UK public gallery threatens Wikimedian
On July 10, Wikimedian Derrick Coetzee received an email message from Farrer & Co., lawyers acting for the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London, threatening legal action in the English courts. In March of this year, Coetzee had uploaded over 3300 high-resolution images of public domain artworks held by the gallery to Wikimedia Commons. Coetzee posted the letter publicly, setting off discussions in the Wikimedia community and beyond about the legal, political, and ethical ramifications of the threat. The National Portrait Gallery holds thousands of portraits that have fallen into the public domain,[1] but the organization claims copyright on photographs of those portraits.
Almost four years ago, in his keynote at Wikimania 2005,[2] Jimmy Wales already described receiving (and refusing) a request to remove "a number of images on your website which are portraits in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London" (among them the famous Chandos portrait of Shakespeare and other 400-year-old paintings), and noted it was "a fairly routine thing for me to get complaints from museums who own [public domain] works, who assume that because they own the physical object they can threaten Wikipedia to take these down." According to a July 2008 statement by Erik Möller, "WMF's position has always been that faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain"—and thus that copyright claims on such reproductions are illegitimate. Since a 54:3 straw poll that followed Möller's statement, Wikimedia Commons has tagged such reproductions as public domain content (noting the possibility of restrictions imposed by "local laws"). In the United States—the home of both the Wikimedia Foundation and Derrick Coetzee—the 1999 case Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. established that faithful reproductions of public domain images lack the originality required to generate a new copyright.
UK copyright law has traditionally been more tolerant of "sweat of the brow" copyright claims, on the basis that "what is worth copying is prima facie worth protecting".[3] On this basis, UK institutions that control public domain artifacts routinely claim copyright on reproductions.[4] However the legal precedents for this approach date from many decades ago,[5] and so cannot take account of the subsequent changes in British and international copyright law. In the message published by Derrick Coetzee, the NPG's lawyers themselves note that there is no English precedent that covers this particular situation.
NPG claims
While the message published by Derrick Coetzee is not a formal letter of claim, it does note four specific grievances of the National Portrait Gallery, in varying degrees of precision: infringement of copyright, infringement of database right, unlawful circumvention of technical measures for restricting image use and breach of contract. According to the message, a formal letter of claim has been prepared and Coetzee will be sued unless all the images he uploaded are removed by July 20.
Infringement of copyright
Following the traditional view of British art galleries, the National Portrait Gallery claims that it has copyright over the digitized images that it publishes on its website:
we can confirm that every one of the images that you have copied is the product of a painstaking exercise on the part of the photographer that created the image in which significant time, skill, effort and artistry have been employed and that there can therefore be no doubt that under UK law all of those images are copyright works…
The NPG asserts that the alleged infringement occurred in the UK, as its servers are located there: it also asserts that images hosted by Wikimedia "are clearly directed at (amongst others) UK users". The NPG also claims to have contacted the Wikimedia Foundation over the issue, but to have been "ignored". On the Foundation-l mailing list, Gregory Maxwell characterized one "contact", from April 2009:
[It] was made by a commercial partner (in the US) of the NPG, and was the typically legally uninformed nonsense that comes in often enough to have a boilerplate reply. They were given the standard "Wikimedia and it's servers are based in the US. Under US law such images are public domain per Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. Therefore no permission is required to use them." response.
Maxwell also noted that "a copyright complaint by the NPG in 2006 where the initial response from our side was 'What we're doing is permitted by US law' was satisfactorily resolved by providing attribution and back-links on the image page." A representative of the NPG stated in an email at the time that the NPG would "allow Wikipedia to use the images available on our site (www.npg.org.uk), providing there is a direct link from the image displayed on Wikipedia to the page it appears on in the NPG website." However, they also stated that such an agreement would be "dependent on Wikipedia displaying correct copyright information" and that it would be "essential that the image was not offered free-of-charge to anyone wishing to use it (under a GNUDFL [sic], Copyleft or similar licence), and that anyone wanting a copy be directed to the NPG website."
Infringement of database right
Database right is a concept in European Union law that is fully applicable in the UK since 1998.[6] Similar rights have been enacted in some non-EU countries, but not in the United States. The right aims to give limited protection to collections of material that would not otherwise be eligible for copyright.[7] In particular, the owner of the database right can prevent the extraction of "all or a substantial part of the contents", regardless of whether the database is made available to the public or not,[8] and the National Portrait Gallery claims that the 3,300 images constitute a "substantial part" of its database of 120,000 images.
