The Signpost
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4 October 2010

News and notes
German chapter remodeled to meet Foundation requirements, and more
In the news
Spanish police pursues BLP vandals, Jimbo interviewed, advice for experts and spammers
Book review
Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia, by Joseph Reagle
WikiProject report
Hot topics with WikiProject Volcanoes
Features and admins
Milestone: 2,500th featured picture
Arbitration report
Tricky and Lengthy Dispute Resolution
Technology report
Code reviewers, October Engineering update, brief news
 

2010-10-04

German chapter remodeled to meet Foundation requirements, and more

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By Resident Mario, Jean-Frédéric and Tilman Bayer

German chapter creates new body to meet Foundation's fundraising requirements

Last week, it was revealed that the German Wikimedia chapter is creating a new limited-liability non-profit corporation (in German, gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, or gGmbH) to replace the existing membership-based association (Verein) as the recipient of donations from Wikimedia fundraisers. This will enable the direct transfer of donation money to the Foundation, which has so far been impossible due to local charity laws.

Founded in 2004, Wikimedia Deutschland is the oldest Wikimedia chapter. Its legal status does not allow it to transfer funds to an organization abroad without risking the loss of its charity status (this problem already became apparent in its first year, according to a long-time member). To some extent, this restriction was overcome by the chapter's providing funding for several endeavors of Foundation-wide relevance, including the Wikimedia Toolserver, the cache-server cluster in Amsterdam, and gatherings such as the 2009 and 2010 Wikimedia Conferences in Berlin. According to notafish, other chapters (including Wikimedia France) are currently grappling with similar narrowly framed regulations in their own jurisdictions.

The new gGmbH non-profit corporation, called "Wikimedia Fördergesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung", will be entirely controlled by the membership-based Verein, and will split fundraising income equally between the Verein and the Foundation. Donations to the gGmbH will be tax-deductible for German donors, unlike direct donations to the Foundation. Last week's announcement was made by the chapter's treasurer, prompted by and confirming a rumor that had been brought up on the Verein's mailing list. It appears to have caught most members by surprise; many expressed concern that they had not been informed earlier, even though the process of establishing the new organization had been going on since August. The treasurer explained it had been necessary to act quickly, without extended public discussion, because of the Foundation's position on fundraising since this year:

Without the gGmbH [structure] we will receive virtually nothing in this year's fundraiser; seeing that, the Verein [Wikimedia Deutschland] could then only resolve its own disbanding.

The current solution was negotiated between the Foundation and the Verein in early August during a visit to San Francisco by Wikimedia Deutschland's CEO Pavel Richter and its Chair, Sebastian Moleski (User:Sebmol). Sebmol has acknowledged that the Foundation's new focus on "community giving" (small donations as the main source of income, rather than grants and few large donations), an outcome of the Strategic Planning process, means that it will need to rely on chapters more, and that a direct revenue stream is important to retaining the Foundation's independence. According to the WMF's deputy director Erik Möller, the fundraising aspect of the relationship between the Foundation and the chapters was discussed extensively at a fundraising summit held last May in Bristol, UK.

These negotiations between the Foundation and the German chapter appear to have gone on for some time, and have also concerned the renewal of the chapter agreement between them, which ended by default in 2009. In the chapter report for March/April 2009, Sebmol reported he had retained a San Francisco law firm pro bono to develop a response to a draft new agreement prepared by the Foundation's legal counsel Mike Godwin, which Sebmol regarded as disadvantageous for Wikimedia Deutschland. In the Foundation's most recent monthly report for July 2010, it was stated that the legal department "re-engaged a charity-specialist attorney" for various issues, and that "we confirmed that there are ongoing structural issues, particularly in Europe, with transferring charitable funds to WMF – we're looking for holistic, comprehensive ways of resolving these issues."

