Reviews of The Wikipedia Revolution
Last month saw the release of The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia, by Andrew Lih (Fuzheado), which has been widely reviewed in mainstream newspapers. This week two Wikipedians share their perspectives on the book.
Review by Raul654
- Full disclosure: I was interviewed for this book, and am mentioned by name in it. I also made a few small contributions to the afterword.
Andrew Lih's book The Wikipedia Revolution is probably the single most comprehensive discussion of Wikipedia's history that has been written. Lih's insider understanding of Wikipedia, along with his cogent explanation of technical aspects of the site (in which his background in computer science is apparent) make this book unique among the many thousands of pages that have been written about Wikipedia.
The book is organized as follows:
- Chapters 1 through 3 are about the early days (Ward Cunningham, Bomis, and Nupedia).
- Chapter 4 is part history and part technical primer (the early slashdotting, server load, etc).
- Chapter 5 describe aspects of editing Wikipedia (dot maps, gdansk, bots).
- Chapter 6 describes how each of the language versions have their own culture and technical issues
- Chapter 7 is about governance
- Chapter 8 is about controversies
- Chapter 9 is about Wikipedia "making waves" — the world's response to us.
As someone who participates only in the English language community, I found chapter 6 (describing the cultural and technical issues facing non-English Wikipedias) particularly interesting. The end of the book includes a novel feature — an afterword collaboratively written by several high profile users. Although the afterword does, to some extent, repeat some of the things said earlier in the book, it also provides a heretofore unexplored perspective of the community — the community's view of itself.
I don't agree with all aspects of this book. Just to give one example, based on personal observations, I think Lih overstates the influence Sunir Shah's Meatball wiki had on Wikipedia (Meatball was marginally important when I started editing Wikipedia back in 2003. I doubt most of the people reading this in the Signpost today have even heard of Meatball.) For the issues Wikipedia is facing today, while the book gives a good overview, it is not comprehensive. It mentions one arbcom case, Wikiprojects exactly once, and featured content of any kind exactly twice (two passing mentions of featured articles, the second of which was in the context of saying that they degrade over time — an effect that, like the Yeti, is talked about much but for which relatively few concrete examples have ever been shown.) In short, Lih has left himself plenty of material to cover should he ever decide to do a sequel. And, in fairness, nobody else has written that book yet either.
The Wikipedia Revolution is an excellent retrospective - invaluable documentation of where Wikipedia came from. It's hard not to appreciate the sheer amount of work that Lih put in to sifting through the vast (vast, vast) archives to pull out the nuggets he quotes so liberally throughout the book. For anyone who wants to know where Wikipedia came from, this book is for you.
Review by Ragesoss
The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia is a valuable, if incomplete, reflection on Wikipedia's past and future. Author Andrew Lih presents his book as a history of Wikipedia, but journalist Noam Cohen describes it better, in his recent New York Times essay, as the project's "first serious memoir". The book has much to offer, especially to Wikipedians like me who joined only after the technical and social foundations were laid by the first waves of usenetters, hackers, and Slashdotters. It is a compelling narrative and a fun read (even if it had me constantly wishing for an edit button to deal with little issues of style and grammar).
From hacking to wikis to Wikipedia
The early chapters are based in part on interviews with wiki inventor Ward Cunningham and (as Lih diplomatically describes them) Wikipedia's "principal enablers" Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, supplemented with mailing list posts and other documents and interviews. Lih weaves the stories of wiki software and of Wikipedia into the heart of the better-known histories of the world wide web, hacker culture, and the free software movement.
In this telling, Wikipedia is no longer a surprise left-field project that came out of nowhere in the wake of the dot-com bubble. In fact, its emergence seems almost overdetermined; the collaborative encyclopedia is part of the trailing edge of a networked computing revolution decades in the making.
Your friendly neighborhood encyclopedia
Lih does nicely explaining why Wikipedia works as well as it does. As Jimmy Wales and many other Wikipedians have observed, most people have good intentions. This is what makes communities possible, on-line and off. The social dynamics of Wikipedia find their parallel in the street culture of cities; Lih draws on the writings of activist and social critic Jane Jacobs, who argued that trust and familiarity (not overt authority or technological control) were what made streets and parks safe. (Noam Cohen explores the Wikipedia-as-city metaphor further in his essay, which was inspired by his reading of The Wikipedia Revolution. Nicholas Carr explores the seamier side of the sprawling Wiki-metropolis in his response to Cohen, "Potemkinpedia".)
