All Aboard WikiProject Trains

WikiProject news

News in brief

• Repairs have finally begun on ArticleAlertbot. Check your favorite WikiProject for a test update that included a link to last week's issue of the Signpost.
• Editors have been discussing a request for approval of a bot designed to create stub articles for gastropod taxonomy. Members of WikiProject Gastropods are hoping to finish the month-long discussion soon.
• Help improve the WikiProject Universities Collaborations of the Month. This month's collaborations are University of Sydney and University of South Dakota.
• WikiProject Algae, WikiProject Bhutan, WikiProject Piracy, and the valued pictures project are seeking new members to contribute new energy and new ideas.
• The Guild of Copyeditors September Backlog Drive is only 100 articles away from eliminating the year 2008 from its backlog. Help the project wipe out old and new copyedit requests and you can earn a barnstar along the way.

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

This week, we have a ticket to ride with WikiProject Trains. Started in March 2004, the project has grown to include over 58,000 pages, including 35 featured articles, 22 featured lists, 157 good articles, and an unassessed article backlog of 13,000. The project's total number of members is staggering. WikiProject Trains is aided by a network of related projects, including WikiProject Stations, WikiProject Streetcars, and several projects covering country-specific railways. The project maintains a featured portal, to-do list, manual of style, resources for new articles, and 12 task forces. We interviewed Mjroots, DavidCane, Slambo, Iridescent, Redrose64, Simply south, and Oakshade.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Trains? Do you consider yourself a railfan?

Mjroots: I've always been interested in railways. I was a trainspotter in my youth, but stopped when British Rail was split up.

DavidCane: A specific London Underground-focused enthusiast, but definitely not a trainspotter; I'm interested mostly in the infrastructure and the engineers behind it rather than the trains. My interest stems from growing up in Morden at the southern end of the London Underground's Northern line; a childhood trip into central London usually involved an exciting journey on the tube - alternately rushing through dark tunnels and stopping at a brightly lit stations. I can remember writing a school essay when I was about ten on the building of Morden tube station and discovering photos of the suburb where I lived in the 1920s when its was still just fields.

Slambo: I am very much a railfan. In fact, the lead image of the railfan article, File:Railfans at prairie du chien.jpg is a photo that I took showing my wife and a friend of ours when we went on one of our railfanning trips to Prairie du Chien. I've been interested in trains and model railroading as far as I can remember, which dates back to about the early 1970s. When I started editing here in September 2004, I looked at the amount of railroad-related articles and thought I could help out with them. The first edits I made were to correct and add links to railroad historical society websites. It was Morven who introduced me to WikiProject Trains, and it seemed like an excellent way to focus my editing on the subjects that I was most interested in.

Iridescent: I'd worked on a lot of train related articles so thought I ought to put my name on the list. And no, definitely not; I've come from the social history side, not the engineering side.

Redrose64: A school trip on Wednesday 21 March 1979 (yes, it's etched in my memory) to the National Railway Museum changed my life permanently. That was the day I first collected engine numbers; the following weekend I rifled my father's bookshelves in search of anything railway related. I stopped collecting numbers when it became clear that locomotives on passenger trains were doomed to disappear. I signed up to WikiProject Trains just over a year after getting a Wikipedia account, although I had already joined WikiProject UK Railways, after less than 150 edits across the whole of Wikipedia. I would say that the vast majority of my 17000+ edits are rail-related.

Simply south: There are many different terms for the same thing and i would call myself a rail enthusiast. I have always been interested in rail transport since i was younger and only recently became interested elsewhere. However i am not a trainspotter.

The project covers a wide range of articles related to modern and historical trains throughout the world. What are some of your favorite articles?

Mjroots: Some of the articles on lines outside the UK, such as the North Friesland Railway in the Netherlands, the Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme and Réseau Breton in France, all of which I've had a hand in.

DavidCane: Historical articles, ones that feature interesting engineering and articles on things that are no more or that were planned but did not happen. These tend to be in fairly obscure areas, so article development on these is sometimes minimal. Tunnel Railway is a good example of something gone and mostly forgotten. The Victorians and Edwardians were hugely keen on the idea of building underground railways in London but very few schemes were able to raise money. City and Brixton Railway is an interesting short article on one such failure.

