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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. 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.12 (8b8c762), 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
One bot task was approved this past week:
- Kumar Appaiah Bot (task 1) – adding coordinates for places in India.
Bug fixes
- The $wgStylePath and $wgLogo configuration settings were re-added to the default LocalSettings.php file. (r58133)
- The warning seen when deleting a page with history has been changed so that the number of revisions for that page is displayed as part of the warning. (r58087, bug 3480)
- Users will now be warned when moving a file to a name already in use on a shared repository, such as Wikimedia Commons. (r58079, bug 18019)
- Moving subpages of titles containing \\ now works properly. (r58008, bug 21234)
New features
Other news
- Tim Starling and other remote tech staff were in San Francisco this past week for tech and all-staff meetings. [3]
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-26/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-26/Opinion
New hires, German Wikipedian dies, new book tool, and more
New hires
Several new hires at the Wikimedia Foundation were announced in the last week.
Guillaume Paumier (user:guillom) has joined the Usability project, as the Product Manager for the Ford multimedia usability grant project (see previous story).
Pete Forsyth (User:Peteforsyth) has been hired as Wikimedia's first Public Outreach Officer. According to the announcement, he will work on "all of the Foundation's public outreach activities, including the development of educational materials (Bookshelf Project), the development of public outreach related grant proposals and the communication of volunteer-led outreach activities to a global audience".
Moka Pantages has been hired as a communications officer at the Foundation. She will work on communications projects, reporting to Jay Walsh.
Additionally, two people, William Pietri and Howie Fung, have been hired on a contract basis to help with the deployment of Flagged Revisions on the English Wikipedia, according to a message from Erik Moeller.
German Wikipedia editor dies unexpectedly
User:Bradypus (Joachim Miesbauer), a long-time editor of the German Wikipedia, died unexpectedly on October 24 from a heart attack at the age of 38, according to reports from German Wikipedians. There is a condolences page on Wikipedia.
Bradypus had been an editor since 2004. His username came from the brown-throated Sloth (Bradypus variegatus), and he was very active in editing articles about mammals, particularly about primates. He was awarded the Zedler Medal from Wikimedia Deutschland in 2008 for his article on Ceratopsidae, a group of dinosaurs (German, English).
New version of Book tool launched
A new version of the Wikipedia Books tool (see previous story) was launched earlier this month, according to a blog post from PediaPress. The new tool launches a box at the top of the page when you click "Create a book", which then can be used to add more pages to the book by clicking the "add an article" link. Once you have a book started, you can also simply hover over an internal link to add it, via a popup interface. There is also an "add category" tool. The creator also now includes a "Suggest pages" tool, to suggest more articles for the book once you have at least one page chosen.
The tool is available to any logged-in user. More information can be found at Wikipedia:Books.
WatchKnow launched
Larry Sanger's project WatchKnow formally launched last week. WatchKnow is a nonprofit project to collect, organize and enable creation of educational videos. Although the project has been going since the summer, Sanger is planning a "grassroots" launch now.
Custom Google Search skin
As announced on the official Google blog, Google has unveiled a Wikipedia skin modification that integrates Google search features throughout the website. Instructions for applying the modification can be found at the userpage for the project: User:Csewiki.
Briefly
- Wikizine #120, covering Wikimedia news from the last two weeks, came out October 24.
- Erik Moller reported that the WMF is fully moved into their new offices.
- Ed Chi released Part 4 of his group's work on Wikipedia's growth rate (see previous stories)
- The next IRC staff office hours will take place on Thursday, October 29, featuring Kul Wadhwa, Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Business Development. [4]
Milestones
- The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached 300,000 articles.
- The Breton Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles.
- The Crimean Tatar Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Swedish Wikipedia has reached 333,333 articles (with sv:Bizerte or perhaps sv:Hodeidah).
- The Malayalam Wiktionary has reached 15,000 entries.
- The Croatian Wikipedia has reached 70,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 2,500,000 edits.
- The Slovenian Wikipedia has reached 80,000 articles.
- The Sakha Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
This day in history
- 2005: Partnership with Answers.com announced
- 2006: Report from the Finnish Wikipedia
- 2007: BLPs reach 11% of all articles
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-26/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-26/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-26/In focus
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee did not open any cases this week, and closed one, leaving three cases open.
Open cases
Socionics
The Socionics case has entered its third week of deliberations. The case was filed by rmcnew, who alleged that Tcaudilllg has engaged in edit-warring and personal attacks. Tcaudilllg has denied the allegations, calling them "ad hominem attacks on [his] character". No significant drafting has yet taken place; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Carcharoth, was expected by 25 October.
Asmahan
The Asmahan case has entered its sixth week of deliberations. The filing editor, Supreme Deliciousness, alleges that Arab Cowboy has engaged in a variety of disruptive behavior on the "Asmahan" article; Arab Cowboy denies the allegations, and claims that Supreme Deliciousness is pursuing a disruptive agenda of his own. No drafting of proposals has yet taken place, although the drafting arbitrator, John Vandenberg, has posed a number of questions to the parties. A draft decision in the case was expected by 20 October.
Eastern European mailing list
The Eastern European mailing list case has entered its sixth week of deliberations, and its second week of voting. The case concerns a set of leaked mailing list archives which are alleged to show an extensive history of collusion among numerous editors of Eastern European topics. Standard workshop procedures have been suspended for the case, so normal drafting of proposals by the parties and other editors has not taken place.
The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Coren, would strip Piotrus of his administrator status, ban him for three months, and place him under a topic ban for one year; ban Digwuren and Martintg for three months and also place them under year-long topic bans; and issue a number of admonishments and reminders, as well as an amnesty for all participants of the mailing list not otherwise sanctioned. A secondary proposal by arbitrator Rlevse would ban Tymek for three months as well. No other arbitrators have yet commented on the proposed remedies.
Closed cases
The Speed of light case was closed this week. The decision places Brews ohare and FDT under general probation, and bans both from "all physics-related pages and topics, broadly construed" for a period of one year.
Amendments, clarifications, and other motions
The Committee has adopted a motion amending the Date delinking decision to acknowledge that the full-date unlinking bot satisfies the requirements of a community-approved process for date delinking as stipulated in the case.
A pair of motions to amend the ADHD decision have been proposed by arbitrator Vassyana. The motions would either ban Literaturegeek from the topic area for one year, or place him under general probation for the same period. A third motion, banning Scuro from the topic area, has also been proposed. Arbitrator voting on the motions is currently divided.
Following a review by the Audit Subcommittee, Raul654 has resigned his access to the CheckUser and Oversight tools, and the associated mailing lists, and has committed not to use his administrative tools in the topic area of global warming. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-10-26/Humour