Lih's optimistic perspective on Wikipedia culture—the "street culture" of the greatest "city" of its kind—comes through in his consistent use of the language of "community" to describe participants and in his choice of examples illustrating the social dynamics of the project. It is a perspective that Wikipedia's critics would no doubt take issue with, but it captures the essence of why—all theory to the contrary, per the zeroeth law of Wikipedia—it seems to work much of the time in practice. However, for all his emphasis on the software story that leads up to Wikipedia, Lih spends little time exploring the ways software has structured the community (and vice-versa) since the project's early formative period. As Aaron Swartz observed in his 2006 essay "Code, and Other Laws of Wikipedia", "technical choices have political effects"; the programmers—led by Brion Vibber, whom Lih mentions only in passing—surely ought to play a bigger role in future retellings of Wikipedia's story.
Wikipedia's place in the world
Despite some omissions and simplifications, Lih tells a satisfying story about Wikipedia's creators, from "chief instigators" to programmers to writers. But, in the mode of memoir rather than history, Lih merely asserts—rather than explains—why readers have so enthusiastically embraced Wikipedia. In the first chapter he writes that "Wikipedia became an instant phenomenon because of both supply and demand": great demand for "balanced and reliable content" and an excess supply of knowledgeable volunteers. Yet the balance and reliability of Wikipedia's content and the authoritative knowledge (or lack thereof) of its contributors have been exactly the grounds on which the project has been most strongly challenged.
The Internet has brought unprecedented access to a wide range of the sorts of content that, before the age of Wikipedia, were widely accepted as authoritative: major newspapers and magazine; books from reputable publishers; scientific literature. Rather than explaining Wikipedia's success, the consideration of informational supply and demand over the period of Wikipedia's rise reveals a paradox that requires deeper explanation. Why would the public turn to Wikipedia at a time when the supply of reliable content was greater than ever (and, in fact, is what made Wikipedia possible)? The wider cultural and economic currents that have shaped Wikipedia's reception among the non-editing public will no doubt make for a whole new way of understanding Wikipedia's history, but are not addressed much in this book.
The relationship between Wikipedia and other media will only become more complex as the business models of traditional "reliable sources" continue to disintegrate—in part because of the success of Wikipedia and other online information sources. What might Wikipedia look like in a world without the newspaper industry?
The need to evolve and adapt—and to better understand our project's place in society and its historical roots—is all the more urgent with the recent news that Encarta, the project that revolutionized the idea of an "encyclopedia" a generation before Wikipedia, is shutting down just sixteen years after it started. As other Wikipedians conclude in the collaboratively written foward-looking "Afterward" of The Wikipedia Revolution, our project can either "remain complacent with what it has achieved, or it can attempt to find innovative ways to remain on the cutting edge of collaborative Internet projects."
Reader comments
Wikipedia's coverage and conflicts quantified
Researchers at PARC, creators of WikiDashboard (see previous coverage) have announced a new study of English Wikipedia that quantifies Wikipedia coverage. Based on the categories assigned to each article, coverage is sorted according to eleven broad categories used in Wikipedia's Categorical index: Culture and the arts; Geography and places; Health and fitness; History and events; Mathematics and logic; Natural and physical sciences; People and self; Philosophy and thinking; Religion and belief systems; Society and social sciences; and Technology and applied sciences. ("General reference" is excluded.) They report the following approximate breakdown in coverage:
- Culture and the arts: 30%
- People and self: 15%
- Geography and places: 14%
- Society and social sciences: 12%
- History and events: 11%
- Natural and physical sciences: 9%
- Technology and applied sciences: 4%
- Religion and belief systems: 2%
- Health and fitness: 2%
- Mathematics and logic: 1%
- Philosophy and thinking: 1%
The PARC researchers presented a short paper describing their work, "What’s in Wikipedia? Mapping Topics and Conflict Using Socially Annotated Category Structure" to the 'CHI2009 conference on Human-Computer Interaction', and have a blog post summary of the results.