The Foundation's deputy director, Erik Möller, denied the Foundation had made a particular model a precondition for Wikimedia Deutschland's participation in the upcoming fundraising. He described the relationship between the Foundation and Wikimedia Germany as "excellent" and said that the WMF regards the chapter as "a model for professional organization and development of projects to support free knowledge", highlighting the Bundesarchiv image donation (see Signpost coverage) as "one of the most important developments in the Wikimedia universe in the last two years", and WM DE developer Daniel Kinzler's "WikiPics" project as "one of the most innovative ideas to make media files accessible".

In brief

2010-10-04

Spanish police pursues BLP vandals, Jimbo interviewed, advice for experts and spammers

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By Tilman Bayer and Tarheel95

Spanish police investigates BLP vandalism

The Spanish police are investigating four Internet users for edits made in the months up to July 2009 to the Spanish Wikipedia's article about politician Javier Arenas of the center-right People's Party (PP). As reported[1] by news agency EFE on September 25, a resident of Albacete and one of a village in the Levante were recently summoned to testify at their local courts, joining as suspects two other Internet users that had come under scrutiny some months ago. According to the PP, whose complaint led to the investigation, the offending edits included "insults and coarse language" against Arenas and his family, and false information that was subsequently used by a government member to insinuate that Arenas had needed a long time to complete his law degree.

Jimbo Wales on censorship, Wikileaks (again), Wikipedia and other topics

Various media reported on comments made by Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales on a recent visit to Malaysia. AFP ("Wikipedia founder says Malaysia should ditch censorship") quoted him as saying that "a very open flow of information" was important in "making sure that the people have the information they need" and that "I want to write that information (on sites like user-generated Wikipedia) so that my fellow citizens have the knowledge they need so they can't be oppressed."

On the other hand, Wales repeated earlier criticism of Wikileaks (see Signpost coverage: "Difficult relationship between WikiLeaks and Wikipedia"), a website set up to publish leaked information: As reported by Associated Press, Wales said that the site has committed an "irresponsible" act by knowingly releasing the contents of classified military information, and that it could potentially "put innocent lives at risk". In related news, Wales recently explained on Wikipedia why the domains wikileaks.com, wikileaks.net, wikileaks.us, wikileaks.biz, and wikileaks.mobi appear still to be registered to Wales' company Wikia, even though

Malaysian tabloid The Star quoted Wales [2][3] on various other topics, e.g. his education, negative media coverage by Fox News related to his deletions of sexual images on Commons earlier this year ("That controversy, says Wales, is all over, too. 'Fox News basically ran some outrageous, inflammatory stories that were absolutely not true'), the dispute over whether Larry Sanger should be called a co-founder of Wikipedia ("this so-called controversy has overshadowed his contribution not as co-founder but as a very important employee and a very important part of the early community"), a 2009 Wall Street Journal article about Wikipedia having lost 57,000 editors within a year ("I said, ‘Well, I found them – in my refrigerator’. It was just a badly done study") and many other topics.

Yet another interview with Wales was published a few days later in the Financial Times Magazine—a list of personal questions titled The Inventory. Asked for his "mentor", Wales said that one is Larry Lessig ("He was one of the first people who realised what I was doing at Wikipedia"). To the question "What ambitions do you still have?", Wales replied: "My goal for the next 10 to 20 years is to build Wikipedia in the languages of the developing world."

In brief

  • Editing advice for experts: In an article published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, academics from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the University of Cambridge provide "Ten simple rules for editing Wikipedia". The article explains core Wikipedia policies and guidelines such as Verifiability or Conflict of interest—although there is no mention of the Manual of Style—and focused on how these rules apply to editing by experts. One of the co-authors is longtime Wikipedian and MediaWiki programmer Magnus Manske.
  • Editing advice for spammers: The SEO blog GAMBLING CA$H COW has published advice for Link Building on Wikipedia. The "tips for proceeding with a Wikipedia campaign" include building a good reputation within the community (e.g. obtaining barnstars for one's user page), directing the "flow of link juice" within Wikipedia, "making friends within the community" which can give support in an AfD, and avoiding anonymous editing to prevent Wikiscanner-like embarrassments.
  • Band calls song "Wikipedia": The debut single of 1980s-style pop band "Ambassadors of Morocco", to be released on November 15, is called "Wikipedia", according to an announcement on British music web site Glasswerk. Apart from the title and the frequent exclamation of "Wikipedia, Wikipedia!" in the lyrics, the song and video clip do not contain obvious references to Wikipedia.