Oakshade: I very much enjoyed reading Berlin Friedrichstraße station. It was a fascinating station as it was located directly on the border between East and West Berlin, therefore separated countries within the working station. I never knew any of this and the article explains this history in great detail. Another article I enjoyed is Rack railway. This is an excellent detailed description of this unique type of rail infrastructure and its examples around the world.

Slambo: I wish I could be a little less selfish about this question, but right now I have two favorites: Pioneer Zephyr and John Bull (locomotive). I started both of these articles and researched and edited them both up to Featured Article status. For a while I was researching the history of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway with an eye toward getting that article up to featured status as well; I got a little distracted with some of the associated articles, starting articles for the railroad's presidents and a few of the subsidiary companies, such as California Southern Railroad, and significant events, like the operation of the Scott Special (both of these ancillary articles are now listed as Good Articles).

Iridescent: By their nature, most of them are boring to non-specialists, just because it's often necessarily a technical and inherently boring topic. DavidCane's biographical articles such as Edgar Speyer are probably the most interesting to non-specialists.

Simply south: It is hard to pick out which are my favourite articles. It has been interesting learning about systems around the world, for example the Vancouver SkyTrain or the Wuppertal Schwebebahn. There are also odd articles, an example which is the British Rail flying saucer.

The project has 34 featured articles, 22 featured lists, and 156 good articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? Are there any other articles you are currently working on bringing to FA or GA status?

Mjroots: I've been responsible for two GAs - Charles Fryatt and the Hawkhurst Branch Line. I'm not currently working on any GAs or FAs.

DavidCane: I've written and taken through the approval process seven of the featured articles, three of the featured lists and nine of the good articles. I am currently working on improving to GA standard the article on architect Charles Holden, who designed many of the tube's best stations. After that I will be developing Metropolitan District Railway to FA to complete a Featured Topic on the Underground Electric Railways Company of London.

Oakshade: I'm quite proud of creating Santa Fe Depot (San Bernardino) and providing much of the content seen today. It has been suggested it can be Good Article status. Perhaps more detail is needed. But that's what's great about this project. There's an endless supply of editors that can be motivated to improve upon existing articles.

Slambo: I took four articles from creation to Featured Article status: Pioneer Zephyr, John Bull (locomotive), Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works and an older version of the Franklin B. Gowen article. The article on the Pioneer Zephyr was created from nothing and promoted to Featured status in just five days (February 24 to March 1), which at the time was the fastest for any article from creation to Featured status. The article on Franklin Gowen has since been updated by another editor with quite a bit more information and also retains Featured status. I have taken many articles to Good Article status, including Scott Special, California Southern Railroad, Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad and Cyrus K. Holliday. Many more articles I created are former Good Articles; they were removed from the list after the inline citation and length standards improved. These include: Weyauwega, Wisconsin derailment, Timken 1111, El Gobernador, C. P. Huntington, stock car (rail), dome car, autorack (in collaboration with another editor), EMD BL2 and others.

Iridescent: Eight of the FAs and two of the GAs, plus minor edits and encouraging noises on a number of the others. Until an article's near complete it's impossible to say whether it's GA/FA material so it's pointless making predictions, although I do want to get Quainton Road railway station up to scratch to complete the Brill Tramway set.

Redrose64: I have made various edits, small and large, to articles which later reached GA/FA; of these, the most important were probably helping get Hawkhurst Branch Line to GA, and SECR K and SR K1 classes to FA. Although I did create Wotton (Metropolitan Railway) railway station, which is now FA, most of the FA work was carried out by iridescent (above); I don't consider my own somewhat factual style would satisfy WP:FAC should I write the whole article and submit it. Consider Reading Southern railway station: that's mostly mine, but will need the attention of others if it's to rise above C-Class (it doesn't satisfy B-class article criterion 2, and possibly not 5 and 6).

Simply south: I have made small edits to a few GAs such as Railway stations in Cromer.

The project is home to 12 task forces with focuses ranging from drawing maps and adding images to reducing the assessment backlog and maintaining the project's portal. Tell us a little about how these task forces contribute to the project's overall goals.

