Interview with Johanna Niesyto and Nathaniel Tkacz from "Critical Point of View"

The Signpost recently interviewed Wikipedia researchers Johanna Niesyto and Nathaniel Tkacz from the "Critical Point of View" (CPOV) initiative. That initiative organized three conferences about Wikipedia this year, in Bangalore, Amsterdam, and Leipzig (see brief Signpost coverage of the second and third conferences). Via e-mail, we talked about these conferences and other activities of CPOV, the state of Wikipedia research in the humanities, criticism of Wikipedia, and the relationship between Wikipedians and those who research their activities.

Let's start with some basic questions: What is the CPOV conference series – how did it originate, what was the idea behind it, and what has been the scope of the three conferences so far?

CPOV has put on several conferences (in India, Netherlands and Germany), but it is more than these three events. We have a discussion list (cpov@listcultures.org), websites in German and English, as well as one forthcoming book. CPOV is the name we give to our overall initiative, which encompasses all these things.

Regarding the origins of the initiative, several of us were already doing research on Wikipedia. Geert Lovink from the Institute for Network Cultures had the means and desire to bring us all together. We started a dialogue in late 2008 and mapped out our mutual interests and a vision for the project/s. At the most general level, we all agreed that 1) Wikipedia had become well and truly mainstream and part of the ordinary existence and daily routine of people in many countries, and; 2) that it was time to start a deeper and broader discussion about all facets of open network projects, of which Wikipedia is the most visible and successful. By 2008, there were many publications describing and celebrating various dimensions of Wikipedia. This was all fine, but we felt there was more to the story. The role of research is to do more than wonder at the marvels of new developments. We were also, however, very disappointed with the kinds of critique that had been put forward so far. The type of positions advocated by Andrew Keen, but also the oft-cited piece on Wikipedia by Robert McHenry, both seemed very conservative and offered little insight into the transformations that were taking place. Mourning the loss of so-called experts, ivory towers, and institutions seemed to miss the point. We also all share a loosely humanities-based background and we thought that these perspectives were under-represented in Wikipedia research.

Transformations in net cultures – new technologies, new modes of organising, and so on – translate into all areas of life. We are all bound up in these transformations and we see Wikipedia (its license, structure, mode of production, rhetoric, and so on) as a chance to reflect upon them. Indeed, because Wikipedia is so often held up as an example – as a model of successful mass collaboration, participation, transparency and so on – it is an ideal place to begin. In the German conference one participant said: "We have to move away from a culture of participatory ignorance towards a culture of participatory observation." While we are certainly not suggesting that we are all ignorant, we agree that we need to spend more time scrutinizing the new scenery.

In terms of scope, we have covered a lot of ground, all of which is detailed on our website. Some of the things we have covered (all in relation to Wikipedia of course) include: notions of the free and open; the history of encyclopaedias; designing debate; education; Western knowledge; art; resistance; and digital governance.

We have been very deliberate in making CPOV "international", just like Wikipedia. History is that of dead white men and Wikipedia is compiled and ordered largely by alive white men (usually young and geeky). This Western and even English-centrism is well known within the community and an ongoing challenge, but it is something our initiative, as a smaller group, has tried to recognize and address from the start (with limited success). For us, this doesn't necessarily mean increasing the number of entries in marginalized or "underprivileged" languages. What does it mean for a culture to have its knowledge translated into the encyclopaedic form? What is at stake in this process? This brings us into the realms of post-colonial studies, cultural anthropology, and development studies.

Who are the members of the group behind CPOV? Which other organizations and institutions have been involved in the CPOV conferences, apart from the Institute for Network Cultures?

There is no such thing as members or an institutional group. Rather, we see ourself as a loose network that may spread through different channels as well. However, there has been a relatively stable core who came up with the agenda, produced the events, the readers, and so on. Mainly, it is Geert Lovink (Amsterdam), Johanna Niesyto (Siegen), Nathaniel Tkacz (Melbourne), and Nishant Shah (Bangalore) who connected in constant discussion. Next to it there were also more people from the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam and the Center for Internet Society (Bangalore), such as Ivy Roberts, Juliana Brunello, Margreet Riphagen, Sabine Niederer, Serena Westra, and Sunil Abraham, who contributed to the conferences and the websites. On the side of the German conference in Leipzig we have built a cooperation with the university’s library director Ulrich Johannes Schneider and cultiv – a society for international cultural projects that is based in Leipzig.

