WikiProject Apple Inc.

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News in brief

• Torchiest and Diannaa have copy edited 100 articles as part of the Guild of Copy Editors' July Backlog Elimination Drive. Start working towards your barnstar today!
• WikiProject Algae could use your help creating and expanding articles
• Join the crew of WikiProject Piracy for adventure on the high seas
• The WikiProject Universities Collaborations of the Month for July are the University of Wales, Lampeter and the Annapolis Group

Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

WikiProject Apple Inc., formerly WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject iPhone OS, is an evolving project that dates back to December 2005. It assumed its current form in May 2010, with two task forces handling the duties of the old Macintosh and iPhone OS projects. WikiProject Apple Inc. is home to 4 featured articles and lists, 18 good and A-class articles, and a total of over 4,000 articles maintained by 20 members. The project hosted an unassessed article backlog elimination drive last month, resulting in the elimination of the entire backlog of over 500 articles.

This week we interviewed five contributors. HereToHelp joined the Macintosh project several years ago and claims to be the project's oldest active member. Mono, a writer for the Signpost, describes himself as an Apple "fanboy" and initiated the project's transition from WikiProject Macintosh to WikiProject Apple Inc. SuperHamster participated in the project's backlog elimination drive in May, later "officially" becoming a member of the project. RN describes himself as "not historically a wikiproject person," but he joined recently after editing Apple-related articles for several years. David Fuchs is an admin and graphic designer with experience reviewing FACs, GANs, and peer reviews. Members Airplaneman and NerdyScienceDude also contributed to this report.

The project has undergone some major reorganization in the past couple months, including the merging of WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject Apple. Why were these changes necessary and how have they improved the project?

Mono: After joining, I began to realize that most of the stuff on the project page was two years old and nothing really happened there. Eventually, I was working on a portal somewhere and I floated the idea for a revival on Airplaneman's talkpage. Soon after, we rebuilt the project page, notified all old members (most didn't respond), and slowly began reorganizing. People began to show up, and we found consensus to shift the project's scope, renaming Macintosh to Apple Inc. This change allowed more collaboration, and I'm certainly looking forward to future project endeavors.

HereToHelp: A few months ago, several people started showing up on the long-dead project talk page. I was skeptical at first, but out of the blue, or so it seemed, there were new people who wanted to get involved. I had previously tried to rename the project to Apple, but it fell through almost immediately. Now, we've been able to make progress towards articles and retain a critical mass of editors.

David Fuchs: Part of the problem with having too many overlapping projects is that it divides editor attention and leads to higher attrition. In practical terms, WikiProject Macintosh was covering almost everything created by Apple Inc., such as the iPod. Merging the projects together was common sense to gather everyone under the same umbrella. Another benefit of the merge and resulting discussions was narrowing the scope to shed articles that were better covered by other projects—video games whose only relevance to the project was they were released on the Mac platform at some point, for example. A leaner, meaner project is a happier project.

WikiProject Apple Inc. is home to four pieces of featured content. A fifth piece of featured content, Macintosh, was the subject of a collaboration last month in an effort to prevent delisting, which occurred 5 July 2010. Have you been involved in the promotion of any of these articles or in the recent collaboration? What have you learned from these experiences?

HereToHelp: Promoting Macintosh to Featured Article status was the one great achievement of the "old" project. It was nominated for delisting two years later, and by that point I was Wiktator of a dead project and defended the article in a ten-week siege. Now it's up for delisting again, but this time I have help. I've learned that projects can go in cycles as interest waxes and wanes, and that it is extremely helpful to have someone help you improve articles.

When the iPhone 3G came out in 2008, people created a direct copy of the iPhone article and made changes to reflect the new model. This lead to a lot of duplicated content, because the devices have so much more in common than not. It really was a mess, and did the reader a disservice because there was no way to tell what stayed the same other than realizing two paragraphs were verbatim copies. It got merged back when the interest died down—activity spikes around new products and then subsides quickly. When the 3GS came out in 2009, we created List of iOS devices to hold the extra content, although it wasn't called that at the time. I also created every conceivable iPhone-related title as a protected redirect to the main article. With overwhelming consensus against me this time with the iPhone 4 (but mostly from anonymous users), I unlocked four separate articles for each model, promising to stay out of them with the intent of showing how bad an idea it was. Initially, the same problem occurred. I talked to Scott Bywater, who seemed to be the only main contributor, which affirms that far more people talk about writing articles than actually write them. I also suspect that many of the anons (who I am guilty of looking upon disdainfully) were knee-jerk Apple fanboys; I try not to paraphrase Apple's promotional materials and to add relevant historical and 3rd party sources as much as possible. I was upset, and thought that they weren't considering all the options and believed that the most obvious organization was the only option, and didn't stick around afterwards to care — but I digress. I explained to Scott my position, trying to persuade him while also letting him make his own opinion, and we quickly agreed to discuss only the changes each model brought. Once we decided to begin with "The iPhone 4 is an iPhone..." rather than "The iPhone 4 is a multimedia-enabled Internet smartphone," which is how iPhone begins, everything fell into place. (I realized later that the precedent of "The iMac is a Macintosh..." was already in place by another editor long ago.) It looks increasingly likely that the articles by model will remain, rather than get merged somewhere (as I originally planned). They are also allowing for the creation of valuable new content that is too specific for the main article. So keep an open mind when you edit (and in life), and be willing to try new things, even if you're not sure they will work. Never be afraid to explain yourself on talk pages and communicate with other editors. And be ready to admit you were wrong, because sooner or later, you will be.

