WikiProject California

WikiProject news

News in brief

• Check out new portals for Santana, Piano, and Submarines
• Newly founded projects covering North America and East Asia are looking for members.
• The Guild of Copy Editors Backlog Elimination Drive has begun. Join in the fun and earn a barnstar along the way.
• The new WikiProject Multi-sport events seeks to improve Wikipedia's coverage of non-Olympic and non-Paralympic multi-sport events like the Commonwealth Games. They could use your help.
• Discussions about the December 2010 Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive are underway.

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

This week's interview almost didn't happen. When we aproached WikiProject California, a debate ensued among the project's members as to whether their project deserved to be featured in the Signpost. Concerns about the number of active members and how quickly the project produces featured content left many of the members second-guessing their efforts. Zzyzx11 commented that the Culture of California was limiting the success of WikiProject California and driving contributors to focus on other, more narrowly defined WikiProjects. Spongie555 considered the project's articles to be strong while the project itself remains messy, a description echoed by Killiondude. Optigan13 pointed to individual editors as the source of the project's many featured and good articles, noting that his contributions to California articles have focused on cleanup. To Amerique, the project's greatest attribute is offering a forum for editors to discuss articles and develop consensus. The Report learned firsthand just how well the project serves as a medium for discussion.

WikiProject California, started in June 2005, is home to 52 featured articles, 26 featured lists, 2 A-class articles, and 140 good articles. The project maintains portals for California, the Greater Los Angeles area, the San Francisco Bay area, and the Great Central Valley. Several task forces of varying activity cover the state's geographic areas. Collaborations with other projects include WikiProject California State Highways (with WikiProject U.S. Roads), WikiProject California Schools (with WikiProject Schools), and WikiProjects for the University of California and California State University (both with WikiProject Universities). Amerique and Killiondude took some time to introduce us to the project that covers the most populous state in the United States.

What motivated you to join WikiProject California?

Amerique: A lot of work I was already doing was on CA subjects. Joining the CA WikiProject enabled me to seek consensus on some contentious local issues from editors knowledgeable about CA & WP.

Killiondude: Like Amerique, I was already working on a lot of California related articles and was interested in collaborating with other people who had the same interest.

Have you contributed to any of the project's 52 featured articles, 26 featured lists, 2 A-class articles, and 140 good articles? Are you currently working on promoting an article to FA or GA status?

Amerique: I was the lead editor on getting University of California, Riverside to FA a few years ago. I also helped University of California, Santa Cruz retain GA status when it was under reassessment. Currently helping out with improving Chula Vista, California and various other regional and university articles as I have time.

In addition to cities, counties, and geographic features, what are some interesting articles covered by the project?

Amerique: California English, dude. Also, Eliza Tibbets is an interesting bio of the woman responsible for the early development of the CA orange industry.

If I may add two more, apart from hosting the hippie epicenter during the Summer of Love in SF, CA also bequeathed unto the world the advent of Pentecostalism during the Azusa Street Revival in LA.

Nine of the project's ten most popular pages are about celebrities or technology companies (Proposition 19 makes the list at number ten). How does Hollywood and Silicon Valley affect the scope of your project? Does this help or hurt your efforts?

Amerique: So far as Hollywood and Silicon Valley subjects are taken as symbolic of California or the "California lifestyle", I would say they do affect the scope of the project. I do not think they hurt the project; the more media resources that are out there the better the associated articles can be, I think.

The project is home to many task forces and keeps an eye on several other California-related projects. How were most of these task forces and projects born? Are some more successful than others? Has there been an effort to consolidate?

Amerique: I was only personally involved in creating Wikipedia:WikiProject University of California. Generally, these projects are easily started when someone takes the initiative to do so, but are difficult to maintain consistent interest in. Most of the local, regional or municipal WikiProjects were consolidated into task forces of WikiProject CA last year, I believe. Most of them were inactive and it was decided that the work of all of them would be better off if monitored from the centralized framework provided by a state-level project.