What about yourself (Johanna and Nate) – what are your personal research interests regarding Wikipedia?

Johanna: I am affiliated with the professorship of comparative political research at the University of Siegen, Germany. In the past I worked as research fellow in the project Changing Protest and Media Cultures: Transnational Anti-Corporate Campaigns and Digital Communication in the Collaborative Research Centre "Media Upheavals", which was funded by the German Research Foundation. My field of research comprises questions of contentious politics, transnational public spaces, and political knowledge production, with regard to the Internet in general and the Wikipedia in particular. The objective of my Wikipedia research is the exploration of the interrelations between knowledge production and the political. The English and German language versions of Wikipedia are taken as examples to explore both the politics of knowledge production and political knowledge production. Do differences in terms of policies and "politics" exist with regard to the language versions or are differences rather due to the type of conflict? How and in which ways is political knowledge produced on the platform? What commonalities and differences can be found by comparing the two language versions? Overall I do elaborate the question of how we can conceptualize the relationship between the political and knowledge production so as not to fall into the trap of a simple dichotomy between "knowledge as independent of the political" and the political as all-embracing category ("everything is political").

Nathaniel: I am in the final stages of a PhD at the University of Melbourne in the School of Culture and Communication. My work sits at the intersection of media theory, political philosophy, and technology studies. I use Wikipedia as a constant case study to explore the political organisation of "open projects" – that is, projects influenced by the rise of open source and free software but translated into other areas. More details about my work, writings and interests can be found at <nathanieltkacz.net>.

How much is the "C" of "CPOV" related to critical theory? Have there been connections with non-academic criticism of Wikipedia?

CPOV was chosen to contrast playfully with the foundational and self-contradictory NPOV policy. We thought it clearly signified that we were not a bunch of "gee-whiz isn't Wikipedia great" academics. We all know what is great about Wikipedia already. The "C" is about the general idea of critical discussion and not so much a reference to certain strands of theoretical thoughts, although such strands are part of the term's history. We do, however, understand "critical" partly as a commitment to describing power structures; how new modes of organising and new practices generate new ways of dividing and categorizing people, new winners, and losers. Other dimensions may include considerations of the interaction of technical artifacts and humans, translocality, (encyclopaedic) knowledge construction, changes in education and sciences, and so on. Part of being critical also means that the terms of debate are up for grabs, that we are not reliant on the language of the Wikipedia community in our descriptions. There is a long and tiresome debate about this in the academic world that might be crudely summed up in the terms "normative research" (the idea that you begin with a set of concepts, such as class, gender, and age, and then apply them to an object of study) and "empirical research" (where the researcher tries not to bring in any outside concepts to "fit" the description). In practice, research is always a combination of pre-existing ideas (what some might call academic baggage) and empirical encounters. What we think is important is to see the productivity in the encounter. Academic concepts, sometimes far divorced from online communities, might hold crucial insights for understanding something happening online. Then again, they might not!

Generally, there is not too much cross-over between non-academic criticism of Wikipedia and CPOV. However, some of the examples given in that Wikipedia article are key historical moments in the popular media, so they do come up from time to time. Perhaps the suitably vague "Impact on Society" section of the article is where we would fit in, but it only has five lines of text so far and it doesn't seem to be about society! A lot of the criticism page is about very obvious things: accuracy of information; conflicts of interest; quality of articles; bias; anonymity; plagiarism; etc. Even though these seem very general, they are really quite specific and are to do with quality and trust. What about how Wikipedia is used in the classroom? What can its organizational form can tell us about working together online? What can Wikipedia tell us about the encyclopaedic impulse? The scope of CPOV is much larger, but our questions are also generally more specific, more directed to a particular set of concerns. Wikipedia becomes a lens.