To qualify for database right, there must have been a "substantial investment in either the obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents".[9] However, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the "substantial investment" must have gone into the specific preparation of the database, excluding, for example, listings of sports fixtures or runners in a horse race:[10]
the expression ‘investment in … the obtaining … of the contents’ of a database […] does not cover the resources used for the creation of materials which make up the contents of a database.[11]
There are also judgments in other EU countries (apart from the UK) that have denied database right to databases produced by public bodies in the course of their normal functions:[12] the National Portrait Gallery is a public body charged, among other things, to "generally promote the public’s enjoyment and understanding of portraiture of British persons and British history through portraiture both by means of [its] collection and by such other means as [it] consider[s] appropriate."[13]
Unlawful circumvention
The NPG website has (or had, Wikimedian Robert Rohde reported that it is currently deactivated) a software feature called "Zoomify", which allows visitors to zoom in on an area of a picture: effectively, to get one screen's-worth of a higher resolution image file. Obviously, it is then possible to stitch the various "screen's-worths" back together to recreate a high-resolution image of the entire portrait, as many patient Wikimedians have done in the past; the images were initially captured and stitched manually, but more recently Wikipedians found automated ways to recover full images through Zoomify.
The NPG's lawyers claim that the purpose of using Zoomify was so "that an entire high resolution image is never made available to a user". However, a FAQ on Zoomify, Inc.'s website states: "we provide Zoomify as a viewing solution and not an image security system."
Around the time that the NPG implemented the Zoomify feature, they also began embedding hidden digital watermarks in the images on their site. The watermarks include the NPG's Digimark ID and a notice stating "Restricted Use, Do Not Copy".[14]
Breach of contract
The breach of contract claim is the least developed in the message published by Derrick Coetzee. The NPG states that there are clear links from each of the image pages on its website which, if followed, make it clear that they prohibit copying without permission. The NPG's lawyers go on to claim that Coetzee should have known that his copying was "in direct contravention of the clear rules" and that this amounts to a breach of contract.
Reactions
News of the legal threats to Derrick Coetzee has generated lengthy discussions on the Commons Village Pump and at the Administrators' noticeboard on Wikipedia. It was also quickly picked up on the blogosphere and on Slashdot. As of Sunday night, July 12, it has not featured in any "mainstream" media, although Wikimedia Norway announced that they had notified local media.
Concerning the Wikimedia Foundation itself, general counsel Mike Godwin said "We're in contact with Derrick. We're looking at ways we may be able to help." Godwin also stated that "while discussing the general theory of copyright as it relates to this case is fine, I don't think it's a good idea to talk about specific responses here just yet." Executive director of the Foundation Sue Gardner stated "we have no plans to send out a press release on this issue." Other Wikimedians on the mailing list and elsewhere have urged restraint on the part of the community, in order to preserve the possibility of a mutually acceptable agreement with the NPG and avoid exacerbating Derrick Coetzee's legal situation.
On Wikimedia Commons, a template used to provide links to National Portrait Gallery sources has been updated to include the Copyright claims disclaimer, which explains the nature of "sweat of the brow" copyright claims and warns users that "You are solely responsible for ensuring that you do not infringe someone else's copyright." On July 12, citing potential conflict of interest, Larry Pieniazek, a Wikimedia steward, temporarily removed Derrick Coetzee's administrator status on Wikimedia Commons, so preventing him from deleting any images. Coetzee responded on his Commons talk page, stating "No insult is taken and I understand the need for the project to take this action under the circumstances."
Precedents for cooperation
Friction between Wikimedia projects and other online content suppliers is nothing new, but such disputes are usually solved amicably without the need for threats of court action. Wikimedia Norway described how a similar (though less acrimonious) argument with Galleri NOR was resolved through respectful discussion once the public image library realised that 60–80% of the traffic on its website was coming from Wikimedia Commons. A recent Signpost article described an agreement between WikiProject Chemicals and the Chemical Abstracts Service over access to the latter's database.
While the New York Public Library has also donated many thousands of images, perhaps the most significant recent collaboration was announced last March, with an agreement between Wikimedia Germany and the Deutsche Fotothek which will result in 250,000 images being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The Deutsche Fotothek hopes that the greater diffusion of these images will help to put them in context, with any additional information aiding its own curational work.
For the time being, and despite having instructed lawyers, the National Portrait Gallery states that it "remains willing to enter into a dialogue with the Wikimedia Foundation to discuss terms upon which low-resolution images of paintings in its collection can be made available on the Wikipedia website".
References
- ^ The NPG online collection claims to have 120,000 portraits, but many of these are still under copyright in the original.