Killiondude: There were several region-specific projects spun off as their own separate WikiProject from WP:CAL, including SF Bay Area's, Southern California's, Los Angeles', Inland Empire's, and Santa Barbara County's projects. Some of those projects started out with a lot of support and backing from active Wikipedians. However, as time went on some of them lost the drive and were mostly inactive. Optigan13 (talk · contribs) starting discussions and ultimately merging all of those projects back in as task forces under WP:CAL. In my opinion, this was a great idea and probably stirred up WT:CAL as a more active discussion place.

WikiProject California maintains a cleanup list. Has there been a push to clear out this backlog?

Killiondude: If I recall correctly, individuals have asked on the project's talk page for help clearing specific lists of California related clean-up listings, but I'm not sure there's been a successfully organized effort to work on backlogs.

As the most populous state in the United States, has it been easy to attract participants? If not, what do you feel is preventing more editors from contributing to the project?

Amerique: In some ways, I would say the project like the state is a victim of its own diversity, in that there seems to be little in terms of social solidarity holding the populace together or causing people to view collaboration across individual, factional interests as a way of getting things done. So, anything that is able to get done tends to be as the result of an unopposed individual initiative. Nothing prevents anyone from participating, but it may be difficult to find people interested in or capable of effectively collaborating.

Killiondude: As mentioned above, California has quite a bit of diversity. Wikipedia editors who live in California might enjoy editing film related topics (Hollywood), technological related topics (Silicon Valley), etc. I don't think there's been a concerted effort to necessarily "attract" editors to the WikiProject. That might be an idea the project takes into account.

How can a new member help today?

Amerique: There is plenty of work, that's for sure. Any sort of "help" would be helpful, I think.

Killiondude: As linked above, the cleanup list is never ending. ;-) I enjoy visiting User:AlexNewArtBot/CaliforniaSearchResult from time to time and helping out (or just reading) some new articles posted to Wikipedia that relate to California. There's also usually several articles that are good article nominees or featured article nominees that fall within the scope of WPCAL, and editors are always welcome to help those pages out or work on another article to bring to those venues.

Next week, we'll munch on a tasty morsel. Until then, cure your cravings with old reports in the archive.

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2010-11-08

No, not science fiction—real science

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87

New administrator

The Signpost welcomes TheCatalyst31 (nom) as our newest admin. TheCatalyst is a member of several WikiProjects, including Trains, US roads, and Cities, and has created many articles on small communities. TheCatalyst has a strong record of gnoming and page patrolling, has contributed to the AfD process, and has assisted the creation of three Good Articles.

Featured articles

Six articles were promoted to featured status:

• Lavanify (nom), about two teeth from an animal that lived on Madagascar about 70 million years ago. It is part of the gondwanatheres, the earliest mammals to evolve high-crowned teeth, possibly to eat grass (nominated by Ucucha).
• Dustbin Baby (film) (nom), a BBC television film first broadcast in 2008. Amazingly, nominator J Milburn managed to gain permission for the release of several high-quality images to illustrate the film.
• HMS Indefatigable (1909) (nom), a battle cruiser of the British Royal Navy, commissioned in 1911. The ship's stormy five-year life, which ended when it blew up after German shelling, seems worthy of a feature film (Dank and Sturmvogel 66).
• Liberty Head nickel (nom), best remembered for the mysterious 1913 nickel, of which five are known. It is an interesting story, both for the inception of the nickel and how it came to be replaced, says nominator Wehwalt.
• The Story of Miss Moppet (nom), a moral tale about teasing, written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published in 1906 (Susanne2009NYC; picture below).
• Mechanical filter (nom), a device that blocks selected signal frequencies, and which has been a significant part of the electronics industry since the 1870s (SpinningSpark)

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Slim Virgin to select the best of the week.

