (although in good faith) on various articles related to conspiracy theories, such as John F. Kennedy Assassination. In response, he denies the allegations, and raised some "practical concerns about arbitration", which seem to regard the legitimacy of the Arbitration Committee bindingly to resolve disputes. Findings of fact have been proposed to the effect that RPJ engages in original research and has few contributions that are not disruptive edits to Kennedy assassination articles, and a one-year ban, to be followed by probation, has been proposed. These motions have the support of four arbitrators.