- ^ Jimmy Wales: Ten Things That Will Be Free. Wikimania 2005 keynote, August 2005. Section 5: Free the Art!. Video (164MB, 1:07:51 / section starts at 0:11:40)
- ^ University of London Press v University Tutorial Press [1916] 2 Ch 601 at 610 (Peterson J).
- ^ See, for example, the Museums Copyright Group.
- ^ See, for example, Walter v Lane [1900] AC 539 (copyright in a speech belongs to the reporter who wrote it down), University of London Press v University Tutorial Press [1916] 2 Ch 209 (copyright in standard examination questions).
- ^ Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997 No. 3032.
- ^ Recitals 1, 4–8, 14–17, 41–52 & 60, Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, OJEC L77 of 27/03/1996 pp. 20–28. See also Database Directive.
- ^ r. 16, Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997.
- ^ r. 13, Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997.
- ^ Fixtures Marketing Ltd v. Oy Veikkaus Ab (Case C-46/02, judgment 9 November 2004); The British Horseracing Board Ltd and Others v. William Hill Organisation Ltd (Case C-203/02, judgment 9 November 2004); Fixtures Marketing Limited v. AB Svenska Spel (Case C-338/02, judgment 9 November 2004); Fixtures Marketing Ltd v. Organismos prognostikon agonon podosfairou AE -“OPAP” (Case C-444/02, judgment 9 November 2004).
- ^ para. 49, Fixtures Marketing Ltd v. Oy Veikkaus Ab.
- ^ See, for example, Republic of Austria v. Compass Publishing Company, Supreme Court of Austria, 9 April 2002 (official company register); De Telegraaf v. NOS and HMG, Nederlandse mededingingsautoriteit, NMa, 10 September 1998 (programme listings of the public television networks).
- ^ s. 2(3)(d), Museums and Galleries Act 1992 c. 44.
- ^ National Portrait Gallery UK embedding hidden watermarks on Commons Village Pump.
Further reading
For reasons of time and space, the authors could not discuss all the points raised in the following articles:
- "Public Domain Art in an Age of Easier Mechanical Reproducibility" by Kenneth Hamma, Executive director for digital policy at the J. Paul Getty Trust, November 2005.
- "Making the Public Domain Public" by Robert A. Baron, April 2000.
- "Archives or Assets? by Peter B. Hirtle, Cornell Univerity, 58th President of the American Society of Archivists, August 2003.
- "Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corporation by Barry G. Szczesny, Government Affairs Counsel to the American Association of Museums, April 1999.
Disclaimer
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Working with, not against, cultural institutions
Recently the National Portrait Gallery in London issued a legal threat against an administrator from Wikimedia Commons. This has attracted attention from free culture enthusiasts; the threat was discussed on the front page of Slashdot this week.[1] The matter probably also has the attention of other museums and archives that hold similar collections. On one level the threat is an issue of differing interpretations of copyright law. The two groups each have strong reasons for holding differing views: one believes unsupportable copyright claims are hampering access to valuable information, the other has traditionally depended on sales of reproduction copies to help cover the costs of curating its physical collections of historic artworks. Free culture and curation also have the potential for cooperation, though, since both share a goal of providing information to the public. In other words, when the talk is about partnering, about sharing values, about bringing our cultural heritage to our shared public, we may be able to move forward together.
As a legal matter, many of the claims currently erected by archives and institutions are untested. Some individuals on both sides would like to see the matter play out in court. An international network of Wikimedia volunteers, represented on the English Wikipedia by projects such as Wikipedia Loves Art and WikiProject Media Restoration, and in Australia with the Backstage Pass and the upcoming "GLAM-WIKI: Finding the common ground" event, have been working toward a cooperative approach with museums and archives. By earning the institutions' trust and developing ways to make greater openness workable for these institutions, this network of volunteers aims to create an environment where the institutions dismantle their own defensive legal claims.
Part of the challenge is to understand the institutions' needs. Even the ones that receive heavy subsidies also remain dependent upon image reproduction sales. For the National Portrait Gallery, its picture library income for TY2007–08 was £378,000.[2] From the perspective of the institutions, that goes toward paying for secure storage and temperature controls and other necessities to preserve their collections for future generations, and for the specialist staff necessary to ensure the maintenance and development of the collections. Digitization and the Internet are changing those economics. One way for institutions to respond is defensive: they are not under obligation to scan material or upload digital files on the Internet, and can charge service fees for doing so. Even when they do, the majority of archival material at most of these institutions remains undigitized and often uncatalogued. In the long run, the most effective way of gaining access to archival material will probably be by gaining the trust of these institutions and by showing them ways that openness is workable for them.