“

It's daunting to have to choose a favourite from such an excellent list. Wehwalt's Liberty Head nickel stands out, as his always do, for the quality of the writing and research. Ucucha's Lavanify, the story of two very old teeth, is fascinating. J Milburn's Dustbin Baby (film) has made me want to see the film, and it's the kind of article people love Wikipedia for: you watch the film then want to know who's who, and who said what, and there it all is, courtesy of a kind Wikipedian. SpinningSpark's Mechanical filter is another example of an article people will be grateful for, as is Dank and Sturmvogel 66's article about HMS Indefatigable (1909), on which 1,015 men died in 1916 when she was blown up in the North Sea. But the one I enjoyed most, just at a personal level, was Susanne2009NYC's The Story of Miss Moppet. Susanne's done some great work for Wikipedia on Beatrix Potter's books, including several GAs. I love the writing, the illustrations, the background details—and especially the Aristotelian analysis! I look forward to seeing it on the front page.

”

Featured lists

Five lists were promoted:

• List of MBTA Commuter Rail stations (nom) (nominated by Grk1011)
• List of World Heritage Sites in Peru (nom) (Grsz11)
• Mariah Carey singles discography (nom) (Petergriffin9901)
• PDSA Gold Medal (nom) (The Rambling Man)
• Celine Dion singles discography (nom) (Max24)

Featured pictures

Six images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":

• Harriet Beecher Stowe (nom), a portrait of American writer and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe (created by Francis Holl).
• Child with smallpox (nom), a young girl in Bangladesh in 1973 infected with smallpox (created by CDC / James Hicks; picture at right).
• The Reichstag building, Berlin (nom) (in German, the Reichstagsgebäude), was first constructed 1884–94 and housed the Parliament of the German Empire. It was severely damaged by fire in 1933 and fully restored in 1990. It now houses the German Parliament. The glass dome was designed by British architect Norman Foster and was added in 1993 (Matthew Field).
• The "queen conch" (nom), a species of edible sea snail, is one of the largest mollusks native to the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic, from Bermuda to Brazil. Reaching up to 35.2 cm in shell length, the queen conch is herbivorous and lives in seagrass beds (H. Zell).
• Laser towards the Milky Way (nom), in which a laser beams upwards to measure the distortions of Earth's ever-changing atmosphere. A group of astronomers were observing the centre of the Milky Way using the laser guide star facility at Yepun, one of the four Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Yepun’s laser beam has created an artificial "star" at an altitude of 90 km high in the Earth's mesosphere, as a reference point for improved observations. More scientific information is provided at the image description page (ESO/Y. Beletsky; picture at the top).
• Bubble-tip anemone (nom), (Entacmaea quadricolor), a species of sea anemone of Indo-Pacific origin that grows to 30 cm in diameter. It is believed that the bubbles—found only in the smaller individuals that colonise the regions closer to the surface—help the organism to capture sunlight (Nick Hobgood; picture below).

Choice of the week. We asked H. Zell to judge what he believes is the best new featured picture, disregarding his own new featured picture.

"This week saw a wide range of themes: American history, medical science, historical architecture, and biology, and physics. Very impressive is the alien-like Bubble tip anemone. I finally decided on Laser towards the Milky Way. A comparison with similar pictures in the same category—for example 1, 2, and 3—shows the technical difficulty of taking such shots by night. Here, the stars are bright and the sharpness is astonishing: the acid test is that these features stand up to scrutiny in the full-resolution display."

Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.

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2010-11-08

The countdown begins

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By Skomorokh and Tony1

Related articles

December 2010 ArbCom election

The community has spoken
13 December 2010

Voting in full swing
29 November 2010

Candidates still stepping forward
22 November 2010

The countdown begins
8 November 2010

So what is being an arbitrator actually like?
25 October 2010

More articles

The community has spoken 13 December 2010 Voting in full swing 29 November 2010 Candidates still stepping forward 22 November 2010 The countdown begins 8 November 2010 So what is being an arbitrator actually like? 25 October 2010

It's that time of year again: the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections are almost upon us, and election fever is intensifying. ArbCom is the final stage of Wikipedia's dispute-resolution process, and the arbitrators are typically experienced and respected editors. The 2010 election will select as many as 11 new arbitrators, whose terms will start on 1 January 2011. Interested editors are welcome to join the team of volunteer coordinators; their responsibilities are set out here.