Methodology
To explain their methodology of sorting content, the researchers use the example of Albert Einstein. In January 2008 (the last available full data dump of English Wikipedia), the Einstein article had 26 categories. Each category can be broken down according to its proportional relevance to the 11 top-level categories based on the shortest paths through the category system to the different top-level categories. So, for example, Einstein's category of "Jewish-American scientists" is most strongly associated with "People and self", but is also part of the "Religion and belief systems" and "Natural and physical sciences" topics. Combining the category weighting for all 26 categories creates a distribution of the Einstein article's proportional relevance to each of the top-level categories. As the paper notes, "Einstein’s topic distribution primarily falls under “People”; however, his roles as both a prominent scientist and social figure are reflected in associations with “Science”, “Society”, “History”, “Philosophy”, “Religion”, and “Culture”. His involvement with the Manhattan Project also leads to associations with “Technology”."
Aggregating this sort of distribution for all articles generates the overall 2008 topic distribution reported above. The paper also compared the 2008 results to the results from a 2006 dump, in order to measure which topic areas were growing most rapidly. They found that "Natural and physical sciences" and "Culture and the arts" each grew by over 200% in that time, with strong growth also in Philosophy, Mathematics, and History. Surprisingly, they also found that coverage of "Technology and applied sciences" actually appeared to shrink by 6% between 2006 and 2008; this was undoubtedly caused by reorganizations of the category hierarchy rather than an actual net loss of technology content.
Conflict
Using the topic distribution method in combination with an earlier method they had developed to measure the amount of conflict generated by a particular article (based on dispute tags and reversions), the researchers calculated the amount of conflict in each broad topic area (normalized for the average number of categories per article in different topic areas). They report in the blog summary "that "philosophy" and "religion" have generated 28% of the conflicts each." This is despite the fact that they were only 1% and 2%". [The post was later edited to 28% "contentious-ness" each, reflecting that the percentages are relative to the number of articles in each category.] As the paper notes, however, this is "normalized conflict"; "People" and "Society and social sciences" had the highest "absolute amount[s]" of conflict.
Reader comments
New program officer, survey results, and more
New Program Officer chosen
Jennifer Riggs has been hired as the new program officer for the Wikimedia Foundation, according to Sue Gardner. Riggs is the first person to hold the newly created "Program Officer" role. She will be responsible for supervising the work of Jay Walsh, who manages public relations and press; Cary Bass, Foundation volunteer coordinator; and Frank Schulenberg, who works on outreach projects. According to Gardner, "as CPO, she is responsible for all non-technical program activities such as volunteer recruitment and public outreach."
Riggs has a background as volunteer coordinator for the American Red Cross Bay Area chapter, and has worked previously in Central America, the Pacific Islands and Togo. Riggs speaks French, Sango and some Spanish.
Commons Picture of the Year finals
The final round of voting has begun for the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year 2008 competition. There are 51 finalists, many of which were created by Wikimedians. Voting is open through 30 April. Any user registered by 1 January 2009 with at least 200 edits on any Wikimedia project before 12 February is eligible to vote, but unlike in the first round, voters may only vote for a single picture.
The first round, in which eligible voters could vote for as many of the 501 Featured Pictures promoted on Commons in 2008 as they liked, was tallied by category. The top 10% of images from each category were selected as finalists, with most finalists receiving over 100 votes.
Preliminary results from the UNU merit survey
Preliminary results from the General User Survey of 2008, which was done by UNU-MERIT in conjunction with the Wikimedia Foundation, have been posted.
The survey, which ran in a central sitenotice in October and November of last year, asked questions about respondants' demographics, editing habits (whether they were a contributor or a reader), why they edited (or not), and whether they donated to the Wikimedia Foundation (or not).
The results posted last week are selected from some of the questions. For instance, the preliminary results found that only 12.8% of contributors are female, and the average age for contributors is 26.8 years. Nearly 20% of contributors claimed either a Masters or PhD degree. Among those who did not contribute to Wikipedia, 25.3% said it was because they did not know how. Finally, the question results released addressed donations to the Wikimedia Foundation; 42% of respondents who didn't donate said it was because "I don't know how to do that", while 19.7% said it was because they didn't know Wikipedia was a non-profit. 33.6% of these responses were from the English Wikipedia, with the next 33% of responses split between the Spanish and German Wikipedias.
According to the Wikimedia Foundation blog post on the survey, the published results don't include responses from the Russian Wikipedia, which was drastically overrepresented in the results; the researchers are working on figuring out why this was the case.