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2010-10-04

Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia, by Joseph Reagle

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By Staeiou

What Wikipedia Is (Not)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is also a community. For most people – and especially for readers of the Signpost – these two banal facts hardly seem worth noting. The current trend in Wikipedia commentary is to show how it is more than an encyclopedia: how it is, at its core, paradigmatic of a radically new way of thinking, learning, knowing, organizing, and collaborating in our brave new digital age. We are constantly told that the success of Wikipedia has significant lessons for business, government, journalism, academia, the Internet, and practically every other institution in contemporary society. Amongst all of these attempts to package up and export some kind of universal “wiki way,” Joseph Reagle’s book Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia[1] is a refreshing look at what Wikipedia means to Wikipedians.

This focus stems from the fact that Good Faith Collaboration is an ethnography, an anthropological style in which the researcher attempts to capture the spirit of a people in writing. Whether one travels to Papua New Guinea or an online community, the goal of any ethnography is to relate their ethos to the rest of the world. It is to give people who have never set foot on an island in the South Pacific or edited a single Wikipedia article an idea of how those people live, where they came from, what they care about, and why they do what they do. And like Margaret Mead or Bronisław Malinowski, Joseph Reagle spent years with this odd tribe of Wikipedians, becoming an editor (User:Reagle), attending meetups, and trawling through mountains of archived talk pages and mailing lists. It is perhaps because of this extended participant-observation that Good Faith Collaboration goes well beyond most accounts written about Wikipedia, insisting on studying Wikipedians both on and in their own terms.

Some of these terms are the obvious ones, like the various strings of acronyms in policies or the odd way in which 'consensus' can mean anything between 51% approval and total unanimity. However, they also include more subtle ways of analyzing what Wikipedians care about and how the community comes to define itself. For example, some readers may be amused to see various well-known 'laws' of Wikipedian behavior at the beginning of each chapter, from "Show me an admin who has never been called a Nazi and I'll show you an admin who is not doing their job" to "Problematic users will drive good users away from Wikipedia far more often than good users will drive away problematic ones." As an ethnographer, Reagle does not take these laws to be true or false social science facts and is not that interested in proving or disproving them. They are instead windows into the world of Wikipedian culture, "a salient example of the community trying to understand itself and its circumstances."[2]

Good faith, bad faith

It is his emphasis on studying Wikipedians for their own sake that leads him to focus on the encyclopedic nature of Wikipedia, an aspect that is often passed over by social scientists who describe generalizable community dynamics or organizational principles. As such, the first chapter after the introduction is not about barnstars and Requests for Adminship, but encyclopedic communities from the 18th century Encyclopedie to Project Gutenberg and Nupedia. True to anthropological form, Reagle does not make the move of a historian and argue for himself that Wikipedia is the intellectual successor of these works. Instead, he shows how Wikipedians see their project much in the same way as Denis Diderot and Paul Otlet saw their reference works. In particular, he shows how a certain Enlightenment-era ideal of free knowledge is one of the community's driving concerns – and has also been the source of its most prominent forks.