DavidCane: I'm not involved with any of these. I think people are most likely to edit what they are most interested in so formalised administrative structures are probably not of interest to most editors. Having a series of niche activities like these also has the potential to discourage users from doing these things because they think that it's someone else's problem.

Slambo: I was involved in founding many of the task forces. I was hoping more editors would step up and take to the tasks that are listed in each. Each task force was designed with the idea of giving newer editors an area of the WikiProject on which to focus. Most of my own focus recently has been on the assessment backlog and maintaining the portal.

Iridescent: I'm not involved with any. "Reducing the backlog" is a will-o-the-wisp which doesn't mesh with how Wikipedia operates in reality; things are improved by people who are interested in improving them, and no project that aims to dictate what people ought to be doing has any chance of working. In my experience, "improvement drives" generally have a counterproductive effect, in steering people who don't really understand a subject towards material they're not competent to work on. I think task forces are great in theory, but generally they just don't work.

Redrose64: It's not altogether clear what the scope of the various task forces is. When I add {{WikiProject Trains}} to a talk page, I usually omit all the task force parameters; the only ones I ever set are |locos=yes and/or |models=yes, since it's a pretty clear decision whether the article falls within those or not. As for participation in task forces, I don't.

Are there any other projects that collaborate and share resources with WikiProject Trains?

DavidCane: There are a number of projects that have overlapping fields of interest and common members, but I am not aware of any specific collaborative efforts or resource sharing.

Slambo: There have been some efforts in the past to collaborate with other WikiProjects. Most of the collaborations that I watched didn't get as far as we wanted them to, but they all led to some improvements in article quality here and there. A few WikiProjects use the {{TrainsWikiProject}} talk page banner that I originally created (Streetcars, Rapid transit, Metros of the former Soviet Union, Trains in Japan, New Zealand Railways and UK Railways).

Redrose64: There's a significant overlap with WikiProject London Transport, which has many areas (such as buses) entirely outside the WikiProject Trains remit. The Route Diagram Template (RDT) is definitely a resource shared between WikiProject Trains, WikiProject London Transport and others (WikiProject UK Waterways is one that I know of, but it's outside my interests).

Simply south: RDT is a resource that was originally set up for rail transport articles and the like and was copied from the German Wikipedia but has been used by a lot of projects such as WikiProject UK Waterways and WikiProject Hiking Trails.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Slambo: I created Portal:Trains in May 2005 based on a quick suggestion on the project talk page. I volunteered that I would be willing to maintain it for the future as well, and have been making updates to the portal (mostly in the Did You Know section) on a daily basis. My efforts got the portal promoted to be a Featured portal in January 2006, and it has retained Featured status since then. Some of the templates that I created for portal maintenance are now also being used by other portals.

Next week we'll admire a buttress. Until then, you can build up your knowledge of WikiProjects in the archive.

Reader comments

2010-09-20

The best of the week

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87

Administrators

The Signpost congratulates two editors on their promotion to adminship.

• Magog the Ogre (nom), from Pennsylvania, was a programming major in college and has worked in the finance industry. He specialises in creating maps on his Ubuntu operating system computer. His primary expertise is in media file policy, though he finds time to work on the reference desk, CSD tagging, and anti-vandalism.
• Wifione (nom), has gained considerable experience on the Help Desk, contributes on the tool server as an accountcreator, and is active on new-page patrolling, Criteria for Speedy Deletion (CSD) assessments, and Usernames for Administrative Attention (UAA). Apart from his "gnomish" work and copy-editing, he has recently created WikiProject Villages, which he hopes to develop over the next few months. He is a member of the Wikimedia Strategy Task Force.

