License update, Commons cartoons, films milestone, and more
License update committee forming
The Wikimedia Foundation is moving closer to a decision on whether to switch licenses for projects that use the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), including English Wikipedia. Deputy Director Erik Möller is currently forming a volunteer committee to help communicate the details of the proposal to the many editing communities and to organize a vote on it. If the proposal passes, the committee will also assist in implementing the shift to the Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Switching to that Creative Commons license, which is similar in spirit to the GFDL, is an option that was added to the GFDL 1.3 (an update released in November 2008), after a long period of negotiation among the WMF, Creative Commons, and the Free Software Foundation (which is responsible for the GFDL).
Draft language for the potential new terms of use has also been posted on the licensing update proposal page, and the Foundation seeks feedback to make sure the language is clear and acceptable to the community. A vote open to editors from all affected projects is expected to take place in the coming weeks, before the Foundation makes a final decision on whether to switch licenses. The GFDL 1.3 requires that any such switch take place before 1 November, 2009.
On 6 March, Möller announced the results of a survey on the preferred method of attributing collaboratively-produced content when it is re-used by others. The most popular of six options was attribution by linking to the original article.
Wikinews photo contest results
The results from the Wikinews Picture of the Year 2008 contest are in. The winner is a photograph by Lex Kolychev of a campaign event for independent candidates in the United States presidential election of 2008. It appeared on the Wikinews front page in the "News in pictures" section, which—as in the case of the winning image—occasionally features newsworthy photography even without a related published Wikinews article.
Commons debates hosting offensive cartoons
A fractious debate on Wikimedia Commons concluded this week over whether to delete an offensive political cartoon by Carlos Latuff. That particular cartoon, which depicts Alan Dershowitz masturbating while watching violence in Beirut, is one of many cartoons the controversial Brazilian artist has released as public domain.
The Commons debate centered on whether the image has any educational value—and thus falls within the project scope—as well as whether it falls afoul of the Commons policy prohibiting "Files apparently created and/or uploaded for the purpose of vandalism or attack". Commons hosts many other images by Latuff, some of which have also been the subject of recent deletion debates. The debate over the Dershowitz cartoon was closed as "delete", which set off a short wheel war in which the image cycled through deletion and undeletion, with five different administrators involved.
The larger issue of how to interpret the scope of the Wikimedia Commons project remains largely unresolved, particularly regarding the requirement that files "must be realistically useful for an educational purpose".
All notable films now have Wikipedia articles?
On 12 March, WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles completed the notable films list. This list, created by Reflex Reaction in 2005, originally included 1,914 movies compiled from various third-party lists which did not have articles on Wikipedia. The final movie removed from the list was Death of a Salesman (1951 film) which was created by Scapler.
In addition to the many missing notable films that were not included on that list, there remain to be written thousands of missing articles on dozens of other topical lists maintained by WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles.
Briefly
- A Wikibooks Motivation Survey being conducted by the University of South Australia. It is being advertised through a sitenotice on Wikibooks.
- Testers are requested to try out new MediaWiki features on Test Wikipedia.
- The submission system for Wikimania 2009 is now operational, and organizers have begun to review early proposals. Presentation proposals will be accepted through 15 April.
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Manufactured scandal, Wikipedia assignments, and more
WorldNetDaily reporter ordered Obama edits
Last week the Wikipedia Signpost noted a story by Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily, in which Klein reported that edits to the article Barack Obama and several other articles were being reverted to keep out "missing" material about Obama-related controversies such as the Bill Ayers presidential election controversy and citizenship conspiracy theories. Klein is an American author, a Middle East correspondent, head of the Jerusalem bureau for WorldNetDaily,[1] and a columnist for The Jewish Press. Several mainstream media outlets subsequently picked up the story, including The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, and Fox News.
Subsequent analysis and investigation, beginning with a story from ConWebBlog, resulted in Klein's admission that the user making the reverted edits, Jerusalem21 (whose only other edits were to Klein's own article), was his research assistant and made the edits on his instructions.