At the core of these concerns, Reagle argues, is how to put into practice the lofty ideals of collaboration, which are best summarized in the demand for Wikipedians to assume good faith of each other. Yet the encyclopedic mission of Wikipedia makes the community of a different kind than those based around discussing politics or authoring fan fiction. Many communities have norms such as assume good faith, but Reagle sees this as an essential aspect of the Wikipedian community, as it integrates with other standards of knowledge and authorship. In chapter three, he shows how social policies and encyclopedic standards are linked: while it is easy to see Neutral Point of View as a purely encyclopedic standard, Reagle shows how it functions with the good faith mindset. As he argues, "NPOV renders the subject matter of a collaborative encyclopedia compatible, good faith makes it possible to work together."[3]

Subsequent chapters on openness, collaboration, and leadership continue with this theme, showing how each aspect of the community's norms relies on assuming a kind of good faith through discussions, policies, and case studies. However, readers wishing to learn whether Wikipedians "actually" assume good faith with each other or whether Wikipedia "really" is an open community may be disappointed by his anthropological perspective. When Reagle discusses Wikipedia as an open community, he is not speaking of participation metrics or exclusion rates. He locates the community's openness in a set of values that Wikipedians hold about themselves and each other – values that sometimes come into contention or contradiction with each other. Similarly, Reagle's analysis of the notorious “anyone can edit” slogan goes beyond the "can anybody really edit" discussions and shows how controversies over this definition reveal a complicated set of priorities that the community works to balance.

Encyclopedic anxiety

The seventh chapter, "Encyclopedic anxiety", examines Wikipedia's relationship with the rest of the world, looking at critics and supporters and the issues they debate in the public sphere. Like with Wikipedia's internal controversies, Reagle does not take much of a stance on who is right and who is wrong, instead analyzing what these kinds of discussions reveal about us as a society. In an interesting historical section, he gives a number of cases arguing that public controversies over reference works are often reflective of a broader cultural concern.

From dictionaries that began including the colloquial words of common folk and encyclopedias with "family-unfriendly" articles, reference works have been the subject of great debate for centuries. And as Reagle argues in the case of a dictionary that was published in the 1960s, "critics were alarmed at the social change occurring around them and attacked Webster's Third as an exemplar and proxy" (p. 140). He concludes by arguing that, in much the same way, many of the controversies directed towards Wikipedia are emblematic of larger social changes, some created by Wikipedia, and others merely associated with it.

Researching a reflective community

In all, Reagle's ethnographic perspective is both the book's greatest strength and greatest limitation. He tends to focus on the mainstream elements of Wikipedian culture, offering a general description of what a good portion of the community believes about who they are and how they ought to act. It is precisely because of this that most Signpost-reading Wikipedians will find nothing too controversial or radically new. Most will probably agree with SJ's review:[4] it is well-written, well-sourced, and neutral; something I'd recommend for my mother. For an ethnographer, this is the highest praise one can give, as it means that the book captures the spirit of the people so well that most parts seem obvious, even boring at times.

However, Good Faith Collaboration isn't just about Wikipedia's culture – it is quickly becoming part of Wikipedia's culture. The book has won accolades from a who's who of people in and around Wikipedia, including Lawrence Lessig, Clay Shirky, and Jonathan Zittrain, and will likely have profound influence on how academics, cultural critics, and journalists imagine Wikipedia. That alone makes the book worth reading, but I also suspect that Good Faith Collaboration will have a powerful impact on how the community sees itself. Wikipedians are highly reflective, as Reagle notes, and I have no doubt his analysis will be endlessly debated and interpreted in discussions at all levels of the community.

This has already begun with Sue Gardner's praise for the book, and in particular Reagle's analysis of how conflict resolution in Wikipedia is similar to that in Quaker communities. As she describes in multiple blog posts,[5] Gardner was so inspired by this that she read about a dozen works on the Quakers and then went to visit a Quaker community to learn about how they resolve conflict. Because of her enthusiasm, I expect the Quakers to become a familiar example, even among Wikipedians who don't read Reagle's book, and would not be surprised to see the analogy invoked on both sides of a debate in the near future. I only wonder what other sentiments are hidden in the book.