Featured articles

Fifteen articles were promoted:

• Ambondro mahabo (nom), a broken piece of jaw 170 million years old; its discovery in 1999 set the stage for one of the major controversies of mammalian paleontology (nominated by Ucucha). (picture above)
• Aquaria (video game) (nom), a single-player action-adventure product released in 2007 (PresN).
• Battle of Quebec (1775) (nom), the first big American defeat of the American Revolutionary War, in 1775 (Magicpiano)
• Princess Charlotte of Wales (nom) (1796–1817), one of the tragic episodes of the British royal family (Wehwalt).
• Flame Robin (nom), a small bird native to Australia; the males have a brilliant orange-red chest and throat (Casliber).
• FC Barcelona (nom), founded in 1899 by a group of Swiss, English, and Spanish football players that has become a symbol of Catalan culture (Sandman888). (picture at right)
• Eshmun Temple (nom), occupied in the 7th and 8th centuries and associated with the nearby Lebanese city of Sidon; now a World Heritage Site (Elie plus).
• Paul E. Patton (nom), a governor of Kentucky (1995–2003), whose second term finished with sex-for-favours and campaign-finance scandals (Acdixon).
• Alboin (nom), a 6th-century Germanic king who played an important role in Italian history; the article is based on English- and Italian-language sources (Aldux). (picture at right)
• Huia (nom), a New Zealand bird (Kotare)
• Wintjiya Napaltjarri (nom), which nominator hamiltonstone says are "the people who have contributed to the last great art movement of the 20th century, and Australia's only domestic art movement of international significance: contemporary Indigenous Australian art".
• William Calcraft (nom), one of the most prolific and incompetent British hangmen ever. Nominator Malleus Fatuorum says "he liked to make a show out of his public executions [to] crowds of up to 30,000, so he didn't want his victims to die too quickly."
• Madeira Firecrest (nom), an avian beauty from Madeira, an Atlantic island off Africa (Jimfbleak).
• Oryzomys antillarum (nom), an extinct Jamaican rat (Ucucha).
• Japanese battleship Haruna (nom), one of the workhorses of the Japanese fleet during World War II (Cam).

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Aaroncrick to select the best of the week:

“

As always, the FAC process throws up some obscure and fascinating articles, making the choice of the week difficult. William Calcraft and his 450 executions over 45 years was one of the more enthralling articles, describing his 45-year career of 450 executions, many using the unusual short-drop method. Three articles were on my short-list: Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Princess Charlotte of Wales and FC Barcelona—all intriguing reads. Being Australian, I couldn’t help but feel a connection with Napaltjarri, an Indigenous artist whose work is showcased in many of the country’s galleries. More will be familiar with Princess Charlotte, who died in 1817 when just 21, ending her quest to become Queen. However, being a sports lover and contributor, my choice of the week is FC Barcelona. The article is a comprehensive, engaging account of one of the biggest and most successful sporting clubs in the world.

”

Four featured articles were delisted:

• Fermi paradox (nom: sourcing)
• Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (nom: sourcing, prose and neutrality)
• November (film) (nom: sourcing)
• Max Weber (nom: copyright, neutrality, weasel words, prose, sourcing, original research, comprehensiveness, structure)

Featured lists

Eleven lists were promoted:

• Venues of the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics (nom). Eighteen venues were used for this Olympics; capacities ranged from 500 seats in Kallang Field (archery) to 25,000 in the The Float@Marina Bay (cycling) (nominated by AngChenrui).
• George Orwell bibliography (nom) Known best for his fictional works Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, Orwell wrote 644 complete works, 555 of which were essays, book reviews, and editorials reflecting his left-wing anti-totalitarian views (Koavf).
• List of Texas Tech Red Raiders bowl games (nom) The Red Raiders have an overall bowl record of 11 wins, 22 losses, and 1 tie. Their most recent bowl game resulted in a win against Michigan State University in the Alamo Bowl (NThomas).
• Registrar of the University of Oxford (nom), one of the senior officials of the university. The Registrar is the "head of the central administrative services", with responsibility for "the management and professional development of their staff and for the development of other administrative support" (Bencherlite). (choice of the week, see right)
• List of Washington Nationals first-round draft picks (nom) Of the 63 players picked in the first round by Washington, 31 have been pitchers, the most of any position (Wizardman).
• List of accolades received by Up (nom). This fully animated film about two characters who visit a house suspended by helium balloons received two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and two Grammy Awards (Tbhotch).
• List of Major League Baseball hitters with four home runs in one game (nom) Called "baseball's greatest single-game accomplishment", this feat has been performed by only 15 players, most recently by Carlos Delgado in 2003 (Staxringold). (choice of the week)
• List of Atlanta Braves managers (nom) Bobby Cox is one of the most successful Braves manager, having guided the team to 1,792 wins, 14 playoff appearances, and 1 World Series victory (LAAFan and K. Annoyomous).
• List of Connecticut Huskies bowl games (nom) The Huskies have played in only four bowl games (all in the 21st century), winning three, including their most recent bowl game: the 2010 PapaJohns.com Bowl against the University of South Carolina (Grondemar).
• 1970 NBA Draft (nom), the 24th annual draft of the National Basketball Association. The 1970 draft class is considered to be one of the best in NBA history, as it produced six Hall of Famers and twelve All-Stars (Martin tamb).
• Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album (nom) With the album 75, Joe Zawinul and The Zawinul Syndicate, an Austrian group, became the first non-American band to win this award (Another Believer).