Composition professor uses Wikipedia to teach writing
Robert E. Cummings, an assistant professor of English and director of the First-Year Composition Program at Columbus State University, praises Wikipedia as "a more authentic, immediate audience for student writing" in a column in Inside Higher Ed. In "Are We Ready to Use Wikipedia to Teach Writing?", Cummings explains how he has successfully used Wikipedia assignments in his composition courses to teach students how to write with an audience in mind that consists of more than merely the professor. He also claims that "in the years of teaching with Wikipedia I have found almost no difference in the range of opinions about Wikipedia held by student writers and those held by their - mostly - older teachers" and that he has found "roughly the same number of enthusiastic adopters among teachers and students." Many students with negative views of Wikipedia, he notes, had previously been penalized for using it.
Cummings is the author of a new book about Wikipedia assignments and related teaching issues, Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia, due out this month from Vanderbilt University Press. Look for a review of this book by one or more Wikipedians in an upcoming edition of the Signpost.
Ecology students assigned to edit
Conservation Magazine reports that University of Florida graduate students in a course on plant-animal interactions were assigned to edit a range of ecology-related Wikipedia articles. The students themselves describe the experience in an upcoming article in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, "Improving Wikipedia: educational opportunity and professional responsibility".
Law scholars analyze Wikipedia's dispute resolution system
Temple University law scholars David A. Hoffman and Salil Mehra have released a draft of a paper that explores English Wikipedia's dispute resolution system as a key factor in the project's effectiveness. In "Wikitruth through Wikiorder", Hoffman and Mehra present both qualitative and quantitative assessments of the formal and informal elements of dispute resolution on Wikipedia, including a statistical analysis of 250 arbitration cases. They characterize the formal dispute resolution system (particularly arbitration) as, paradoxically, a system that does not resolve disputes. Rather, since Wikipedia is largely driven by (civil) disputes over article content, the arbitration system serves to "weed out" editors who do not abide by the community's standards of behavior while it "weeds back in" problematic editors who nevertheless demonstrate a commitment to article content. Using game theory, they argue that channeling difficult users back into the community can be modeled by the game of Chicken.
Hoffman describes the origins of the study in a recent blog post, which also includes a flowchart of Wikipedia dispute resolution in which every other processing step reads "Shower them with Wikilove".
UK government plagiarizes Wikipedia in telecom bill amendment, says grad student
Skittles' Web 2.0 experiment goes awry
The Signpost previously reported on the recently overhauled website for the confectionary brand Skittles, which uses only Twitter feeds, Wikipedia articles, and other "Web 2.0" content. PRWeek reported last week that abusive comments by Twitter users have prompted Skittles to use the Wikipedia article for the home page, rather than Twitter. However, both the "discussion" and "edit" tabs are obscured by the Skittles branding.
The website has since changed again, with YouTube content now used as the default.
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New FAC and FAR appointments
Acknowledging the increasing workload, the extended absence of Featured article review (FAR) delegate Marskell, and constraints on Featured article candidates (FAC) delegate SandyGeorgia's time, Featured article director Raul654 has appointed two additional deputies to assist him in the Featured article process: Karanacs has been appointed FAC delegate and YellowMonkey at FAR as of March 14, 2009. Other participants in the Featured articles process generally supported the choices.
Featured articles director and delegate history
Raul654 has been heavily involved with Featured articles (FA) for most of his editing career. The title of Featured Articles Director was created and Raul654's work in this capacity formalized by a ratification process in August 2004. He became less personally involved in removal of the FA designation, which can only happen after a Featured article review, with the appointments of Marskell and Joelr31 as FAR delegates.
In November 2007, Raul654 announced that he was selecting SandyGeorgia to assist him at FAC. Raul654 explained that the two would share the workload and he would remain actively involved in the process on a day-to-day basis. In December 2008, Marskell announced that, although he intended to edit again, he would not be editing for the medium term future.
New FAC and FAR delegates
Karanacs registered her account in October 2006 and participated in her first Featured article, Texas A&M University in June 2007, followed by History of Texas A&M University in August 2007 and 10 more Featured articles—typically in the content area of Texan military history—ranking her among the leading contributors to FAs on Wikipedia. She was the leading editor of the April Fools' 2008 mainpage FA, Ima Hogg. She has been a regular reviewer at FAC since mid-2007, recognized among the busiest and most reliable reviewers (see February 2008, April 2008, and May 2008 FAC stats). She became an admin in June 2008.