Mono: I've not been around long enough for the "old" project, nor do I have much expertise (or interest) in the legacy Macs, so I haven't contributed to a featured article. I look forward to doing so in the future. Currently, I'm working to get the MacBook Air article ready for a good-article nomination.

RN: Macintosh is a good example of an article that back in the past FAC were mostly concerned with promoting featured articles that were merely good and self-contained. To an extent, that's still true, but the standards are much higher now—every source is scrutinized, and most importantly for this article the context and focus of the article as a whole is more focused on. The latter often forces complete rethinks and rewrites of articles that before were featured with very few reservations.

The project recently completed an unassessed articles backlog elimination drive which resulted in clearing out the entire backlog of over 500 articles. Walk us through some of the planning and advertising that went into the drive. What aspect of the drive motivated contributors the most?

Mono: As the coordinator for the drive, I organized the event and was very pleased with the results. I modeled it after the GOCE Backlog Elimination Drive for May, which in turn modeled it after the April GAN backlog drive. There wasn't much advertising that went on, to be honest: I put a notice at the project and we quickly got participants, some who weren't members of the project (they are now). The biggest attraction was the barnstars, which were to be awarded to participants based on the amount of articles they assessed. Any editor who assessed 1 article would get a star for their contributions, and the top 2 assessors (Airplaneman and EdoDodo) received a gold star. We plan to have a bot assess importance.

What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new member get involved today?

SuperHamster: The project has been striving to meet several needs recently. One example was shown with the Backlog Elimination Drive that took place in May, (see above) which ended successfully. Currently, the project is called for a collaboration to improve the article Macintosh, the only top-importance featured article that the project has, as it is currently undergoing a featured article review. There is, of course, always things that the project wants to get done, as the goal of the project is to of improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to Apple Inc. There's always articles to be made and articles to be improved, which is also why one of the project's most pressing needs is the involvement of current and new members, as we could always use a helping hand. Anybody's welcome to join, whether their interest is anywhere in between of getting involved in an active collaboration to helping clean-up and expand articles on an individual basis. Users can sign up by adding their name to the participants list on the main page of the project. If users are interested in more specific areas of Apple, they can also join one of the task forces, which are also looking for some more participants.

HereToHelp: SuperHamster mostly said it. In my mind, the trifecta of Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone should all be featured. As I mentioned above, iPhone (original), iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 are all new articles that need expansion (especially the middle two).

Mono: The project has a section titled "How to help" which basically covers all the ways anyone could help, from creating/expanding articles to tackling the Things to do backlog.

David Fuchs: Expanding on the above, one of the issues that came up at the Macintosh FAR was what sources were valid for citing things like hardware specifications—essential to any article, but often hard to cite to classic reliable sources (especially since they originally derived from old trade magazines or what have you.) Fixing the project's scope and working on improving top-level articles are important, as is crafting an acceptable formula for structuring articles; the Mac FAR was far more difficult because A) there were few similar FA topics to look to, and B) there was no project guidance on what the article should contain.

HereToHelp: While I've been over most of the Macintosh article, the basic structure was in place when I got here years ago. "What should this article really contain?" never really came up for discussion. What made the FAR so hard, besides sourcing tech specs, was nobody knew (or knows) what the article should look like. Do we organize chronologically or categorically? Is there too much emphasis on new developments, or too little? Sometimes it seems like a bunch of people running around chaotically without communicating, but that is where the Signpost comes in. To be able to talk about these things in a low-stress open forum, and to let other editors learn from our experiences, does a world of good.

Anything else you'd like to add?

RN: The project in general should have more featured articles. Most of the foundation is there in a lot of articles—there are many articles with the "good" tag—it's mostly taking the extra step—in particular making sure the article stays NPOV, which has historically been a problem on Apple articles (many categories of articles suffer from this problem). Take Microsoft articles for instance, many of which of featured in a category where there are not many current featured articles or even wikiprojects! One reason for this is that strangely enough often one's passion for a subject can be more difficult to compromise with then one's simple hatred on a subject.