To become an arbitrator is to take on a high-profile role, and history shows that the personal stamina and confidence of the Committee's members are important if it is to serve the community well. Among other things, arbitrators require the ability to analyse written evidence in relation to the pillars, policies, and guidelines concerning editors' behaviour, and the ability to distinguish relevant from irrelevant evidence. Arbitrators need to be able to write clear, concise English, and to be familiar with the principles of conflict of interest and neutrality.

Many Wikipedians regard it desirable that the Committee have a range of skills and backgrounds among its members. Other skills that may be relevant, although by no means essential, are the ability to draft decisions, motions and injunctions, and to contribute to the organisation of the Committee's processes.

Editors who believe they have what it takes are urged to consider running for election. Nomination is open to any editor in good standing over the age of 18, who is of legal age in their place of residence, and who has made at least 1,000 mainspace edits before the opening of the nomination period. Candidates are not required to be administrators or to have any other special permissions.

Stages of the election

• Call for nominations: Prospective candidates will officially be invited to stand on Sunday 14 November with the opening of a 10-day nomination period. Candidates nominate themselves, and create a candidate profile made up of a statement of up to 400 words and their responses to the "general" questions. Below these general questions, each eligible voter may ask one "individual" question of each candidate, up to 75 words in length. These arrangements are to avoid a repetition of the widespread complaints by voters in previous elections that the number of questions spiralled out of control and did not assist their decision-making. Editors are, of course, free to ask any number of questions on candidates' user and election talk pages, which will be open to community discussion. Nominations will close on 23 November.
  
• The voting period: After nominations close, there will be a two-day fallow period for discussion, for candidates to complete their responses to questions, and to allow for the management of technical issues. The 10-day voting period will start on Friday 26 November and will close at the end of Sunday 5 December. Voting will be via the SecurePoll extension, as for last year's election. Individual questions and discussion are welcome right through the process until the close of voting on 5 December.
  
• Results, certification and announcement: The tally will be posted and certified on the election page by the scrutineers—stewards whose home wiki is not the English Wikipedia. This is expected to take up to a week after the close of voting. Jimbo Wales will formally announce the appointments within a few days of the scrutineers' announcement.

Request for Comment: results

A Request for Comment was opened by MuZemike on 24 October, to determine community attitudes to the voting procedures. The proposals that attracted most debate were:

• that secret ballots (i.e. the SecurePoll interface) be used, or that open voting be reinstated;
• that straight support/neutral oppose voting be retained, or that some form of proportional representation (i.e. the Schulze method, Condorcet method or single transferable vote) be used in its stead.
• that last-minute withdrawals by candidates should be disallowed;
• that appointees must gain a ranking percentage of at least 50% and that seats should remain vacant if insufficient candidates satisfy this requirement;
• that a "none of the above" ballot option be provided;
• that the parameters for the 2011 election be left unsettled for the time being.

The discussion featured several other proposals that gained negligible support.

The RFC was closed on 3 November by an uninvolved administrator, Llywrch, who concluded on the main point of contention that there was consensus to retain secret ballots and the SecurePoll interface (a proposal to this effect by Will Beback attracted the support of 85 editors). However, this judgement came with two qualifications. The closing admin noted that even if support for using the Schulze method had been overwhelming, it would not be feasible to implement it due to software limitations. Secondly, Llywrch found that "[t]he argument supporting open & transparent discussions about the different candidates are compelling", and recommended that such discussions be facilitated.

Llywrch noted that two other proposals "failed to gather anywhere near the support that the secret ballot proposal did", but that they nevertheless ought to be treated as "non-binding suggestions". While most statements in the RfC generated discussion on the talkpage, the debates on these two were particularly intense. The first, a proposal by Neutron supported by 35 editors, was that candidates ought not to be allowed to withdraw from the election once voting has begun, and that their results be "reported along with all other candidates." The second such proposal, by Risker with the support of 31 editors, stipulated that in order to be appointed to ArbCom, candidates must have self-nominated in the most recent election and received more support than opposition. The closing admin in recommending that Risker's proposal be non-binding, noted that this "gives Jimmy Wales carte blanche to appoint anyone he wants to this empty seat. Do we want him to appoint someone people voted for, or for anyone else who has an account who strikes his fancy?" Wales issued a response on the considerations that motivated the proposal.