This is the first large-scale survey of Wikipedia readers and contributors. UNU-MERIT, who developed the survey, is a research group that studies technology innovation, including free software and collaboration; Rishab Ghosh, who heads the research sub-group that completed the survey, spoke at Wikimania 2006.[1] There has been talk of running a large-scale survey of readers and contributors for several years, with several volunteers working on a general user survey. However, the effort did not get off the ground until the agreement between the WMF and UNU-MERIT. UNU-MERIT developed a new survey, which was translated by volunteers; when the survey was posted, several contributors on the English Wikipedia felt that it was poorly implemented and that there were flaws in the questions.
Briefly
- The submission deadline for Wikimania 2009 has been extended to April 30; see the Call for Participation.
- The host city for Wikimania 2010 has not yet been chosen; the jury is still deliberating.
- Wikia, which selected the GFDL as the default license for its wikis to ensure compatibility with Wikipedia, has started a discussion about the opportunity to switch GFDL wikis to the Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, pending the license update decision of Wikimedia. Assuming that Wikipedia changes licenses, it appears that GFDL Wikia wikis will be given the opportunity either to opt-in or opt-out of a license change.
- Voting is continuing on the potential licensing change; go here to vote. (see previous story)
- The Finnish Wikiversity opens its doors, resolving Bug 16977.
Milestones
- The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 250,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 250,000 total wikipages.
- The Finnish Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.
- The Czech Wikipedia has reached 125,000 articles.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 80,000 articles with Quangbao's article on the song "…Baby One More Time".
- The Nepal Bhasa Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
- The Chuvash Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Samogitian Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Waray-Waray Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Malagasy Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Burmese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Czech Wikiversity has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Czech Wikisource project name has been localized to Wikizdroje.
Reader comments
Valued pictures
Valued pictures (VP) aims to recognize images of high encyclopedic value (frequently abbreviated as EV or enc) on Wikipedia. To draw a rough analogy, VPs are to good articles as featured pictures (FP) are to featured articles. Valued picture candidates go through a seven-day discussion process where users work towards a consensus on whether the nominated image meets the valued picture criteria. As of April 19, 2009 there are 59 valued pictures and 1,727 featured pictures.
The valued picture criteria
The criteria state a valued picture must:
1) Add encyclopedic value (EV) to an article. One of the ways EV is judged is by the amount of time an image is kept in an article. To be eligible, an image must be in an article for at least one month prior to nomination. This shows that other editors concur that the image is well used in an article, implying that the image has at least some EV. Also, images must be well used in an article (or, preferably, multiple articles); images used solely in galleries will not be promoted because they do not offer much EV.
2) Be among Wikipedia's most educational work. It leads a user to want to know more about the subject, or explains a concept or process in a simple, understandable manner.
3) Not be featured. Since FPs are already recognized for their encyclopedic value, a picture cannot be valued and featured at the same time. However, delisted FPs are eligible to be nominated for VP.
4) Be freely licensed. All valued pictures must either be in the public domain or freely licensed. No images with a "fair use" justification are accepted. Information supporting the license must therefore be provided on the image description page. (See related stories: Reviewing free images and Reviewing non-free images.)
5) Have a complete caption which explains the content of the image, identifies its subject and outlines any relevant metadata. The caption must be succinct—extended information is best placed on the image description page.
How does VP compare with FP?
The main differences between FP and VP are the quality expectations of a given image. VP is not as strict about quality, but does expect an image to be reasonable enough for positive use in at least one article. Some quality problems, such as compression artifacts, blown highlights, crushed blacks, etc., are forgivable. However, technical problems must not compromise the accuracy and value of the image: VPs are expected to have an accurate color balance and exposure, and the subject should not be tilted, cut off, or obscured without a sufficient reason. For practical examples of acceptable and unacceptable technical problems, see the case studies below.
The VP expectation of high EV is necessary but not sufficient for promotion to FP. The valued pictures project is not a dumping ground for failed Featured picture candidates (FPC). While failed FPCs are welcome, they must still meet the VP criteria and not all failed FPCs will succeed.
The VPC process is modelled on the FPC process—an image can only be promoted if it receives four support votes and has a favourable consensus in approximately seven days.
How does VP compare with Commons VI?
Commons hosts a valued images program (VI), which is similar to the VP program at the English Wikipedia. The main difference is that Commons looks for potential value across all Wikimedia projects, not just the English Wikipedia. Another major difference is that at Commons VI, each image must be the most valued illustration within one or more scopes. Wikipedia VP does not use scopes; rather it just judges the general EV of a given image here on the English Wikipedia.