Next week, we'll take a walk on the wild side. Until then, tame your unruly spirit with some previous reports from the archive.

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2010-07-12

The best of the week

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By Tony1 and Wackywace

Administrators

Two editors were promoted to adminship:

• Fetchcomms (nom) has been with us since last October and has already made 27,000 edits, half of them to unique pages. Fetchcomms has 14 DYK hooks and two good articles, and helps new Wikipedians, dealing with real-time assistance in #wikipedia-en-help and responding to on-site "helpme" requests.
• MGA73 (nom) is an admin and CU on the Danish Wikipedia, an admin on Commons, and an OTRS volunteer. Much of MGA's work involves cleaning up the large backlog of images and other content on the Commons and the English Wikipedia.

Featured articles

Nine articles were promoted to featured status:

• Confirmation bias (nominated by MartinPoulter, who substantially rewrote the article) on the tendency for people to favour information that confirms their preconceptions. Reviewer DCGeist commented, "Lovely to see a quality article on a serious intellectual topic such as this. Looking forward to more."
• Masako Katsura (Fuhghettaboutit), a carom billiards player who trail-blazed a path for women in the sport by competing and placing among the best in the male-dominated world of professional billiards.
• Distributed element filter (Spinningspark), whose aim was to make a highly technical topic readable.
• Achtung Baby (Y2kcrazyjoker4 and Merbabu), the seventh studio album by rock band U2, released in 1991.
• The Volcano (British Columbia) (BT), a cinder cone on the Canada–Alaska border and the most recent to erupt in its field of 10 volcanos.
• Jordan River (Utah) (Bgwhite and three co-workers), which runs from freshwater Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake.
• Lad, A Dog (AnmaFinotera), a set of short stories by American novelist Albert Payson Terhune, published in 1919.
• Banksia aemula (Casliber), who is hoping the promotion will somehow lead to his successful transplanting of "a gnarly old one" into his new garden.
• The Temple at Thatch (Brianboulton), who said "not much is known about this lost Evelyn Waugh novel, partly because Waugh said nothing about it for 40 years.... An intriguing footnote for the Waugh-mongers, and my first endeavour in this field."

Choice of the week: The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Wehwalt to select his number-one for the week. "I reviewed Evelyn Waugh's The Temple at Thatch and recommend it. I'm not an early 20th century literature buff, but not only is this well written and interesting but it will be very useful for someone wanting (or needing!) information on this rather specialized topic. And then he can take the references and go further. That's what Wikipedia is all about."

Three featured articles were delisted:

• Macintosh (sourcing and prose)
• John Vanbrugh (sourcing)
• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (sourcing)

Featured lists

Nine lists were promoted to featured status:

• List of New York Yankees no-hitters (nominated by Staxringold)
• Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance (Another Believer and Cannibaloki)
• List of Toronto Blue Jays first-round draft picks (Wizardman)
• Taylor Swift discography (Ipodnano05)
• List of Texas Tech Red Raiders in the NFL Draft (NThomas)
• List of French football champions (Joao10Siamun)
• List of presidents of Washington & Jefferson College (GrapedApe)
• List of Washington Capitals seasons (Nomader)
• List of FC Barcelona presidents (Sandman888)

Choice of the week: We asked delegate and reviewer The Rambling Man for his opinion. "Two choices actually, for different reasons. The List of New York Yankees no-hitters, nominated by regular contributor Staxringold, exemplifies what FLC nominations should be about: it's notable, meets pretty much all of the criteria, it's interesting (even to a non-baseball enthusiast such as me), and it took little adjustment to get the green light from reviewers. Secondly, and equally important, is Sandman888's List of FC Barcelona presidents. Here was a nominator who took on a great deal of advice, including two peer reviews, made changes swiftly and diligently, and we now have a great list."

Featured topics

Three topics were promoted to featured status:

• Major League Baseball Triple Crown (nominators User:Killervogel5 and User:Staxringold, with one featured article and six featured lists. The Triple Crown is awarded to a player who leads a league in three specific statistical categories.
• Crag martins (User:Jimfbleak), with two featured and two good articles. There are three species of this small bird, which is in the swallow family.
• Everglades (User:Moni3), with six featured articles, one good article, and one featured list. The Everglades are ecologically rich subtropical wetlands in the southern portion of the U.S. state of Florida.

One featured topic, Canadian election timelines, was delisted, for want of progress in promoting constituent articles.