You, Johanna, observed in another interview that there are currently two generations of Wikipedia researchers – an older one who started to research it after they graduated, and a younger one who already did their thesis on Wikipedia. Would you say that there has been some kind of "professionalization" of academic Wikipedia research, in that the average Wikipedia researcher is now more likely to devote the majority of their research to Wikipedia than a while ago, and therefore has more in-depth knowledge of the subject?

Academic research about Wikipedia is still in its infancy. There is much mainly quantitative research that attempted to grasp the dynamics and developments of Wikipedia. “Professionalization” may not be the right term to describe what is now happening: It is rather a growing awareness from the strand of humanities-based research to seriously engage with Wikipedia. And it's surprising that it took such a long time since Wikipedia has not become a global knowledge-reference overnight. Maybe research needed another generation that more actively participates in net cultures. This is not only restricted to researching Wikipedia but also (commercial) net projects such as Facebook, Google, and YouTube. However, when it comes to research about Wikipedia there are still many areas uncovered in terms of academic analysis of Wikipedia, such as the relationships of Wikipedia to other knowledge institutions such as schools, universities, and museums; or research of the use of Wikipedia that not only looks at editors’ activities but how (young) people use Wikipedia and what cultural practices they develop when it comes to constructing knowledge.

In your observation, what are the most common misunderstandings or misgivings that Wikipedians have about Wikipedia researchers, and vice versa? How can they be overcome?

This is a very good question! And we would further distinguish between researchers working with the foundation and those with no formal ties. There is also a spectrum of involvement, with some researchers being active community members and others having little or nothing to do with the project. A lot of room for different kinds of work, and different kinds of misunderstanding!

We have noticed that Wikipedians are sometimes critical of academic perspectives because they do not align with their lived experiences. Once again, this is a difference between two types of knowledge. It might very well be that the researcher hasn't done their research, such as when researchers harp on about Wikipedia's claims to the "truth" and pay little attention to the actual policies of verification, no original research, and so on (which are much more interesting). On the other hand, some research is not supposed to align with the experiences or expectations of members. Indeed, it might have little to do with the concerns of the community. The CPOV initiative is of the opinion that Wikipedia is too large a part of many people's lives for all research to be related to and endorsed by and concerned with the community.

Perhaps the most common misunderstanding is when Wikipedia research is aligned with traditional notions of scientific knowledge production and therefore as an authority of truth – an authority that then "tells it how it is" about the project. We would stress that research is plural and always an interaction between the researchers and the objects they research. Realizing the multiplicity of research also means going beyond a "Wikipedia-centrism" towards an awareness of research questions that address broader phenomena, of which Wikipedia is only one part. This could be one way to overcome some misunderstandings as perhaps researchers and Wikipedians would engage in a dialogue that is directed towards a third object of interest. On the other hand, we also think that sometimes a distance from the community is perfectly acceptable.

The third conference in Leipzig appears to have made a step towards the community, involving the local Wikimedia chapter for outreach workshops and a panel discussion, and inviting Wikipedians for a "Sciences and Wikipedia" roundtable. It also seems that the audience contained a larger ratio of very active Wikipedians. Did this result in a successful dialogue?

Johanna: It is true that the Leipzig CPOV conference did more consciously search for a discussion with the Wikipedia community and the institutional backbone behind the German-speaking Wikipedia. While on English-speaking events such as Wikimania or Wikisym an international exchange between researchers and Wikipedians is fostered, we thought it is time not only to translate these discussions into German but also to look for the specifics that are grounded in German speaking humanities research cultures as well as in the German language Wikipedia itself. The German language Wikipedia is one of the biggest language versions and has both its own cultures (think only about the discussions on "relevance criteria" [Signpost coverage]) but also served – in particular with regard to the introduction of the Wikimedia chapter model – often as a provider of ideas or even as a "role model". Also, the Leipzig conference actively sought to launch a broader debate in the media, and here Wikipedians' voices, experiences and criticisms should not be missed. In this respect I think we have been able to get public attention in order to recognize that Wikipedia is plural and worth a closer look that goes behind questions of accuracy and quality.

Within the debate during the roundtable the question of the self-conception of Wikipedia emerged over and over and was also linked to the observed social closure within Wikipedia. How can Wikipedia open up to users and to sciences in plural? Some Wikipedians asked how academia can contribute to Wikipedia – in that way Wikipedia and other free culture institutions are a sign for a change in science communication towards society in Germany.