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator and reviewer Wizardman for his choice of the best:

“

My original plan was to look past the sports-related articles, since I'm more familiar with them, but due to how many were promoted this week I'm choosing two articles as best, one sports and one not. The sports article that caught my eye was List of Major League Baseball hitters with four home runs in one game. It really shows how significant of an accomplishment hitting four home runs in a game is, though that could be my bias talking. The second article I would choose is Registrar of the University of Oxford. Oxford is not something usually on my radar, but this list is a very nice look at the position and the people who have held it. It was a very interesting read, with the descriptions of each person adding a good deal to what the article is about.

”

Featured topics

One topic was promoted: Supernatural (season 1) (nom), concerning an American television series broadcast 2005–06, with 22 episodes. There are two featured articles and one good article (nominator Ophois).

Featured pictures

Seven images were promoted:

• Male impala in Serengeti (nom), which captures many of its attributes; taken in the Serengeti (created by Ikiwaner). (picture at right)
• Reproductive cone of Encephalartos sclavoi (nom), an endangered species, photographed in the capital of Tanzania, East Africa, by Muhammad Mahdi Karim).
• Lambis crocata (nom), a species of sea snail in the family of true conchs (created by George Chernilevsky).
• Portrait of Maurice of Nassau (nom), Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange with a commandant's baton, by Dutch portraitist Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, ca. 1613–20. The details of the gilt suit of armour can be inspected closely in the full-resolution version. The colours were enhanced after comments by reviewers.
• Sceliphron spirifex (nom), a species of insect photographed in East Africa; after reviewers' comments, the image was cropped, a dust spot cloned out, and levels were adjusted (created by Muhammad Mahdi Karim).
• Cactus in bloom (nom), Parodia tenuicylindrica cactus with flowers in bloom (created by (Laitche).
• Buildings along Chicago River (nom), a westward view from Lake Shore Drive's Link Bridge over the Chicago River, showing many of the city's most notable buildings (created by Mindfrieze). (picture below)

Choice of the week. Dschwen, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost:

“

My choice this week, the Impala, is not only a masterfully executed shot of a beautiful animal, but it comes as a package. Linked in its image description are two more detail shots of the head and horns, and when viewed through our sister site commons this featured picture has annotations that pop up when you hover the mouse over the animal's various body parts, indicating characteristic traits of its species. It is exciting to see the potential of our online format being used in a way that greatly enhances the educational value of a nice piece of photography (picture above right).

”

Reader comments

2010-09-20

Tools, part 2: Internal links and page histories

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By Resident Mario, Dispenser and Tilman Bayer

This article is a continuation of Tools, part 1, in a series meant to introduce readers to useful tools for editing. This time, we will be treating tools related to internal links (wikilinks), and the version histories of wiki pages.

Many tools consist of user scripts, JavaScript code running in your browser, that can be imported by adding importScript("User:Example/awesome script.js") to your skin.js page. Compatibility varies with skin and browser, with Internet Explorer being the most problematic. A more extensive script list is at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts.

Various other tools are hosted on the Wikimedia Toolserver (currently provided by the German Wikimedia chapter) and can be accessed via a web interface. Some are also hosted on non-Wikimedia websites.

Dabfinder

Dabfinder adds a "Find disambiguations" link to your sidebar, outlines disambiguation links in green and allowing you to fix them on the fly without having to go to a separate page. Unlike Begriffsklärungs-Check ("disambiguation check") from the German Wikipedia, it works on all languages.

