In an article published last Monday, "Wikipedia Faces Growing Pains", Daniel Terdiman of Wired News directed more press attention to the question of how credible Wikipedia is as a reference. As efforts to devise new review mechanisms for Wikipedia continue, the debate still retains a certain fascination for the media.

At the outset of his article, Terdiman picks up on the recent wave of discussion about Wikipedia's credibility (see archived story). The first half recaps some of the existing debate, quoting such participants as Clay Shirky and Larry Sanger. Once Sanger's criticisms are introduced, the remainder of the article is framed as Jimmy Wales' response and plans for the future of Wikipedia.

Terdiman refers to Sanger, oddly enough, as a "former Wikipedia developer". In the ordinary sense of the word "developer", this might be reasonable, since Sanger helped to develop the Wikipedia project and its policies at its inception. In fact, this might serve as a compromise title to solve the question of whether Sanger qualifies as a "co-founder" of Wikipedia, since he refers to himself that way but Wales does not. Still, as Wikipedia has actual software developers, a concept one might assume Wired's readers are likely to understand, the choice seems odd, since this wasn't really the area Sanger worked in.

In presenting the Wikipedia response to criticism, Terdiman offers both refutations from Wales and ways to address the problems. He devotes some attention to the plans to develop a frozen and "finished" version as Wikipedia 1.0. Based on hints from Wales, he reports that a 1.0 version might not be published this year, however. Not clearly stated in the article was what medium a Wikipedia 1.0 would be in, whether this meant a print issue as Wales originally conceived or simply a static version distributed on DVD or other form of computer data storage.

In the end, Terdiman allows for a reasonably positive outlook, saying that in time Wikipedia "probably will be seen as on par with the Britannicas of the world." Of course, many Wikipedians see it as having surpassed Britannica long ago, but obviously some segments of the population are not willing to concede that point yet.

Wikipedia remains a popular and frequently cited resource on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. In a column on Sunday, Darren Green of the Chicago Tribune apparently found Wikipedia's coverage of the event so comprehensive that he referred to it as a "chapter" instead of an "article".

The Arbitration Committee closed two more cases last week, as its deliberations and decisions continued to emphasize measures to address the problem of personal attacks and general incivility.

In a case arising originally out of disputes over the article on Jesus and some related pages, the arbitrators issued a ban on CheeseDreams and imposed additional editing restrictions to follow the ban.

The request for arbitration in this case came from Snowspinner, prompted by a confusing request made by CheeseDreams herself. The issues raised covered a number of articles related in some fashion to Christianity or the Bible, with a particular complaint being that CheeseDreams inappropriately moved or forked the article Cultural and historical background of Jesus. As the dispute escalated and a request for comment was started, complaints also arose that CheeseDreams started frivolous RfC pages against her opponents.

As part of the Arbitration Committee's decision, CheeseDreams was given a one-week ban for disruptive editing, notably the addition of dispute tags to numerous articles without mentioning a reason for the dispute. An additional day was tacked on for an instance of userpage vandalism.

Earlier in the case, CheeseDreams had already been placed under an injunction that restricted her from editing articles related to Christianity. This prohibition was kept in place for a period of one year. The ruling did allow for a request to lift the restriction early based on good behavior.

In a second case, involving a complaint initially brought against HistoryBuffEr by Jayjg, the arbitrators faced another dispute arising out of the articles on the Arab-Israeli conflict. As with the Alberuni case earlier, they focused on abusive comments by editors.

The complaint, to which HistoryBuffEr responded with his own counter-complaint, involved a mountain of evidence, and at one point the Arbitration Committee had to instruct the parties to organize and summarize the information they wanted to present in a manageable form. This delayed progress in the case, which was one of the older cases remaining on the arbitration docket.

After sorting through the evidence, the arbitrators produced a detailed decision based on a number of findings, noting the general history of problems surrounding the articles in question. The ruling gave HistoryBuffEr a 30-day ban for personal attacks, citing instances of him calling Jayjg things such as "Zionist dolt" and "agitprop hack", and imposed a further 30-day ban for discourtesy.

A three-month parole is to follow in which HistoryBuffEr may be blocked for making further personal attacks. HistoryBuffEr was also placed under editing restrictions with respect to pages on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, designed to require sources and prevent the addition of original research.

For HistoryBuffEr's counter-complaint against Jayjg, however, the arbitrators declined to impose any sanctions, although they did cite some violations of the three revert rule that predated the current enforcement policy. Arbitrator David Gerard commented, "Jayjg knows the right thing to do and generally consistently does it, but has been goaded into blowing his top on occasion. But of late he's been acting in an exemplary fashion". The ruling also indicated that Jayjg had complied with the request to organize his evidence coherently, but HistoryBuffEr had not.

The dispute over country infoboxes (see related story) also spilled over and produced two arbitration requests, but the arbitrators chose not to hear these cases. The first request came from Netoholic, invoking the provisions of a previous arbitration ruling against Gzornenplatz.

Although several of the arbitrators were initially willing to accept the case, objections caused some of them to reconsider and the request was ultimately rejected. This reversal followed mav's argument that the case would need to involve all the users involved in the dispute and was not limited to Gzornenplatz. David Gerard also pointed out that the existing decree against Gzornenplatz remained enforceable, just as with his opponent Cantus, and argued that a new case was premature.

Jguk then tried to raise the question of whether Gzornenplatz is the same person as Wik—as believed by a number of people familiar with both users—since Wik was also given editing restrictions in two earlier arbitration cases. However, the arbitrators declined to consider this request separately and dismissed it along with the other.

On Sunday, two new requests for arbitration were accepted for consideration. The first was submitted by Johnleemk regarding the conduct of Everyking with respect to several articles about Ashlee Simpson and her music. This dispute had already prompted two abortive requests in December that were withdrawn, and was renewed when problems continued over the article Pieces of Me. At one point last week Everyking was blocked for violating the three revert rule, but the block was reversed amid disagreement over whether certain edits qualified as reverts.

The other newly accepted case was brought by Radicalsubversiv against Libertas and a number of alleged sockpuppets, based on a dispute spread across a number of political articles. As has been the case recently, the arbitrators managed to decide whether to accept or reject all new requests within 24 hours.