Further discussion

The election talk page has seen considerable discussion, particularly over the past week, concerning several matters unaddressed in the RfC. These include:

• how and to what extent there should be attempts to encourage voter turnout;
• the duration of the discussion period; and
• various discussions on userspace voter guides.
  
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2010-11-08

No cases this week; Date delinking sanctions reduced for one party; History ban extended

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By Tilman Bayer and Ohconfucius

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving none open.

Closed cases

Date delinking (Week 2)

Ohconfucius requested that an amendment be made to relax the restriction which prohibited him from using any automation in the article space.

At the time of writing, only arbitrators had commented on this request. Two arbitrators said they were "impressed with the quality of [Ohconfucius'] contributions since the Date delinking case, and with the tone and substance of [his] comments", and suggested terminating the automation restriction entirely. The Committee followed their suggestion and adopted a motion which terminates the restriction and permits Ohconfucius to use automation subject to community guidelines. Ohconfucius is still indefinitely limited to editing with a single account. Additionally, he is still topic-banned from style and editing guidelines relating to the linking or unlinking of dates, and related discussions.

PHG

Following the 30 March 2010 renewal of his ban on editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year imposed on 14 March 2008, User:Per Honor et Gloria filed an amendment on Tuesday for the topic ban to be lifted. It was decided by unanimous vote of six Arbitrators on 8 November 2010 that the ban be extended indefinitely. PHG's participation is limited to talk pages, subject to civil interaction with fellow editors. The discussion is here.

Ban Appeals Subcommittee appointment

Arbitrator Mailer diablo was appointed by the Arbitration Committee on 7 November to fill the vacancy on the Ban Appeals Subcommittee at least until the end of this year. All subcommittee memberships will be reviewed after the December Arbcom elections.

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2010-11-08

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250

November Engineering Update published

The Foundation's November Engineering Update was this week published to the Wikimedia Techblog, and gives a brief overview of all technical operations in the last month. Developer Rob Lanphier (User:RobLa) gave an executive summary of the month:

“

October featured continued work on the Virginia data center migration, continued work on features such as ResourceLoader, Article Feedback and Upload Wizard, increased focus on code review, new testing infrastructure, many new job postings, and the Hack-A-Ton in Washington DC.

”

Additionally, a number of items had had their statuses updated since last month. For example, the Foundation noted that the establishment of the new Virginia data centre (originally planned to be online by January 1, 2011) had been delayed temporarily, but was happy with work done to the donation-handling infrastructure. In addition, the Foundation announced that it was "on track to deploy a new version of Pending Changes on November 16" and the release of the new Resource Loader was nearing, but that development of LiquidThreads had slowed due to lack of available personnel.

Likewise, regarding the new media upload wizard, the Tech team said that Neil Kandalgaonkar had finished development of a temporary storage system for media files that are missing required metadata like licensing or source information, and that Roan Kattouw has started the prep-work for deployment of this feature, scheduled for late November. Other developments included the news that developer Ryan Lane had started actively investigating OpenStack for open-source testing and that the Foundation were pleased with making some headway in code review (note the drop in unreviewed revisions of the MediaWiki software shown to the right of the chart), after allocating more resources to the task (see Signpost coverage: "More developers to review code"). In addition, the success of the Hack-a-Ton (cf. Signpost coverage) was noted, as was an intention to revamp Wikimedia's mobile sites.

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.

Old color [10]

New color [11]

Current color

• The background color of the "You have new messages" box notifying users of changes to their user talk pages is being modified from orange to blue in the Vector skin (bug #25145, r76017).
• {{fullurl:Special:Mytalk|diff=cur}} now works as expected (bug #25829).
  
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