Author : Splarka

Placement : Adds a "Find disambiguations" link to the Toolbox sidebar.

Demo : Paste javascript:importScript('User:Splarka/dabfinder.js');findDABsButton() into your browser's address bar while viewing or previewing the article of interest.

Installation : Add {{subst:js|User:Splarka/dabfinder.js}} to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page.

Dablinks and Dab solver

Dablinks is a Toolserver tool which checks for disambiguation links. It can check individual pages or up to 500 pages from a category, list, or a user's recent contributions. A companion tool, accessible via "(fix links)", Dab solver provides an easy to use menu driven interface for resolving all links. The tools also collects statistics to assist WikiProject Disambiguation.

Author : Dispenser

Linkclassifier

Linkclassifier assigns over a dozen possible attributes to links. Users can opt to use either the default style sheet or create their own with the looks and color they want for each attribute. The default highlights disambiguation and self-redirects links and outlines non-free images. What sets this tool apart from others is the ability to identify Set index articles. While there is no firm standard, they are typically hybrids between a list article and a disambiguation page. Writers may intentionally link to these if they wish to have a description or history of a Ship's name, for example.

Author : Anomie

Placement : Highlights are inline, configurable to page load (default) or button click.

Demo : Paste javascript:void(importScript('User:Anomie/linkclassifier-demo.js')) into your browser's address bar while viewing or previewing the article of interest.

Installation : Add both {{subst:js|User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js}} and importStylesheet('User:Anomie/linkclassifier.css'); to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page.

Contributors

The Contributors tool lists users who have edited a page, based on the number of their contributions. This is a good way to identify the major contributors to an article. The tool can also display the page history in other formats. (Documentation)

Author : Duesentrieb

Article revision statistics

Article revision statistics by X! also shows users who have edited a particular page, sorted by number of edits; but it provides many other statistics about the page's history, such as the number of edits per month, or the percentage of anonymous edits.

Author: X!

WikiDashboard

WikiDashboard displays an article together with a timeline showing editing activity, and also lists the contributors with the most edits to the article. Editing while using the dashboard is not possible. It was the subject of an article in Technology Review last year; see also the Signpost coverage of its release in 2007.

Author : Palo Alto Research Center

Revisionjumper

Revisionjumper allows easier navigation of a page's history, generating diffs between arbitrary revisions or time periods with just a few clicks. It was developed on the German Wikipedia and is used by around 1500 users.

Author: DerHexer

Demo : Try it in the Wikipedia:Sandbox

Placement : Adds drop-downs between the revision info and the revision diff

Installation: Add {{subst:js|MediaWiki:Gadget-revisionjumper.js}} to your Special:MyPage/skin.js page, or go to Special:Preferences, check its box under "Gadgets", and click "Save".

WikiBlame

WikiBlame (documentation) searches revisions of a page for a text string in either the HTML or wikitext. It then displays the revision dates where the string exists or does not by a green circle and red X. This is useful if one needs to ask the author of a particular statement for a clarification or a reference, and is certainly faster than doing it by hand. Article Blamer by X! promises similar functionality in a streamlined interface. WikiTrust (see below) is another alternative.

Author: Flominator

Placement: The tool is linked as "Revision history search" from the History pages on the English Wikipedia.

WikiTrust

WikiTrust analyzes an article's history and the contributions of its authors to calculate a trust score for each part of the text, which is displayed as a color (white=trustworthy, yellow or orange = unstable). It is also possible to check directly who contributed that part: A CTRL-ALT-click on a word will take you to the diff where it was added.

WikiTrust is currently available as a browser add-on for Firefox. The Wikimedia Foundation has indicated that it may eventually be integrated into Wikipedia itself (see Signpost coverage).

Author: Online Collaboration Lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz

Placement: Adds a "WikiTrust" tab on top of the page

Page view statistics

Page view statistics graphs the number of views per day for a Wikipedia page. The tool aggregates a list of the "most viewed pages", although this is often several months behind. The data is also used in a new, still experimental tool by Emw that graphs over larger periods.

Note: Due to past problems with the underlying data (squid logs), page views may be under-reported from November 2009 to July 2010.