However, there were also some academics that were puzzled by the discussion cultures of Wikipedians. Reading the follow-up blog entries, there were two conference participants claiming that Wikipedians and Wikipedia researchers did not really talk to each other. We do think there is more to the story: As said, there are different languages that need to find a meta-language going beyond pure internal Wikipedia knowledge and connecting it to broader phenomena as it's about Wikipedia and not at the same time. Also for some researchers who were present at the Leipzig conference that means to value ad-hoc-discussion cultures via social media and not to criticize the low quality of live-blogging and the like. Thinking aloud and sharing thoughts while they come may have a value in itself. To think in the present progressive in public may be something some researchers with humanities background find strange. Where discussion cultures clash, differences become visible and hopefully lead to communication about these differences.

In terms of sciences this debate should be about how to broaden debates to the ‘public’. In terms of Wikipedia the debate should not be restricted to how to attract old knowledge authorities such as sciences but also include how to go on providing ground for new knowledge authorities.

What is the scope and concept of the book that you mentioned (the CPOV reader)? When is it going to come out?

The (English version) reader will largely focus on the same issues as the first three events. The articles are mostly written by people who attended these events and reflect what we think are the most interesting discussion and insights we have covered so far. We hope to have the reader out in March 2011 and plan to have both paper and PDF versions available for free. The reader will be published in the INC reader series.

What future activities are planned for CPOV? Anything else you would like to say?

In spring/summer next year we will publish an online dossier about Wikipedia on the platform of the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung). This dossier will strive to explain Wikipedia and its history as well as to bundle the main controversies that accompany it.

More generally, there are two directions we would like to pursue further: education and literacy still needs much more attention, as does interface design. Regarding the latter, there are new questions, for example, regarding the turn to mobiles and the "appification" of Wikipedia, as well as the continued role of video and HTML5. As of yet we don't have any concrete plans for these activities and so they remain, for the time being, on the horizon.

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2010-11-29

Celebrate WikiProject Holidays

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By Mabeenot

WikiProject news

News in brief

• The Bugle, the monthly newsletter at WikiProject Military History, is seeking authors to write editorials on a topic of their choosing. Articles do not necessarily have to be about military history as long as they're related to Wikipedia (ex. how to spot copyright issues).
• A couple of editors at WikiProject Veterinary Medicine have expressed interest in reactivating the project. Drop by with your suggestions on what would improve the project.
• WikiProject Kayaking has been refreshed and is looking for contributors. Check out the Outline of canoeing and kayaking for articles you can help improve and be sure to add your name to the project's list of members.
• The November Copy Edit Backlog Elimination Drive ends Tuesday. Get moving!
• Have you seen the latest Harry Potter film? There's a project for that.

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

This week, we spread a little cheer with WikiProject Holidays. The project is home to 8 featured articles/lists and 30 good articles. The project's 32 members maintain a to-do list, two portals (Holidays and Christmas), and two task forces covering Christmas and Halloween.

The scope of WikiProject Holidays tends to include a variety of days celebrated by both religious and secular groups. HiLo48 has protested the project's broad scope which relies upon the usage of the word "holiday" in the United States, where a holiday can be any day set aside for commemoration, celebration, or observance. In Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the term "holiday" is typically limited to either public holidays when individuals are given time away from normal employment or personal vacations. Because of this difference, there are occasional debates over the project's internationalization and localization.

We interviewed John Carter, an admin who enjoys Halloween "for the silly costumes people get to wear, which most wouldn't be caught dead in at any other time", and Christmas for religious reasons and "the large number of cultural artifacts, like books, movies, etc." John Carter notes that holidays "get a lot of attention in the 'real world', particularly those which also tend to be days off from work," but the articles about these holidays are often incomplete and neglected. He joined the project hoping to show those articles some much-needed attention.

Does activity at the project increase and decrease with the changing seasons? When is the project's peak time of year?