References

  1. ^ Reagle, Joseph (2010). Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01447-2.
  2. ^ Reagle, 10
  3. ^ Reagle, 71
  4. ^ SJ’s Longest Now » Blog Archive » Reagle on the Culture of Wikipedia
  5. ^ What Wikimedia can learn from the Quakers, Part 2 « Sue Gardner's Blog


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2010-10-04

Hot topics with WikiProject Volcanoes

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By Mono
WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
Puʻu ʻŌʻō, a cinder cone on Kīlauea, Hawaiʻi.
A pāhoehoe lava fountain arcs through the sky.
The eruption plume of Mount Etna as seen from the International Space Station.
Aerial view of Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park.
Black Tusk, as viewed from the southeast.

This week, we had an explosive visit with WikiProject Volcanoes. Started in 2007, the project has grown to include almost 4,000 pages, including 25 featured articles, 3 featured lists, and 40 good articles. The project's total number of members is healthy, with around 25 active contributors, however, the project is seeking new participants. The project maintains a featured portal, in addition. We interviewed Resident Mario, Ceranthor, Volcanoguy, and Avenue.

What motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Volcanoes?

Resident Mario: One of the things I love most about writing in this topic area is that it's very open. The United States Geological Service posts a good majority of their publications online, and contrary to what you expect, writing in the area isn't "heavy science" at all. The Global Volcanism Program is very comprehensive as well.
Ceranthor: Volcanology has always been a hobby of mine. When I joined WikiProject Volcanoes, I noted that the project had an array of featured and good content under its belt, and my goal was, from the start, to expand upon that. The quality content in the area is mostly on major volcanoes, so I wanted to work on some of the lesser-known but powerful ones. The WikiProject provided a great opportunity to collaborate with others to reach these goals.
Volcanoguy: A long-time and main contributor to Canadian volcano articles. Igneous petrology has been my favorite topic for over 5 years. I started editing the English Wikipedia in 2006 to expand and create articles related to volcanism. At first, Canada had a very limited amount of volcanological information. It was in horrible condition for a country that has over 100 volcanoes and 1000s of other magmatic features. My goal is to help increase the sparse knowledge of Canadian volcanism, though I sometimes expand/create articles for volcanological features outside of Canada and volcanic-associated mineralization throughout Canada.
Avenue: I've loved volcanoes since I was a teenager, so when I saw someone starting a project on the topic, I thought it looked like fun. And it has been.

Have you contributed to one of the project's recognized articles (GA, A, FA, FL, etc.)? Share your experience.

Resident Mario: Plenty. I keep a full list here. I've written 7 good articles, 1 Featured article (Loihi Seamount), 1 Featured list (List of volcanoes in the Hawaiian – Emperor seamount chain), and 1 Featured portal (our very own Volcanoes portal). My area of expertise are seamounts and Hawaiian volcanoes, and of course I'm most proud of what I've done for those two parts of the project. Basically, seamounts now exist on Wikipedia, and Hawaiian volcanoes are in much better condition. Possible next stop: Alaska: the land of vast wilderness and very remote volcanics!
Ceranthor: Yes, I have written four featured articles (Nevado del Ruiz, Cerro Azul (Chile volcano), David A. Johnston, and Armero tragedy) under the project's scope. I've also contributed to fourteen good articles (sixteen counting FAs) concerning a variety of volcano types, including supervolcanoes, stratovolcanoes, shield volcanoes, and even an article about a hotspot. My experience along the way has been exceptional. I found that there are lots of experts out there who are very capable in terms of copyediting and accuracy checking, as well as lots of non-experts willing to collaborate with others on volcano articles.
Volcanoguy: Several. I began improving Canadian volcanism articles to GA class in 2007 while my FA contributions did not start until early 2010. So far, I have brung 6 Canadian volcanism articles to GA class and 3 to FA class, one of which is currently at FAC.
Avenue: I helped bring Nevado del Ruiz to FA class, and more recently our list of largest volcanic eruptions to FL. It seems like FA standards are always increasing, so there's lots to be done to bring our existing FAs up to scratch, and I've tried to help save some from the chop at FAR. I've taken one volcano FP, too (inside the Tarawera rift).

Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?

Resident Mario: Personally, I've developed a distant relationship with WikiProject Mountains and WikiProject Geology, and a rather close one with WikiProject Hawaii, as well as a rather monologous one with WikiProject Seamounts. Along the way I've met some very capable and committed users hammering away here and there.
Ceranthor: I've found that other larger projects can be very helpful when looking for sources or input; however, I don't think I've made kept any lasting relationships with other projects other than the Volcanism of Hawaii workgroup.
Volcanoguy: Though not necessarily projects, there are two workgroups (Volcanism of Hawaii Workgroup and Volcanism of Canada Workgroup) that have close connections with WikiProject Volcanoes.

What are WikiProject Volcanoes' most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?

Resident Mario: I gave an outline, more or less, of our coverage gaps here. The project suffers most IMO from a lack of eruptive coverage; highly important and impactful eruptions like the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora and the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo (a redirect) only exist as sections of their respective volcanoes articles, often taking up the bulk of the article! It naught aught be, and they would make very easy targets for users looking for a DYK credit or two. The other big issues is the coverage gap in volcanologists and the relative staleness of Lists of volcanoes.
Volcanoguy: There are gaps all over the place. Over half of the project's articles are either stub or start class, especially ones that cover notable volcanoes and volcanological topics.
Avenue: There's plenty left to do, especially if you look beyond recent volcanoes in English-speaking countries. We don't have much on regional patterns of volcanism yet (only five countries have articles: Canada, Chile, Iceland, Italy, and New Zealand). There are huge gaps in our coverage of submarine and extraterrestrial volcanoes, too.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Resident Mario: New users are always needed. We're a work in progress, and the more users to help out, the better! You can fool all your friends that you're writing hard science while really just afixating your fascination with the hot red stuff :)

Next week, we'll visit a real archive. Feel free to browse ours in the meantime.

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2010-10-04

Milestone: 2,500th featured picture

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87
The 2,500th featured picture, "Coconut octopus", a creature that has evolved to use coconut shells for protection and to carry them for later use. Below, how the featured-picture process has evolved.

Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status:

Featured article Choice of the week: the Saint-Gaudens double eagle, a $20 gold coin produced by the US Mint from 1907 to 1933.
Choice of the week. The Signpost asked Bishonen, who has many FA promotions to her name, to select the best of the week. The choice is from both last week plus the four new FAs from the week before:

"Abandoning with regret all sports, music albums, battleships, flora and fauna after a quickish read-through—I'm very sorry, but I'm just not equipped for giving opinions on those subjects—I dived into David Bowie, Lat, and Grace Sherwood with relish. Such intriguing subjects! Articles that do them full justice! Picking one of those three wouldn't be easy, I reflected, and then promptly stumbled over an irresistible and unlikely article, my choice for the week. Saint-Gaudens double eagle is about a twenty-dollar gold coin, first produced in 1907. Strictly for the numismatics otaku, is it not? No. The piece is a great read for anybody who enjoys human, historical and cultural eccentricity and battleground. It's very considerate of the ignorant reader, and I especially appreciate that, even though the subject is so American, it's perfectly transparent and accessible to the international reader. I can hardly wait for the third part of Wehwalt's numismatics trilogy."