Author: Henrik

Placement: The tool is linked as "Page view statistics" from the History pages on the English Wikipedia.

Reader comments

2010-09-20

Discretionary sanctions clarification and more

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By Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases, leaving one open.

Open case

Climate change (Week 15)

This case resulted from the merging of several Arbitration requests on the same topic into a single case, and the failure of a related request for comment to make headway. Innovations have been introduced for this case, including special rules of conduct that were put in place at the start. However, the handling of the case has been criticized by some participants; for example, although the evidence and workshop pages were closed for an extended period, no proposals were posted on the proposed decision page and participants were prevented from further discussing their case on the case pages (see earlier Signpost coverage).

The proposed decision, drafted by Newyorkbrad, Risker, and Rlevse, sparked a large quantity of unstructured discussion, much of it comprising concerns about the proposed decision (see earlier Signpost coverage). A number of users, including participants and arbitrator Carcharoth, made the discussion more structured, but the quantity of discussion has continued to increase significantly. Rlevse had said that arbitrators were trying to complete the proposed decision before September 6, but it was later made clear that he will no longer be voting on this decision. This week, arbitrators made further additions to the proposed decision and further attempts to manage the quantity of discussion.

Closed cases

Transcendental Meditation movement (Week 2)

Before discretionary sanctions can be imposed on an editor, the editor is required to be "given a warning advising of the problems with his or her editing". Additionally, where appropriate, the editor should be "counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve" his or her editing. The exception to this requirement is where there is "gross misconduct".

Littleolive oil filed a clarification request regarding this requirement and asked that the revert restriction that was imposed on her by Future Perfect at Sunrise be overturned by the Committee. A few users characterised the request as “forum shopping” and arbitrator Coren alleged that it was “not a request for clarification...but an appeal/protest.” However, the filer stated that the clarification fundamentally affects the restriction and that the Committee should stand by its statements - that discretionary sanctions may be appealed to the Committee.

Arbitrators Newyorkbrad and Roger Davies clarified that the warnings should come from "a neutral third-party" rather than "an opponent in a content dispute". In response, an administrator suggested that the discretionary sanctions from this case be replaced with what some arbitrators refer to as “standard discretionary sanctions”. However, practical issues with the latter approach were pointed out in the Climate change case:

The "standard" sanctions have changed to some extent every time that the Committee has used them, so they're hardly standard. As the wording on that page changes, editors in affected areas will have no way of knowing that the "rules" have changed. This will also lead to disputes about whether the current wording of the so-called standard discretionary sanctions, or the one in effect at the time of the decision, will hold sway. [Even with announcements of changes]...sanctions cover hundreds of pages and potentially apply to thousands of editors. Most of them don't watch WP:AN or the village pumps, and even fewer of them watch arbitration pages.

— Arbitrator Risker, Sentences taken from comments made at 04:30, 6 September 2010 (UTC) and 17:39, 6 September 2010 (UTC) in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change/Proposed decision.

In light of the clarification, the filer suggested the Committee keep the existing discretionary sanctions wording for this case because it “clearly defines the criteria” making it “easier to determine if the criteria has been met or not”. Recently, she also asked the Committee whether she will need to file another case to deal with the "allegations of wrongdoing" and editors that were "improperly sanctioned".

Eastern European mailing list (Week 2)

At the time of writing, arbitrators have not yet responded to the request to reimpose an Eastern European topic ban on Radeksz. It has been over a week since the request was filed.

Race and intelligence (Week 2)

Arbitrators have responded to the request to impose a topic ban on Ferahgo the Assassin from race and intelligence related articles that has been filed. It has been over a week since the request was filed. Kirill Lokshin stated that he did not see any reason to presume wrong-doing, but Shell Kinney advised Ferahgo the Assassin to avoid editing the topic, particularly in light of policy and the facts of this case. Roger Davies also stated that he would support a topic ban.