One example is the German Federal Archives, which donated 100,000 medium resolution images to Wikimedia Commons in December 2008. Much of its collection is under copyright, uncontroversially, so Bundesarchiv relicensed the medium resolution versions under CC-by-sa 3.0 license while it retained full copyright over the higher resolution originals. Since that donation its sales of high resolution images have increased significantly. Each image hosting page contains a link back to the Bundesarchiv as a source, so people who have an interest in higher resolution material have gone to Bundesarchiv to purchase copies. Also, the Commons community have been submitting improvements to the Bundesarchiv's metadata which get imported back into their catalogue. The result is a mutually beneficial relationship.
Another way to build relationships is to restore slightly damaged material. The following example is a restoration of an artwork that ran on the cover of Life magazine in January 1910. The scan was made directly from the artist's original.
- Coles Phillips
-
Unrestored version: stained at lower left. -
Restored image.
The unrestored version has no resale value due to stain damage, but the restored version is suitable for posters, mouse pads, etc. The Wikimedia community has a growing team of volunteer restorationists who donate high quality services in order to motivate institutions to open their collections to the public. If a restored image gets selected as a featured picture, as this one has, it eventually runs on Wikipedia's main page. That gains additional attention for the donating institution and its collection. By restoring selected showpiece examples, Wikimedians motivate institutions to make large donations to Wikimedia Commons.
These are two of several approaches that Wikimedia volunteers have been employing to open greater access to media content. Without acting in ways that would validate disputed rights claims, these volunteers seek solutions that give the institutions reasons to dismantle the barriers themselves. Wikimedia Commons is not the only organization that seeks these donations. Flickr, a commercial website, has a paid staff that is seeking the same material. As Noam Cohen of The New York Times noted earlier this year, Flickr and Commons are competing for similar donations.[3] Each site brings a different set of advantages to the table. In theory, it makes sense for one nonprofit institution to build a relationship with another nonprofit in preference to a commercial website. In practice, the outcome may depend upon whether Wikimedians adopt a cooperative or a confrontational approach. Possibly within the next year, either Flickr or Commons will gain enough momentum to become the dominant venue for archival image donations.
In the broader picture, openness increases the possibilities of new discoveries arising from better communication. Earlier this year the Signpost reported on a Wikimedia volunteer's restoration that prompted the Library of Congress to update its records when the restoration revealed previously unrecognized human remains in a photograph of the Wounded Knee Massacre aftermath. Not long afterward, a restoration of the landmarked Hotel Del Coronado of Coronado, California pieced together a panorama by noted photographer William Henry Jackson that had been forgotten in archival collections and was unknown to the hotel's own staff. A Library of Congress librarian wrote about the Wounded Knee discovery, "You can imagine that among a collection of 14 million items here, there are a lot of secrets waiting to be uncovered!"
References
- ^ "UK's National Portrait Gallery Threatens To Sue Wikipedia User". Slashdot. July 11, 2009. Retrieved July 14, 2009.
- ^ National Portrait Gallery Annual Report and Accounts 2007-2008 (PDF). National Audit Office. ISBN 978 0 10 295746 4. Retrieved July 14, 2009.
- ^ Cohen, Noam (January 18, 2009). "Historical Photos in Web Archives Gain New Lives". The New York Times. Retrieved July 14, 2009.
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WMF Elections, Annual Financial Plan, Google Image Search, and more
Wikimedia Board Elections now open
Candidates are now being accepted for the 2009 Elections for the Wikimedia Board of Trustees. Prospective candidates can review the prerequisites and information about being on the Board, and then submit their candidacy as outlined on that page. The deadline for submitting candidacies is July 20, 2009. A list of the candidates so far can be viewed on Meta.
This year, there are three slots open for community elected representatives to the Board; the three open seats are those of Ting Chen, Kat Walsh and Domas Mituzas (see graphic).
The Wikimedia Board oversees the Wikimedia Foundation, helping to provide strategic guidance; detailed responsibilities are in the Wikimedia board manual.
Wikimedia Foundation annual plan released
The 2009-2010 Foundation Annual Plan and associated FAQ has been posted to the Foundation website. The plan increases planned total spending to $9.4 million in 2009-2010, $8.1 million of which will be on "core operational spending" and $1.3 milion of which will be on "non-recurring priority projects," including the strategic planning process (identified as the key initiative of this year), the bookshelf project and communications campaign. This is compared to projected spending of $5.3 million in 2008-2009 (and $3.0 million in spending in 2007-2008).
According to the plan, the increased spending will go toward nine new permanent staff (including three new technical staff and a technical project manager, three program staff and two fundraising development positions), and four temporary positions (three for strategic planning and one for the bookshelf project). The other new expenses will include an office move to larger quarters in San Francisco; more bandwidth and servers; a communications campaign and bookshelf project to produce educational materials (see last issue for job posting); grants to chapters; and the collaborative strategic planning process. This last item is projected to cost $700 thousand, according to the FAQ, but is a one-time expense.