Featured pictures

Six images were promoted:

• Tantalum single crystal, fragments, and 1 cm³ cube (creator and nominator Alchemist-hp)
• Southern Red Bishop, Male (creator Noodle snacks), cropped after reviewers' comments.
• Evaporated tungsten crystals and cube (creator and nominator Alchemist-hp)
• File:Egretta novaehollandiae Tasmania 1.jpg (creator Noodle snacks), to replace a featured picture of the same species for which delisting was successfully sought.
• Eastern rosella (male) and Eastern rosella (female) (creator Noodle snacks) to replace a single featured picture for which delisting was successfully sought.
• Clavaria zollingeri ("Violet coral") (creator Dan Molter of Mushroom Observer; nominator Sasata)

Choice of the week: J Milburn, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost, "Evaporated tungsten crystals, fragments, and cube is another fantastic photo from Alchemist-hp, who has provided many high-quality images of elements, and has more to come. This was a particularly interesting one in terms of composition and texture, to my eyes, and passed without controversy. I also adored Clavaria zollingeri, also known as "Violet coral", as a weird and wonderful example from the world of fungi, but I don't make any secret about my love of mushrooms, so I don't think that would be the most impartial choice from me!"

Featured portal

Portal:Terrorism was promoted, the first new featured portal since April.

Video on the Main Page

The July 2009 Ürümqi riots, featured on Monday's Main Page, was accompanied by a video—something rarely seen with TFAs—captured on a Wikipedian's cell-phone. Among the other TFA highlights were:

• The 1930 FIFA World Cup, the inaugural FIFA World Cup championship, which appeared on Sunday to coincide with the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final.
• Gustav Mahler, the late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation, which appeared on Wednesday. The article describes him as "one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century".
  
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2010-07-12

Arbitration Report

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By Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving two open.

Open cases

• Climate change (Week 5): Special rules of conduct were put in place for this arbitration. The case resulted from several Arbitration requests on the same topic matter being merged into one case, and a related request for comment on the matter failing to make headway. Currently in the workshop phase.
• Race and intelligence (Week 6): This case concerns accusations of incivility, disruptive editing, and tag-teaming to control the content on articles related to race and intelligence. A proposed decision was expected by the end of June, but the drafting arbitrator failed to meet this expectation (see Signpost coverage). The drafter apologised for this last week and noted that it would be posted by 8 July 2010, but this expectation was not met either.
  
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2010-07-12

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250

Wikimania live streaming and rebroadcast

As Wikimania draws to a close, the debate about how best to (re)broadcast video footage has begun on the wikitech-l mailing list. There was general praise for the quality and reliability of this year's live video feeds provided by the iStream.pl company – for instance, User:Bodnotbod commented that "most talks had multiple camera set-ups and live cutting to keep it more visually engaging. It really made me feel a part of the conference". However, User:Gmaxwell criticised the choice of an Adobe Flash-based mechanism for displaying them. Flash, developed commercially, has wide support among operating systems and web browsers but remains proprietary: this conflicts with the Foundation and community-at-large's vision of a world based around open source software. An open source alternative exists in the form of the Theora OGG format (.ogv), though support for OGG remains patchy despite Wikimedia and other groups pushing for its adoption.

Last year, there was almost no live streaming, with just about all video converted to OGG format overnight and relayed via Wikimedia Commons and other sites. This time round, it seems unlikely that OGG files will be available for several weeks, but they could potentially be of a more professional standard. In the meantime, slideshows and PDF versions of the presentations are already available.

Import of French books begins

In April this year, the French chapter of the WMF, Wikimedia France, announced it had reached an agreement with the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) to import about 1400 French public domain texts primarily for use on the French Wikisource (see Signpost coverage). This week, the technical work began. This involved first downloading each text from the BNF in DjVu form on July 7, and reuploading it directly into the system, the following day. It is not known how complete the transition is.

[Update: See the talk page of this section for some corrections and additional information]

In brief

Note: not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

• Two fixes for the mwEmbed JavaScript library have been produced: the resolution of bug #20962 allows plural forms of words to be translated and used in interface messages and that of bug #24268 fixes functionality when working alongside Twinkle.
• Bug #24196, referring to problems with Special:ValidationStatistics (itself related to pending changes), has been fixed.
• The first support for "Special:" namespace pages has been added to the MediaWiki API, namely the ability to check their existence and other basic properties (bug #24185).
• The Wikipedia pageview statistics visualiser http://stats.grok.se has suffered from intermittent readings. The cause is thought to be an underlying one in the data itself supplied by the software.
• A dynamic recent changes feed for the latest web browsers has been created and is available on the Toolserver. More details, including how to embed it as a user script, are available.
• The option "Mark all edits minor by default" is soon to be removed from Special:Preferences, because "users often set it and forget it, causing non-minor edits to be marked minor." (bug #24313).
  
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