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2010-09-20

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250

Washington DC "Hack-a-Ton" announced

On the Wikimedia Techblog, contractor Chad Horohoe announced the first Wikimedia "hack-a-ton", an event when developers, amateur and professional, get together with the explicit aim of bug-fixing and generally getting "down and dirty with the code". Designed to act as a counterpoint to the "MediaWiki Developers' Meetup" in Berlin, which is focused on demonstrations, workshops and small group discussions, the event is scheduled for October 22–24 in Washington DC. Bugs for the weekend are going to be tracked using a new keyword in Bugzilla, "bugsmash". MediaWiki has around 4900 bugs and feature requests outstanding from a total pool of around 25000, though not all relate to the core MediaWiki software.

Google Summer of Code: Samuel Lampa

We continue a series of articles about this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with Samuel Lampa, a biotechnology student at Uppsala University, who describes his project to develop a system for the general import and export of RDF metadata from the Semantic MediaWiki software.

“

Some of you might know Semantic MediaWiki, the MediaWiki extension that (if installed, which is not currently the case on Wikimedia wikis) lets users annotate facts in articles with a special syntax, which makes them "machine readable". This allows external software tools to use the facts for powerful stuff like integrating data, querying the data in a bandwidth-saving way, providing powerful search facilities, and so on. For example, on the Stockholm article, one would add: [[is capital of::Sweden]]. Annotations are of course best embedded in templates such as the infobox on the Methane article, where they can make use of the already formatted information without bothering users with additional syntax. Apart from Wikipedia, MediaWiki is used by numerous organizations and companies for all kinds of knowledge bases. In fields such as construction and engineering there are loads of data available in strictly formalized and standardized document formats that, if stored in Semantic MediaWiki, could be turned into "machine readable", queryable databases, by simply adding semantic annotations in the templates, for example. Now, what if one exposes this data in a standardized format that the rest of the web was using, everyone using the same identifier for "Stockholm" and "Bosch spark plug no 0001"? This would enable connecting all the data available into a big "web of things" instead of "web of documents", which can be much more smartly queried – asking explicitly for "all cities in" "Europe", or "all spark plugs that fits" "Volvo V70", for example, instead of guessing the keyword combination that returns such a document on a search engine like Google. Such a format is already available, and called RDF. Semantic MediaWiki already allows the static export of articles in RDF, but does not allow its import; nor does it provide a method out of the box to select from remote only exactly those pieces of data you want. The RDFIO extension, which I built for the Google Summer of Code, addresses the mentioned gaps by providing ability to import RDF as well as an interface for both the querying and updating of facts via a so-called "SPARQL endpoint" (see here for an example) which external tools can also very easily talk to. This new ability to update semantic facts remotely opens up for some interesting use cases. For example, chemists and biologists using Bioclipse can take their working data and export it to a wiki where their peers can make corrections, before importing it again for further analysis, etc. This workflow is in fact already possible as hinted in this blog post / screencast, and is the focus my current work (progress documented on the blog). For a more technical description as well as download and install instructions, see the RDFIO Extension page. The development, and thoughts behind RDFIO was documented on this blog.

”

In brief

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.

• Nightshade, a login server for the Toolserver, is to be converted from the Linux operating system to Solaris at "some point in the future" (Toolserver-Announce mailing list). The Toolserver's other login server, Willow, has been running Solaris for some time without issue, though there are differences between the two setups for which some tool owners will need to compensate.
• Users can now embed TIFF files into documents and have them thumbnailed. For multi-page files, the "page" parameter can be used to select a page for rendering.
• Diffs with "intermediate revisions" will now say how many different users contributed to those revisions (bug #24007).
• Gadget and script developers can now assume the availability of the jQuery library, after it was added to all skins, says User:DieBuche.
• There was a temporary problem affecting servers handling the API on Friday, soon fixed, and another with European servers on Wednesday (identi.ca).
• After the announcement in last week's Signpost that the Article Feedback extension will go live on the English Wikipedia on September 22, in a trial that is part of the Public Policy Initiative, a post on the Techblog and a FAQ provided further technical explanations.
• As announced last week, longtime Wikimedia tech staff member Mark Bergsma has been promoted to Engineering Program Manager for Operations. EPMs are a position that was recently introduced at the WMF, as explained by Erik Möller some weeks ago.
• Wikimedia Chief Technical Officer Danese Cooper will hold an IRC office hour (a public chat event on IRC) on Wednesday, 22 September at 23:00UTC.
  
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