YellowMonkey created the account Blnguyen in September 2005. With major contributions to 30 FAs, he is among the top five FA nominators on Wikipedia (see related story). He is also a leading contributor to new content featured at DYK (see related story). He is a checkuser, oversighter and admin, and a former ArbCom member who did not seek re-election in 2008. In addition to reviewing and submitting FACs, he has been an active participant at FAR.
Depending on workload, another FAC delegate may be appointed in the near future. Joelr31 has expressed a desire to resign as FAR appointee, and therefore an appointment to replace him as FAR delegate may also be forthcoming.
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Discussion Reports And Miscellaneous Articulations
The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.
- A proposal to trial Flagged Revisions has been opened at Wikipedia:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions. The proposition is divided in two sections: flagged protection and patrolled revisions. With flagged protections an article can be protected by an administrator so that the version viewed by readers by default is the latest flagged version. Patrolled revisions add a passive flag used to monitor articles for vandalism, BLP violations, POV pushing, and other editorial issues. Patrolled revisions can be used for all articles, but have no effect on the version viewed by readers. The proposals are independent but supplement each other. They involve the creation of a reviewer usergroup. This implementation can also support secondary trials. The main trial should run for two months if approved, then a community discussion would be planned to decide the future of this implementation.
- This week three WikiProjects were proposed. WikiProject Historic Sites is proposed to cover officially designated historic sites world-wide. Currently WikiProject National Register of Historic Places only covers locations listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this project would help provide broader coverage of designated locations. WikiProject Copyright Cleanup is proposed to be a central location where users would work to obtain permission, revise or replace violations, provide commentary at review boards, and delete violations. WikiProject Maintenance is proposed to be a parent project of all maintenance WikiProjects and work with Wikipedia:Maintenance. The WikiProject would provide a list of active WikiProjects and Task Forces dedicated to maintenance work and would direct editors to the one suitable for their interests. It has also been stated that the project would attempt to aim editors to specific maintenance tasks when a backlog occurs.
Proposals
- Themfromspace has proposed a noticeboard for the discussions over individual external links on Wikipedia. The noticeboard would be a centralized place to find consensus in disputes involving external links over what should and shouldn't be linked to. Supporters say that having such a noticeboard would be helpful for editorial disputes regarding links that do not fall under the category of spam, while opponents state that the noticeboard may have too much overlap with WT:EL.
- Scarian has proposed a noticeboard for handling issues with genre trolls. A genre troll is defined as someone who continually changes genres in the musical artist infobox, or similar locations, to suit their own personal tastes with no reliable sources to support them. The noticeboard would be a centralized place to discuss how to deal with genre trolls. Supporters say that having such a noticeboard would drastically decrease the amount of time that would be spent on dealing with genre trolls, while opponents state that it would be "an incredibly over-specific noticeboard" that would be chronically under-watched.
- After recent discussions at Wikipedia talk:Featured picture candidates, a proposal was brought to the village pump regarding the possible reopening of discussion regarding Wikipedia's non-free content guideline. Voiced opinions have ranged from allowing all non-commercial content, to allowing some non-commercial content as a limited replacement for fair use, to continuing the existing ban on all non-commercial content. Prominent community members Jimmy Wales and Erik Möller have both stated that they oppose Wikipedia using non-commercial content, and note that the Foundation's position is unlikely to change. Supporters of the change state that this would allow Wikipedia to have greater access to non-commercial content and stop companies from "exploiting" Wikipedia's free content.
- An RfC has been opened to discuss the current status of the proposed fiction notability guidelines. The proposition states that the guideline should be tagged with {{rejected}}, with {{historical}}, or restored to a version from August 2007. There is an even amount of users who state that any changes should be made at a later date and state that the proposal should be restored to its past state. In response to the RfC an essay in place of WP:FICT; this proposition hasn't garnered much discussion as of press time.
- An RfC has been opened to discuss whether the spoiler guideline should be modified to exclude plot details that some consider to be spoilers from the lead section of an article. While there is both support and opposition to a change, it is generally agreed upon that what constitutes a spoiler is subjective and they should only be in the lead if notable.