John Carter: The peak time for most project-related activity is probably toward the end of the calendar year, which is when Halloween and Christmas come. Those two holidays probably get more attention, in the "real world" and here, than any others, although the end-of-the-year holidays of other religions, like Hanukkah and others, also tend to get more attention at those times than others. Is the varying level of activity a concern? To a degree, yes, but there are a lot of topics out there which tend to get attention at some times more than others. For instance: politics get more attention around elections, sports get more attention during each sports' season, and such.

The Holidays Portal is a featured portal. Share with us the work that went into building it.

John Carter: Any portal, particularly a featured portal, is a lot of work. Choosing which content to include in the portal for any given period is probably the most difficult thing to do. It helps a lot that we have several good articles to choose from, of course, but I think we would all welcome the possibility of having more quality articles, preferably GA or better, to feature. I think we would particularly welcome having high-quality articles for holidays which are of primary importance to some countries other than the US and UK, and the world's various religious traditions.

WikiProject Holidays is organized into a detailed set of categories. Why was so much effort put into the organizational structure? Has it helped the project keep track of articles and focus contributors' efforts?

John Carter: The effort was made in the first place to make it clearer to editors what material was relevant to the project. This project does deal with matters across national and religious boundaries, and I think we wanted to make that clear. And it has helped to focus the attention of contributors.

Does the project collaborate with any other projects?

John Carter: I don't myself know of that many times when there has been active focused collaboration with other projects. The individual holidays do get attention from the various relevant religious and national projects which relate to the holiday in question.

With several major religious and secular holidays coming in December, what are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new member help today?

John Carter: Our greatest needs are probably to improve the quality of our most important articles. These include Christmas and several of the other holidays of the period. For the purposes of presenting a neutral, worldwide view of these holidays, and all others, we would definitely welcome any input on the particular types of activities and specific forms of attention these holidays receive worldwide.

Anything else you'd like to add?

John Carter: We would all very much welcome the gift of new members and editors working on developing the holiday-related content. In particular, getting a few more articles of GA or better for Portal:Holidays and Portal:Christmas would be very welcome. And Christmas in particular, given its worldwide observation, doubtless has a lot of material related to it which would benefit from attention, from Christians and non-Christians alike.

Next week, we'll tidy up some articles of questionable authorship. Until then, enjoy our copylefted material in the archives.

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2010-11-29

The best of the week

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87

Featured picture Choice of the week: Wikipedian Diliff's panorama over the historic Czech city of Prague, shot in October from the Petřín Lookout Tower. The view stretches over about 180°, from north on the left to south on the right.
Interactive large-image-viewer (non-Flash)

Featured articles

Eleven articles were promoted to featured status:

• Miniopterus aelleni (nom), a bat found in the islands off the coast of south-east Africa (nominated by Ucucha).
• Ronnie Lee Gardner (nom), executed by firing squad after a 25-year judicial process, providing an interesting look into incarceration and capital punishment in the American state of Utah (KimChee).
• Common Firecrest (nom), a tiny avian ball of fur that breeds in most of temperate Europe (Jimfbleak).
• Thomas Percy (Gunpowder Plot) (nom), something of a rogue, a man who would do whatever it took to get the job done. He also reportedly had a bit on the side, was into bribery, killing and most importantly, pork pies (Parrot of Doom).
• Venture Science Fiction (nom), the on-again, off-again American digest-size magazine (Mike Christie)
• Thomas C. Kinkaid (nom), the American World War II admiral who served under General Douglas MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific (Hawkeye7).
• Limbo (video game) (nom), the puzzle-platform video game and premiere title of independent Danish game developer Playdead Studios. (Masem).
• Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia (nom), the sister of Tsar Nicholas II and "the last Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia". Her life started in a massive palace, and ended in a small apartment above a shop in East Toronto (DrKiernan).
• September 1964 South Vietnamese coup attempt (nom), an attempted coup without bloodshed (YellowMonkey)
• Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre (nom), the story of national rivalry, mutiny, and wartime action, in the first half of the 20th century (The ed17).
• SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand (nom), which helped enforce a blockade of Montenegro in 1913, and was one of the first ships to deploy seaplanes for military use (Buggie111 and White Shadows).