To account for this additional spending, revenues are projected to increase to $10.6 million, from projected 2008-2009 totals of $7.4 million. This total amount includes a buffer of $1.2 million of planned contingency revenue. Increased growth is primarily projected in small (<$10K) donations and an additional projected $1.3 million in earned income.
The plan contains a Board resolution approving the budget which according to Veronique Kessler, Foundation CFO, was unanimously approved by the entire Board.
Google Image Search introduces free license search option
Google Image Search recently introduced an option to search images by license. Under the "advanced search" tab, you can now choose to filter your results by "usage rights". The choices are: "not filtered by license," "labeled for reuse", "labeled for commercial reuse," "labeled for reuse with modification," and "labeled for commercial reuse with modification." According to the Google blog, the search will look for images tagged with Creative Commons licenses, but "your search will also include works that have been tagged with other licenses, like GNU Free Documentation license, or are in the public domain." Images from Wikimedia Commons do show up on the license-restricted searches.
WikiProject Citizendium porting
A WikiProject has been formed to port content from Citizendium to Wikipedia, now that the licenses of the two projects are compatible. According to the original project proposal, content only from Citizendium's "approved articles" will be imported. Reaction on the Citizendium forums has been mixed.
Webcite broken, fixes underway
WebCite, a popular on-demand web archiving service referenced by Wikipedia over 20,000 times, went down for a server upgrade on June 24th. WebCite is currently "on-line" but a few things were broken in the upgrade and it is currently not working properly - for example, returning error messages or blank pages for most previous archives. ThaddeusB has been in contact with Gunther Eysenbach throughout the process and would like to assure the community that efforts are underway to fix the broken links. In the mean time, please do not remove, or otherwise attempt to fix, "broken links" to webcitation.org. See this discussion for more information.
New thesis about Wikipedia
Felipe Ortega released his PhD thesis on Wikipedia, entitled Wikipedia: A quantitative analysis, which compares the top 10 language editions of Wikipedia. According to a message from Ortega on the mailing list wiki-research-l in February, "[the thesis] presents a complete study of the activity of logged authors, articles and talk pages, evolution in time of distributions of key parameters (diff. authors per article, articles per author, revisions per author/article, etc.). It also offers a more in-depth study of the inequality of contributions by logged authors, and also for articles. Likewise, it presents a complete survival analysis to examine the average lifetime of Wikipedia contributors...Finally, we already examine some very basic metrics for quality."
Briefly
- The number of Good articles passed 7,000 this week.
- Wikizine #111 was released, covering community goings-on; and a new edition of the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, covering the Usability project, was also released.
- A proposal for the "Advisory Council on Project Development" was released; see related story in TROLL.
- Registration for Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires (26-28 August) is now open.
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More on kidnapping, vandalism commentary, libel suit, and more
Kidnapping controversy commentary continues
The media continued to react this week to the news that Wikipedia had assisted in the media blackout of the kidnapping of reporter David S. Rohde. The story broke two weeks ago in the New York Times (which had organized the blackout), and the Signpost covered Wikipedia's involvement and early responses in the 6 July issue and in the 29 June issue.
On 4 July, another wrinkle for the ethical dimensions of the blackout surfaced: the public editor of the New York Times revealed that:
The Times persuaded news organizations around the world to keep a lid on the story with a simple appeal: The kidnappers had demanded silence. “Possibly by defying them, we would be signing David’s death warrant,” said Bill Keller, the paper’s executive editor.
Seth Finkelstein of guardian.co.uk commented on the unusual success of the media blackout despite the kidnapping having been reported in Italian and Afghan news sources. The article notes that the Wikipedia blackout was aided by the facts that the story hadn't been reported in major news sources and that "nobody with the skills and ability to oppose the removal (whether from noble or ignoble motives) was involved".
Life without chickens
Web cartoonist Ryan North, author of Dinosaur Comics, proposed a solution to the problem of widespread vandalism on Wikipedia: Allow (and encourage) vandals to concentrate their efforts on one article rather than throughout the entire encyclopedia. The article he suggested was chicken. The incident was discussed by Globe and Mail writer Ivor Tossell, who drew connections to the Stephen Colbert elephant incident.
Libel suit filed over Wikipedia edits
Mark Grebner filed a libel suit against one student from Central Michigan University and two students from Michigan State University over edits they had allegedly made to his biographical Wikipedia entry. The edits in question include allegations of homosexuality, sexual abuse, tricking voters into approving a tax increase, and connections to Osama bin Laden. The details of the case were discussed by the Michigan Messenger (a web site belonging to the Center for Independent Media).