It is also possible to nominate sets of valued images. This is not explicitly allowed on Wikipedia—typically one can get away with nominating two closely related images, any more will likely see the nomination fail due to lack of interest or consensus. Here is an example valued image set.
For promotion, a Commons valued image candidate must have a straight majority vote in support after seven days. There is no quorum. Valued images can be demoted through a Most Valued Review, where the values of two or more images within the same scope are compared.
Reviewing valued picture candidates
Contrary to FPC where images must be evaluated at full resolution, valued picture candidates are best reviewed at article (~300 pixels) and image page (~1000 pixels) size. Reviewing at full resolution is usually unnecessary as most technical problems affecting the EV show up at image page size.
Users are encouraged to join in the discussions going on at VPC. VPC is much less intimidating at first than FPC, which has a steep learning curve due to its high technical standards and resulting use of photographic jargon. It takes a significant amount of experience to contribute to FPC effectively, while any reasonably experienced content builder will have an instinctive handle on assessing an image's EV for VPC.
Any logged-in user may nominate an image that they feel meets the criteria. Since the project is still young, it is quite easy to find eligible images. Keep VPC in mind while making your rounds on Wikipedia; if you see an image that you think adds greatly to an article (and it's not already featured or valued), don't hesitate to nominate it!
VP/FP case studies
| Picture | Relevant article(s) | Won't pass FPC because... | Prospects at VPC |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Spotted Hyena | Unsharp, harsh lighting, overexposed background, CCD blooming | Valued because it shows hyena cubs and what appears to be its nesting site. Successful nomination. |
| Yehoshua Hankin | Much too small. | Valued because the subject is difficult to illustrate with a free picture. A Google image search shows it's probably the only unambiguously Public Domain image available. Successful nomination. | |
| File:Kalki 03 1948.jpg | Kalki (magazine) | Although this is a hard to find free image, this image is not a good illustration because the subject is cut off and tilted. Unsuccessful nomination. | |
|
Lycoperdon perlatum | Blown highlights, clipped shadows and insufficient depth of field. Unsuccessful nomination | A good, clear illustration of the species at article and image page size. Successful nomination. |
|
Religion in Laos | Subject obscured by leaves | Failed at 3/1 due to lack of interest. |
|
Singapore, List of tallest buildings in Singapore | Excessive noise, oversaturated | Oversaturation compromises accuracy - the subject probably doesn't look like that. Unsuccessful nomination. |
|
Little Stirrup Cay | Image quality a bit lacking—slight chromatic aberration (CA), noise, unsharpness, dust spots. Also per concern to the right. | Used only in a gallery in the relevant article. Unsuccessful nomination. |
|
White House, United States, Template:White House | Loss of detail due to compression artifacts, noise | Clear, aesthetically pleasing view of the structure on a pleasant day. High level of EV due to its use in Template:White House, which is used in more than 50 articles. High profile images typically have lots of EV. Successful nomination. |
|
Lomatium parryi | Compression artifacts, made worse by inappropriate manipulation. Unsuccessful nomination. | Manipulation reverted, now a good, clear illustration of the species. Successful nomination. |
|
Tree of life (science), Phylogenetic tree | Poor illustration because the content is effectively incomprehensible at article size. Unsuccessful FPC nomination, won't succeed at VPC. | |
.jpg)
|
Magna Carta | Needs restoration, too small. | In fact, too small to read the text. Insufficient resolution. Nomination. |
See also
WikiProject Film
Whether you're into sofa-hugging horror, edge-of-your-seat action, side-splitting comedy or even just a good old-fashioned romantic, Wikiproject Film is the ideal WikiProject for any serious film-goer. With over two hundred active members and countless featured articles, the vast world of media covered by the group is still surprisingly easy to navigate and above all, an enjoyable experience. We asked one of the project's new co-ordinators, Collectonian, about the Project and her personal experience in the field.
- Tell us a little about your Wikipedia life.
I'm a fairly active editor at Wikipedia, having found it to be a great place to enjoy my love of research and my love of writing in a way that matches my interests, personality, and attention span. I am most active in three project areas: Anime and manga, Films, and Television, though I have also dipped into a few company articles, one or two biographies, and Texan organizations, cities, and historical landmarks. I am a strong believer in Wikipedia's notability guidelines and in following the policies here, and have worked hard over the last few years to learn how to work on a cooperative environment as it goes against my "real-world" nature. Though I've had my rough spots, as most active editors do at one time or another, I can honestly say I love being an editor here and I consider it one of my top "hobbies".