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Ruhrfisch to select the best of this week's promotions and the four from last week (Petrified Forest National Park (nom), Robert Burnell (nom), Aylesbury duck (nom), and Dendrocollybia (nom)).

"Reading all 15 articles was a wonderful experience and showed the strengths and diversity of the encyclopedia. Trying to pick one as the best was a bit like asking a teacher or parent to pick their favorite student or child. There were four great military history articles: SMS Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand and Chilean battleship Almirante Latorre were both fascinating looks at two different early battleships, while Thomas C. Kinkaid was one of the commanders in the last engagement between battleships, and September 1964 South Vietnamese coup attempt was another in a great series on the history of Vietnam. In biographies, Robert Burnell was another in an interesting series on English bishops (and, in this case, a chancellor too), the story of Thomas Percy and his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot was engaging, and the life of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia showed truth can be stranger than fiction. Venture Science Fiction had an interesting though short life, and Limbo is a video game I'd like to see played. Biology was another strong area, with the recently identified species of bat, Miniopterus aelleni, the beautiful European bird, Common Firecrest, and the unique mushroom Dendrocollybia.

My honorable mentions go to Petrified Forest National Park, which showed there is much more to the park than fossilized trees, and Ronnie Lee Gardner, a murderer executed by Utah whose article is a model of neutrality. My choice for best article is Aylesbury duck, which I had not heard of before. I really enjoyed the story of this breed, how its rise was linked to the coming of the railroads, and how its decline was tied to the introduction of the Pekin duck and the world wars. It was the article I kept thinking of most after I had read them all."

Featured topics

Two topics were promoted:

• Characters of Smallville, with eight good articles. Smallville is an American television series developed by writer/producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Bignole).
• History of the New York Giants, with five good articles. One of the most prominent US football teams, The Giants were founded in 1925 (Quadzilla99).

Featured pictures

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

• Mission Santa Clara de Asís (nom), the mission at Santa Clara University, California (created by JaGa).
• Hera Hjartardóttir (nom), a singer-songwriter from Iceland who now lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her facial art is "inspired by moko and also by Celtic warrior paint", and is intended to represent both her Icelandic and New Zealand heritage. Created by the photographer Kyle Cassidy.
• Prague Panorama (nom), a 180° view of Prague, the historic capital of the Czech Republic, as viewed from Petřín Lookout Tower (Diliff; picture at top).
• Calcispongiae (nom), sponges of the Calcarea class—"cellular" sponges characterised by spicules made of calcium carbonate in the form of calcite or aragonite (Ernst Haeckel; picture at right).
• Manganese (nom), 99.99% pure manganese chips, electrolytically refined—a typical view of an air-oxidised surface (Alchemist-hp).
• Cadmium (nom), a bar of this metallic element, 99.999% pure (created by Alchemist-hp; picture below).
• Blackback butterflyfish (nom), photographed on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The species ranges from East Africa to Japan to Micronesia, grows up to 18 cm long, and may live for up to 20 years. The dorsal portion of the body turns black when the creature is frightened (created by Leonard Low, edited by Papa Lima Whiskey).
• Bison bonasus (nom), the wisent, or European bison, the heaviest of the surviving land mammals in Europe. This moulting male was photographed in a game park near Springe in Germany (created by Michael Gäbler).
• The Boulder Brain Coral (nom), a species of coral distributed in the Gulf of Mexico and the entire Caribbean region, including coastal regions of the South American mainland, where it occurs down to depths of 50 metres (created by Nick Hobgood, small edit by Papa Lima Whiskey).
• Actiniaria (nom), a painting of sea anemones (created by Merculiano and restored by Citron; picture at right).

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

"One image that really impressed me this week was this panoramic image of Prague. There were some concerns during the nomination about the lighting, but I think the way the image moves from light to dark is incredibly striking. What I really appreciate about this image, though, is that you can spend ages looking at intricate details. From the bright orange tiles lining the tops of buildings, to the blue of the winding Vltava, it is the amazing things there are to see in this panorama. My regards to Diliff for taking such a beautiful and vibrant picture."