A tower of grey ash erupts above a mountain
The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, the largest eruption since 1912, was dwarfed by the earlier eruptions in FL Choice of the week, List of largest volcanic eruptions
Five lists were promoted:

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator and reviewer Parutakupiu for his choice of the best (ignoring his own):


Ancient wiki fossil: "Epicyclic gear ratios" appears to have been the first FP nomination; its featured status survives to this day.
User:Fir0002's Tau Emerald dragonfly was the 1,000th FP.
User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim's tropical Rambutan fruit on white background, with the skin peeled away to reveal the edible flesh on the right, was the 2,000th FP.
On the occasion of the 2,500th featured picture, The Signpost asked FPC regular Makeemlighter about the earliest days of the process and how it has evolved. "The early history was quite confusing when I dug it up", he says. "The original process, called 'Brilliant pictures', was described as the visual equivalent to 'Brilliant prose', the forerunner of the featured article process. The oldest FPC archive is from the start of 2004, but Featured Pictures existed for about a year before that. As far as I can tell, the earliest Featured Pictures were Peppermint and Corsican mint plant and Potato plant, although they were subsequently delisted. Epicyclic gear ratios was the first image nominated through the process, and has survived an attempt to delist it."

In those days, Makeemlighter says the process was fairly casual – some of the nominations even lacked closing statements. It took more than a year after the first FPs were created for a template to be developed. Fair-use images, not permitted nowadays, were allowed for a while, and there seemed to be little of the modern formal emphasis on the notion of encyclopedic value. The process was different mechanically, too: "Images that received any objections would not be promoted unless that objection was dealt with and a 'nearly unanimous consensus' was reached. Today, the general rule is 2/3 support and an image passes", within a strictly applied nine-day period. By October 2004, there were more than 130 FPs. Tau Emerald in flight was the 1,000th FP, in December 2007. Rambutan white background was the 2000th FP, in September 2009 .

This week was uncommon at FPC in that only four images were promoted. They will be considered for Choice of the week along with next week's promotions. Medium-sized images can be seen by clicking on "nom":

One file was promoted: File:Pleasant_Moments_Piano_Roll.ogg nom, a 1916 recording of Pleasant moments (2 m, 56 s), a ragtime waltz recorded on a piano roll by Scott Joplin. Thought lost until discovered by User:PlayerRoll in 2006, it has been scanned and recorded on a grand piano as an MP3 file. Piano rolls—in which perforations were etched into a roll of stiff paper that could operate a pneumatic playing system on a piano—were one of the first forms of digital memory, and provided home entertainment to millions of people in the early 20th century.

Pleasant Moments—a piano-roll recording of a ragtime performance by Scott Joplin, 1916

Administrators

This week saw no new administrators.

New featured picture: the Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine fifth-generation fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology. It was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities that include ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles.


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2010-10-04

Tricky and Lengthy Dispute Resolution

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By Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, leaving two open.

Open cases

Stevertigo 2 (Week 1)

This case concerns accusations of wiki-hounding and disruptive editing. Stevertigo alleges that several editors deem his editing to be "disruptive" or "in need of banning" because they "still hold the grudge that previous cases did not find in their favor regarding [Stevertigo]". He also alleges that he "largely won" an argument against two editors in relation to the Time article, and that those two editors began editing the Punishment article due to an undue interest in Stevertigo's editing rather than due to an interest in the article. The case is currently in the evidence phase.

Climate change (CC) (Week 17)

Innovations have been introduced for this case, including special rules of conduct that were put in place at the start of the arbitration. 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.

A few participants recently made further criticisms of the handling of the case ([4] [5] [6] [7] [8]). Arbitrator Roger Davies was the only user who responded in ArbCom's defense but agreed with some of the criticisms and reconfirmed that after the case has closed, a workshop will be held where users may provide feedback ([9]). This week, further attempts were made to manage the quantity of discussion, and arbitrators made further additions and votes to the proposed decision. The proposed decision is said to be "winding down" as arbitrators move towards a final decision.