- How did you discover WikiProject Films?
The second article I ever edited after registering was a film article, Python. Nearly a year later, the third article I would create would be Python II (theme?). As I began working on other film articles, I noticed the Films template on their talk pages, including ones being added to the article I'd created, so I followed the link to the project. I began learning more about the project, the MoS and so on, and finally joined up in September 2007.
- How have you contributed to the Project as a member?
I'd say that my primary contributions have been in applying basic MoS fixes and clean ups to many film articles, helping to expand, clean up, and de-vandalize articles in the Disney and Sci-Fi B Movie realm, and participating in many discussions in both articles and the projects to help improve articles and guidelines. I have also created eight film articles, though the earlier ones are not the best of quality (makes note to revisit those).
- How do you plan to contribute as a director?
As noted in my intro to the other coordinators, beyond just generally hoping to be helpful, I'd like to help the project revive or retool some of its "dead" departments, like Films based on books, to help get editor focus up and reduce "drift away" memberships caused by inactivity in some areas. I'd also like to help get the project really working on getting more GA and FA level articles in the areas of articles that should, to me, be "easy" ones. Disney films, for example, tend to have a ton of reliable sources because Disney loves to publish books about itself. Yet the vast majority of its film articles are stubs and starts. I'd also like to see the Core film articles getting more attention and improvement, as many are sadly still just "Start" class.
- What are your favorite achievements in the WikiProject?
One would be taking Category 6: Day of Destruction, Maneater, and Grizzly Rage to GA level. All are "B-movies", which generally have some of the worst articles in Films because, well, most people think the films suck. However, I have a love of such films, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself able to pull together the necessary reliable sources to craft quality articles for each of these films. The second would be my work on White Dog, also now a GA. This was a highly controversial film that was suppressed from theatrical and DVD release in its home country of America because of threats of boycotts. In coming across its article, I was surprised to find nothing but a little stub about what, to me, was a key film of its decade. So I began the extensive research, and subsequent writing, to give this film the article I felt it deserved, having seen it a handful of times during insomniatic nights a decade ago and never forgetting it.
- What advice would you give to a new member of the Project?
| “ | Not sure what article to start on? Why not go through our list of ones needing some love and give it a whirl! Remember, you really can't "break" anything as all edits can always be undone if you make a mistake, so don't let fear hold you back from digging in. | ” |
| — Collectonian | ||
Hmmm...first, since we usually leave a custom Film's welcome message on new members, I'd say please take some time to read that message and explore the links. It has a lot of good info in a small package. Come read the Film's talk page and fill free to start contributing when you feel comfortable. Don't be afraid to ask if you have questions or need help. In general, we don't bite so long as you don't ;-) If you want to jump in and edit your favorite film article, just make sure to read over the Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines and learn how to source items. Not sure what article to start on? Why not go through our list of ones needing some love and give it a whirl! Remember, you really can't "break" anything as all edits can always be undone if you make a mistake, so don't let fear hold you back from digging in. Oh, and remember, IMDB is not a reliable source.
- And finally, what is your favorite film of all time?
Wow...this is one of the hardest questions of all because I generally have a hard time doing one "favorite" anything, but it books, films, etc. Half the time it just depends on my mood, and usually I answer by saying if its in my collection, its a favorite. I guess if I were to attempt to narrow it down some, I'd have to go with the ones I've watched multiple times. The Shawshank Redemption and Cry-Baby are both films I've literally watched every single day for a week or more at one time or another. Despite its length, I've watched The 10th Kingdom more times than I can remember as well. Of the lesser known films, I'd have to say Night of the Lepus for its sheer cheesy hilarity (killer bunnies!), Eyes of an Angel for its touching story, and White Dog for its powerful message.
Reader comments
Approved this week
Administrators
Six editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Foxy Loxy (nom), Orlady (nom), Spinningspark (nom), Closedmouth (nom), Drilnoth (nom) and BOZ (nom).
Bots
Ten bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Xenobot (task request), Sambot (task request), Erik9bot (task request), Sambot (task request), Yobot (task request), ReigneBOT (task request), ListasBot (task request), MandelBot (task request), Sambot (task request) and AlekseyBot (task request).