Criticism of politician entry
In an article titled Why you should never trust Wikipedia, journalist Paul Mulshine criticized Wikipedia's entry on former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman. Mulshine argued that the article's section on Whitman's governorship included incorrect information regarding her funding of New Jersey's pension system. The reference used to back up the misleading claims is, according to Mulshine, a "propaganda piece". Mulshine concluded the article by encouraging Wikipedia users to read and judge the references rather than simply trust the entries themselves.
Delete the deletionists
Steven Wells, a British journalist and poet, died on June 24, 2009. The following day, the Wikipedia article about him, which had existed since April 2005, was nominated for deletion. Although the article was unanimously kept, the deletion discussion prompted Shane Richmond to question why Wikipedia entries should be deleted at all: "The question Wikipedians should ask when looking at a page is “would this help someone searching for information on this subject”. Nothing else matters. If the entry isn’t notable, who cares? The point is, would someone find it useful?"
Reader comments
WikiProject Years
Individual years make up one of those unusual areas of Wikipedia's coverage which make people say "Oh, I didn't realize there were articles for that. That's cool." WikiProject Years, the subject of this week's WikiProject Report, is the project responsible for the coverage of these individual years, as well as decades, centuries, and millennia, and various other articles. In January 2009, WikiProject Years earned its first Good Article with 1346. Here to tell us more about the project is Grimhelm, who is currently working on revamping the article on the 1340s.
1. For our readers who aren't familiar with the year articles, what material is covered in them? Is the breadth of coverage even something that the project's members have firmly decided on?
- The first paragraph of our project page acknowledges that "our scope is incredibly large", but the defined scope only hints at our actual breadth of coverage. Originally, the project's scope was "primarily to formalize the unofficial standard used for creating year pages" — that is, to have an article for each year, with the main events listed chronologically. This also implied that there would be articles listing the events and trends of whole decades, centuries and millennia. However, the project has expanded far beyond that. Now it also deals with categories and lists that sort articles by year. If you search through the subcategories of Events by year, you will see just how broad an area this can be. It ranges from general categories for every year from the earliest periods, such as 753 BC establishments or 1564 births, to sub-articles that cover very specific topics in more recent years, such as 2008 in sports or 2009 in spaceflight. Topic lists of year articles, such as List of years in literature or List of years in paleontology, show that some topics obviously have better chronological coverage than others. Our coverage therefore overlaps with numerous other projects, so as you suggest, "boundaries" have not been strictly defined. This makes our potential scope exceedingly broad for such a little-known project.
2. There are also individual year articles for certain countries, such as 1965 in Norway and 1837 in Australia, though not all countries have such articles. Is there a method by which countries are chosen to have such articles?
- I don't think there is any method really. Our coverage of years by country starts in the 10th century, but our coverage is a lot patchier in practice. With over 200 sovereign states worldwide, and many centuries of history to cover, it would be a particularly daunting task to attempt what is essentially grouping every notable event in world history by country. Instead, our actual coverage is determined by three kinds of unintentional but systematic bias. Firstly, Wikipedia editors are affected by geographical bias: we currently have articles on 1773 in Great Britain and 1773 in Canada, but not on 1773 in China or 1773 in Tonga. The category 1773 by country shows just how uneven our coverage can be because of this. The second bias to affect this aspect of our project is recentism: compare, for example, 2008 by country with 1308 by country. This ties in closely with the third kind of bias, although this is probably the most excusable: bias based on the availability of sources. There are obviously going to be more easily accessible media sources on 2008 in Ireland than 1308 in Ireland, and the list of events reflects that. At the extreme, an article on 1308 in Australia would certainly be impossible. These biases are not necessarily a bad thing — they are far from ideal, but eventually other countries will be covered and the most important thing is to recognise that Wikipedia is a work in progress.
3. To what extent do these biases affect the standard country-unrelated year articles? What can be done (or is being done) to prevent these effects?
- With the availability of mass media, biases caused by geographical distribution of editors or a simple lack of sources are a lot less acute, especially for more recent year articles than for year articles in previous centuries. Wikipedia editors are particularly good at compiling news coverage of current events as they happen. Articles on recent years receive a lot of attention, and a glance at an article on any year in the last decade will show that they are comprehensive and that a high standard is maintained. In January 2009, the project also drafted an updated guideline for the inclusion of events in recent year articles. For example, the "Three-Continent Rule" requires that any new events "must demonstrate independent news reporting from three different continents" as a minimum requirement for inclusion. This will not only ensure that events are well sourced, but will also ensure the right balance of coverage and reduce geographical bias. Other "rules" clarify which sporting events, political elections and deaths are worthy of inclusion; although editors can decide to ignore these by consensus.