Proposals being considered for the decision include:

  • A recently drafted discretionary sanctions scheme that was specifically tailored for the CC case & topic (see earlier Signpost coverage concerning discretionary sanctions clarification)
  • Committee reminders to editors and administrators
  • Committee encouragement to administrators and checkusers
  • An evidence sub-page remedy (see earlier Signpost coverage of a similar remedy)
  • Rulings concerning 15 editors (including 2 former administrators), 2 current administrators, and 1 current ombudsman/functionary (a former steward)
Some proposed rulings in relation to the 18 individuals
  • 1 administrator significantly edited CC content issues previously and should not participate as an uninvolved administrator in CC sanction requests
  • All 17 other users made significant contributions towards a battleground atmosphere in their capacity as editors or administrators.
    • The ombudsman/functionary, is still uninvolved, but should not participate as an uninvolved administrator in CC sanction requests
    • The other administrator is topic-banned from CC (no reference has been made to involvement or significant content edits)
    • The 15 editors (including an editor who recently retired as well as a former administrator who invoked his right to vanish during the case) are topic-banned from CC.

Closed cases

PHG (Week 1)

Recently, Per Honor et Gloria requested that his restrictions (which ban him from articles relating to the Mongol Empire, the Crusades, and Hellenistic India) be lifted. The restriction was imposed after the case found that there was a continued likelihood of POV-pushing if he was permitted to edit the articles he was banned from. Arbitrator SirFozzie stated that he is currently not leaning towards modifying the restrictions.

Eastern European mailing list (Week 4 & Week 2)

At the time of writing, no other arbitrators have responded since last week to:

Race and intelligence (Week 4)

The request to impose a topic ban on Ferahgo the Assassin from race and intelligence related articles remains open. Earlier in the week, Ferahgo the Assassin stated that she would voluntarily accept a probation; she alleges that this would avoid the need for incessant accusations by the same two involved users from the case, while allowing uninvolved administrators to determine if there are any legitimate concerns with her editing. At the time of writing, no arbitrator has responded to this suggestion yet.

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2010-10-04

Code reviewers, October Engineering update, brief news

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By Jarry1250 and Jean-Frédéric

More developers to review code

Following Brion Vibber's temporary rehiring (see last week's Signpost), and with the absence of the only previous code reviewer (developer Tim Starling) imminent, another measure was last week taken by the Foundation to unblock bottlenecks in the code review process. Rob Lanphier (User:RobLa) announced that, partly because of Tim's absence, and partly "because we're long overdue for distributing the load", there would be an expansion in the number of users able to take part in the "code review" process, which defines the time it takes for new code to get from the sandbox into a live Wikimedia site, or in some cases a MediaWiki release version (wikitech-l mailing list).

October update on WMF Engineering

The Foundation has published a draft version of what its focuses have been over the past month in terms of "major development and operations initiatives" (MediaWiki.org):

This is a monthly follow-up post to September's WMF Engineering update; for October's, collaboration was invited (unsuccessfully).

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.

  • Full history dumps (backups) of the English Wikipedia have been generated in chunk form for the first time. The chunks are now awaiting re-compression before being in their final form (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • Several bugs affecting the API's "paraminfo" module were fixed (bug #25248). (They remain in MediaWiki 1.16 and the Wikimedia version of MediaWiki and may later be backported)
  • The Foundation has begun advertising for the new post of "bugmeister". The position, which will be filled during October, entails "organizing public bug reporting for the Wikimedia projects, and establishing community habits to ensure that our bug tracking tools become and remain organized and friendly" and is seen as a direct response to criticisms of the existing processes, where difficult bugs can languish for years.
  • Gerard Meijssen (User:GerardM) has been blogging significantly about the importance of Unicode support for the Burmese script in growing support for small language Wikipedias in South-East Asia.
  • Guillaume Paumier proposed a "universal language picker" when choosing between different display languages. It would allow multiple inputs (French, Français, Französisch) to be mapped to the same language code (fr).
  • Magnus Manske unveiled a tool to easily share media from Wikimedia Commons. The tool called "Stockphoto" adds several links to the file description page, inspired by early designs by Guillaume Paumier for the Multimedia Usability project. These links allow users to easily download the file or to share it by e-mail and provide code snippets to use it in wikis or blogs. This new feature was quickly deployed for all users, including those editing anonymously.

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