- An RfC has been opened to determine a specific size oversized non-free images should be resized to. This discussion was started following a BRfA (See previous story) for a bot that would automatically resize non-free images. The non-free image rationale template states that a fair use image should not be more than 300 pixels in width or height, which ensures that the image's resolution is less than 0.1 megapixels. In addition to an appropriate size, discussions are revolving around whether or not a bot should be resizing images at all.
Reader comments
Approved this week
Administrators
Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Bettia (nom) and Camw (nom).
Bots
Five bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: SoxBot II (task request), BücherBot (task request), Sambot (task request), FPBot (task request) and ListasBot (task request).
Featured pages
Seventeen articles were promoted to featured status this week: Malcolm X (nom), Osteochondritis dissecans (nom), Idlewild and Soak Zone (nom), Alexander Cameron Rutherford (nom), Rampart Dam (nom), Meningitis (nom), Hilary of Chichester (nom), Benjamin Morrell (nom), Operation Cobra (nom), Amanita muscaria (nom), Juan Davis Bradburn (nom), Premiere (The O.C.) (nom), SM U-66 (nom), Byzantine navy (nom), Banker horse (nom), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (nom) and Museum of Bad Art (nom).
Thirteen lists were promoted to featured status this week: Ed Chynoweth Cup (nom), List of Popotan episodes (nom), List of individual National Basketball Association scoring leaders (nom), List of Governors of Connecticut (nom), M.I.A. discography (nom), List of Oh My Goddess! episodes (nom), List of Puerto Rican boxing world champions (nom), List of alumni of Jesus College, Oxford: Law and government (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Dexter (nom), List of Calgary Flames draft picks (nom), List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2006 (U.S.) (nom), Houston Rockets seasons (nom) and List of Hot 100 number-one singles of 2005 (U.S.) (nom).
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Western Chalukya architecture, Mozart family grand tour, Lazare Ponticelli, Megatokyo, Chelsea F.C, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, The Chaser APEC pranks and 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt.
Former featured pages
Five articles were delisted this week: Władysław Sikorski (nom), Dundee (nom), Isaac Newton (nom), Gunnhild, Mother of Kings (nom) and Robert A. Heinlein (nom).
One list was delisted this week: List of European Union member states by accession (nom).
No topics were delisted this week.
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Crab spider, Along the River During the Qingming Festival, Tractor drawn aerial, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, American Tree Sparrow, Wrecked German ammunition train, First hot air balloon to carry humans and Greater Dublin Rail Network.
No media files were featured this week.
One featured picture was demoted this week: Joan of Arc statue, Notre Dame (nom).
Twenty-two pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
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Photography by Lewis Hine -
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The Report on Lengthy Litigation
Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science was amended following this request for clarification. ScienceApologist has been banned from the site for three months; his previously instated topic ban for six months restarts upon the expiry of this new site ban.
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, and closed one, leaving five cases open.
Evidence phase
- West Bank - Judea and Samaria: A dispute about editor behavior in discussions about naming conventions for certain Israel- and Palestine-related locations.
- MZMcBride: A case brought after administrator MZMcBride deleted numerous "secret pages". This case is reviewing administrator conduct by MZMcBride only, and is not ruling on the appropriateness of the pages themselves. MZMcBride was admonished for his administrator actions in a previous Request for Arbitration.
- Prem Rawat 2: A case concerning the continued behavioral problems on the pages about Prem Rawat, and related articles. A previous case, Prem Rawat, was closed in May of last year.
- Date delinking: A case regarding the behavior of editors in the ongoing dispute relating to policy on linking dates in articles. An injunction has been issued prohibiting large-scale linking or delinking of dates until the case is resolved.
Voting
- Scientology: A case regarding behavioral problems in Scientology-related articles; the case is related to the prior case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/COFS.
Closed
- Ayn Rand: A case about editorial behavior, such as alleged POV-pushing and bad faith, in relation to the Ayn Rand article. The Arbitration Committee accepted the case as they found that all other avenues of dispute resolution had failed to resolve the dispute. The remedies for the case topic banned several editors from Ayn Rand and related articles, and fully banned TheJazzFan from the site for one year.
Reader comments
- ^ Poulsen, Kevin (2007-07-25). "Fox Claims Wikipedia Whitewashes Obama's Past — Update | Threat Level from Wired.com". Blog.wired.com. Retrieved 2009-03-11.