- However, although recentist interests, the availability of sources and clear-cut guidelines have a largely positive effect on recent years, the effect of these biases is not as benign for earlier years. Even familiar dates in history such as 1066 or 1666 are significantly shorter than 1966. Regardless, there will always be some committed classicist and medievalist editors working on years in their own field of interest. If there were not, it would not have been possible for 1346, a narrative rewrite of a medieval year, to become WikiProject Years' first Good Article. I myself am currently working on a similar redraft of the 1340s decade article. What all this shows is that there is as much interest among members of the project for medieval years as for the modern, and this is the most effective way we can and have been able to overcome bias.
4. As Wrad described in our report on WikiProject Color, color articles often cover a broad variety of subjects, meaning that they benefit from the attention of editors with distinct skills and interests. Is this true of year articles as well?
- I think so. Different years attract different interests. However, no matter which year article is in question, the idea of summing up all the human activity of a single year will inevitably cover a broad variety of subjects in numerous countries and fields. Our new model for year articles is structured in four parts: timeline of events, narrative summary, list of births and list of deaths. Wrad, of course, originally put forth the idea of revamping 1345 and 1346 in this style, and has done a similarly good job in balancing the four different parts of 1929.
- Scope of interests is even broader in the new all-narrative structure for decade articles, which will take the 1340s redraft as its model. The current draft is broken down on three levels: continent (Asia, Europe, Africa, America, etc.); field (political, socio-economic and cultural); and specific subject area. The political field is divided into subject area by geography (eg. European politics is divided by western, central, northern, eastern and Iberian areas). The socio-economic field is divided into areas as varied as fashion, economic crises and disease. Lastly, the cultural area is divided into architecture, art, literature, technology, philosophy and religion. The area to cover in any given decade is so broad that I think the future of year articles will really depend on a collaboration of editors with a range of interests.
5. In which subject areas do you think the project is lacking in experienced contributors?
- Political history, current events and popular culture have the best active contribution, but we're undermanned in other subject areas. In particular, if we are going to covert most of our year articles into balanced narrative, we will need more experienced editors in the pre-modern period; more regular contributors to pre-modern years in Africa, Asia and the Americas; and more historians of economic, social and cultural history.
6. Finally, do you think the project's articles would benefit from the implementation of flagged revisions?
- Possibly. Well referenced lists such as 2007 or 2008 could benefit from some sort of flagged revision to maintain standards. Even though most year articles are unreferenced lists, here too flagging could be used to prevent the further, indiscriminate addition of non-notable or spurious events. However, since these lists are unreferenced to begin with, they would have to be verified before they could flagged. Also, most of them are of such insubstantial length that I don't know whether flagging would be of any use. The project still has a long way to go before the vast majority of year articles are expanded and reach an acceptable standard — I don't think flagged revisions would contribute to that goal.
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Discussion Reports and Miscellaneous Articulations
The following is a brief overview of discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.
Policy
New! Request for comment: Should Wikipedia:Advisory Council on Project Development be implemented? (See also the related news in the Arbitration report.)
- Request for comment: How should "Wikipedia is not plot" be worded? Should it be a policy, guideline, or essay?
Style
New! Request for comment: What dates should not be unlinked by User:Full-date unlinking bot?
Technical
New! Straw poll: Should the functionality of <ref></ref> and <references /> be changed? If so, how?
- Request for comment: Should Google be allowed to include Wikipedia user pages in their search results?
Other
- Discussion: For the Wikimedia Foundation's 2009 fundraising effort, should a button saying something like "Donate now" or "Support Wikipedia" be added to the sidebar?
Reader comments
Approved this week
Administrators
Four editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Mikaey (nom), Pastor Theo (nom), Fastily (nom) and Davemeistermoab (nom).
Featured pages
Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status this week: SECR N class (nom), Luton Town F.C. (nom), Halo Wars (nom), Australian Magpie (nom), Ostend Manifesto (nom), Maiden Castle, Dorset (nom), Matthew Boulton (nom), Bedřich Smetana (nom), Albert Kesselring (nom), Tropical Storm Hermine (1998) (nom), The Time Traveler's Wife (nom), Mariano Rivera (nom) and 2009 Orange Bowl (nom).