Featured pages
Twelve articles were promoted to featured status this week: GRB 970508 (nom), Design 1047 battlecruiser (nom), Nassau class battleship (nom), Capture of Fort Ticonderoga (nom), 1964 Brinks Hotel bombing (nom), Street newspaper (nom), Magic Johnson (nom), Tunnel Railway (nom), Zanzibar Revolution (nom), Forest Park (Portland) (nom), Rufous-crowned Sparrow (nom) and SR Leader Class (nom).
Eight lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of Oslo T-bane stations (nom), List of alumni of Jesus College, Oxford: Mathematics, medicine and science (nom), List of Silver Slugger Award winners at shortstop (nom), List of United States Air Force Academy alumni (nom), List of Olympic men's ice hockey players for Canada (nom), List of United States Military Academy alumni (non-graduates) (nom), Bruce Dickinson discography (nom) and List of TNA World Tag Team Champions (nom).
One topic was promoted to featured status this week: Lists of United States Naval Academy alumni (nom).
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: Agrippina, Emma Watson, Niobium, Retiarius, Joseph Priestley House, Gerard K. O'Neill, Chiffchaff and Alleyway.
Former featured pages
Five articles were delisted this week: Ladakh (nom), Restoration comedy (nom), Malwa (Madhya Pradesh) (nom), Muhammad Iqbal (nom), British African-Caribbean community (nom) and Pink Floyd (nom).
Seven lists were delisted this week: List of longest suspension bridge spans (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Akon (nom), List of universities in Nova Scotia (nom), List of universities in Ontario (nom), List of universities in Atlantic Canada (nom), List of universities in British Columbia (nom) and List of universities in Quebec (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: Abraham Lincoln assassination, Josh Blue, Elizabeth I of England, Recovery of Apollo 13, Silvereye, Firebreathing, Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge and Boat orchid.
No media files were featured this week.
Three featured pictures were demoted this week: Yellow-rattle (nom), Hebe x franciscana (nom) and Blue Morning Glory (nom).
Twenty-one pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
.jpg)
Reader comments
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Please note that some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.8 (f08e6b3), 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.
Bug fixes
- For some pages with suppressed edits, the edits were sometimes still showing up when one was logged out due to the pages being cached on the squid servers. Suppressed edit transactions are now committed before the pages are sent to the squid server, and the cached history views are forced to refresh. (r49592, bug 18450)
- Selective deletion of individual old image versions was broken in r48277, but has since been fixed. (r48837, bug 18171)
New features
- New revision parser functions have been added including {{REVISIONID:name}}, {{REVISIONDAY:name}}, {{REVISIONDAY2:name}}, {{REVISIONMONTH:name}}, {{REVISIONYEAR:name}}, {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:name}} and {{REVISIONUSER:name}} (r49575, bug 6092). Note: this was reverted a month and a half later in r51424.
Other news
- According to Brion Vibber, CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation, after discussion the Wikimedia Projects have requested to opt-out of the Phorm / BT Webwise system, to avoid violating the privacy of the projects' users. Phorm, which was developed as a targeted advertising system based on traffic analysis, has been the subject of a petition, and an open letter has gone to many major Internet companies asking them to opt out of the system, which is planned by three major UK ISPs.
- Wikimedia developer Michael Dale, who is working on improving video and multimedia functionality in MediaWiki, has also been working on improving JavaScript handling within MediaWiki. He is working to make it so that JavaScript code can be added with a centralized loader in a single request. The developers also indicate that they will include the jQuery core library in what gets loaded, which means that they can reduce the size of existing JavaScript files including wikibits.js, mwsuggest.js, and common.js, to reduce the overall amount of JavaScript loaded. These changes may require some minor adjustments to existing skins. [2]
Reader comments
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Committee announced that they plan to re-organize and relocate various arbitration-related pages between April 26 and May 8, after a period of community review, which ends April 25.
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, and closed one, leaving seven cases open.
Evidence phase
- Aitias: A case regarding Aitias's use of his administrator tools.
- Tang Dynasty: A case about editing conflicts on Inner Asia during the Tang Dynasty.
- Ryulong: A case regarding Ryulong's use of his administrator tools.
- Obama articles: A case opened to review behavior of editors of articles related to Barack Obama.
- West Bank - Judea and Samaria: A dispute about editor behavior in discussions about naming conventions for certain Israel- and Palestine-related locations.
- 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
- 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. Users Momento and Rumiton were topic banned from editing Prem Rawat and related pages for one year and a revert limitation was applied to Prem Rawat and related articles for one year.
Reader comments