Sixteen lists were promoted to featured status this week: Dream Theater discography (nom), List of CMLL World Light Heavyweight Champions (nom), List of Turner Prize winners and nominees (nom), List of United States Military Academy alumni (academics) (nom), List of Toronto Blue Jays seasons (nom), Mercury Prize (nom), 19th Golden Melody Awards (nom), List of pre-1920 jazz standards (nom), List of 2006 Winter Olympics medal winners (nom), List of Space Invaders video games (nom), List of members of the Basketball Hall of Fame (coaches) (nom), List of Donkey Kong games (nom), List of pre-Stonewall LGBT actions in the United States (nom), List of cutaneous conditions (nom), Pritzker Prize (nom) and List of cardinal-nephews (nom).
One topic was promoted to featured status this week: The Simpsons (season 7) (nom).
Two portals were promoted to featured status this week: Portal:Opera (nom) and Portal:Finger Lakes (nom).
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Thriller, Kevin Pietersen, Gropecunt Lane, John Calvin, John Brownlee sex scandal, 2006 Westchester County tornado, Talyllyn Railway and Beauchamp–Sharp Tragedy.
Former featured pages
Eight articles were delisted this week: Sikkim (nom), History of Portugal (1777–1834) (nom), Peterborough Chronicle (nom), Krag-Jørgensen (nom), Supreme Commander (nom), Common scold (nom), Panama Canal (nom) and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (nom).
No lists were delisted this week.
One topic was delisted this week: USA PATRIOT Act, Title III (nom).
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Rhinotia hemistictus, San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm, Boat orchid, Implosion of chimney, Jupiter, Australian Pelicans and Reference ranges for blood tests.
No featured sounds were promoted this week.
One featured picture was demoted this week: Oxeye daisy (nom).
Twenty-five pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
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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.4 (a8dd895), 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.
Bots approved
2 bots or bot tasks were approved for operation this week. These were:
- AnomieBOT 31: To move {{translated page}} from articles to their corresponding talk pages.
- EarwigBot I 3: To assist WikiProject United States presidential elections by tagging certain articles that are within the scope of the project with {{WikiProject United States presidential elections}}.
This week's discussion report contains information on current bot requests and related discussions.
Intermittent server issues
Intermittent problems have hit both editors and readers of the Wikimedia Foundation projects recently. In an incident unrelated to the power outages of last week, servers have been suffering from large amounts of traffic - trying to fulfil so many requests at the same time that few are dealt with successfully and in a timely fashion. At the worst point, all Wikimedia Foundation projects simultaneously experienced these issues (unlike with similar outages, which have in the past affected only individual servers, limiting their negative effect). The exact cause is as of yet unknown, but preliminary investigations by the developers have suggested the source of the traffic was the Network File System (NFS) and not HTTP requests. This would rule out the idea of a simple external traffic spike, such as that which overloaded servers after the death of Michael Jackson recently.
Commons is still (Sunday) suffering from an image server overload, with some queries timing out, and others taking a disproportionate amount of time to complete. Disabling the CentralNotice has eased the problems in the interim. (Technical village pump). The Wikimedia Techblog also discusses the problem.
Other news
- <a> tags (i.e. HTML links) no longer have both a "name" and "id" attribute for section linking purpose. The former, required for compatibility with Netscape Navigator 4, has been dropped in favour of cleaner code. Bug 19576.
- The new enhanced toolbar of the usability project was again made available after having been disabled earlier in the week due to performance issues and bugs.
- Several problems and incompatibilities surrounding the new "Vector" skin, which had emerged after its first iteration was released for testing, were fixed in the skin's development version. The changes have not yet been made generally available.
Reader comments
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
This week the Committee voted to unban Betacommand under strict and specific conditions.
The Committee also announced the convening of the Advisory Council on Project Development, a body that according to the original announcement "acts as an advisory body to the Arbitration Committee and to the community; considers various issues facing the project and develops ideas, proposals, and recommendations for improving it; and serves as a forum for the sharing of best practices among the different areas within the project." Initial response was not positive. Concerns included the apparent expansion of ArbCom's purpose from a dispute resolution body to one of project governance; the presence of two Arbitrators on the council; the ill-defined scope and purpose of the Council; its closed nature; and that opinions were not solicited beforehand. Kirill Lokshin, one of the Arbitrators who would be appointed to the Council, announced that he would resign from the Arbitration Committee, as he felt he had let the community down, viewing his actions with regard to the Council as poor judgment. Rlevse also resigned, citing dissatisfaction with the community's response to the Committee's efforts. SlimVirgin opened an RfC on the Council to clarify community sentiment, which is currently underway.
The Arbitration Committee neither closed nor opened cases this week, leaving one open.
Voting
- ADHD: A case examining the dispute on the ADHD article and the conduct of the editors involved therein.
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