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2010-11-29

Voting in full swing

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By Tony1

Voting in the annual Arbitration Committee election began last Friday. One editor, General announcement, managed to register their vote in the first minute after midnight; DC voted in the second minute. Since then, voters have been out in force: well over 400 votes were cast during the first three and a half days, which puts the election on track to repeat last year's total of around a thousand. In this shorter voting period—10 days, down from 14—North American voters are reminded that voting will close on Sunday before 7 pm (east coast) and before 4 pm (west coast).

Last week's Signpost reported that there were 15 candidates. Since publication, there was a last-minute surge of nominations, bringing the total to 23; however, two candidates withdrew before the start of voting, bringing the total down to 21 (now 20 due to the events reported below). The resignation of Arbitrator Steve Smith just before the start of voting has increased the number of vacancies from 11 to 12, since Steve Smith was not due to retire at the end of this year.

One-year block for candidate

In breaking news, checkuser Avi issued a one-month block to one candidate, Loosmark, for "abusing multiple accounts". Avi announced at the election talk page:

“

The English wikipedia checkusers were informed this morning of possible irregularities with Loosmark's editing, and after multiple checkusers, who neither currently serve on ArbCom, nor are currently running for ArbCom, have investigated the issue, it is clear that Loosmark has been running multiple sockpuppet accounts for a long time, apparently evading various sanctions as well as outright dissembling to the English Wikipedia electorate.... The socks have been tagged and indef blocked, and the Loosmark account has been blocked as well. Decisions with respect to the continuation of Loosmark's candidacy are left to the election volunteers and the community.

”

Loosmark almost immediately appealed the ban: "I have not abused multiple account. I request who 'informed' the checkusers about alleged 'irregularities' in my editing is disclosed." This was reviewed and declined by Hersfold: "Checkuser evidence very conclusively shows [on both technical and behavioural grounds] that you have used several dozen accounts". Within four minutes, admin and election coordinator Jehochman had banned Loosmark for one year: "Loosmark, I have blocked your account for a full year as a matter of arbitration enforcement under WP:DIGWUREN discretionary sanctions. You've been socking to evade a six month topic ban.[7] The matter is further compounded by deception in the candidate statement where you did not declare any of these 40+ socks. So we have WP:SOCK, WP:DIGWUREN and WP:GAME violations of a very serious nature."

Less than 12 hours later, admin Gwen Gale informed the candidate that "there has been a consensus at AN for a community ban." Loosmark replied "Ok. I will respect the decision of the community, and will not edit wikipedia anymore. I apology to everybody and ask that somebody puts that tag "retired" here."

Voting guides

Voting guides are an established tradition at ArbCom elections. This year, there are 21 of them, more than the number of candidates. Voting guides explicitly represent the views of their authors, and are linked to from the official election page. The guides reveal surprisingly different approaches to the election, the candidates, and ArbCom. Among the more colourful pages was that of Polargeo, which took a humorous view of the candidates through a gallery of pictures, many of them visual puns on usernames. Among them were a picture of a hare, a royal cavalryman (no ships in sight), a sheep, a crustacean poking out of a shell, a teddy bear, and (you guessed it) a real live bot to stand for a member of the Bot Approvals Group. The sole objection by a candidate resulted in Polargeo's removal of an image of a toilet bowl.

The Signpost has compiled a quick round-up of the numbers of supports/opposes/neutrals in each guide, where provided, and a few quotable phrases. In a few cases, we've had to use a little guesswork on the numbers; we disregarded the words "strong" and "weak". The numbers were calculated before Loosmark's site ban.

• Aiken drum 7/9/5: comments provided on specific candidates.
• AGK 10/9/2: "it really doesn't make much of a difference who is elected, so long as they aren't going to release privileged communications or other private information".
• CT Cooper 13/5/3: "The political issue which will probably impact on my vote most in this election will be the summary motion regarding [BLP] deletions".
• DC 12/9/0: "... arbcom needs a few fresh faces.... This isn't to say all current arbs should be voted out.... Arbcom needs a balance, and there are a few outstanding sitting arbs who deserve re-election".
• Ealdgyth 8/10/3: "... I want content contributions, or at least the concept that they support content contributors.... I'm also looking for folks who don't get so wrapped up in enforcing civility or rules that they forget that first goal above, the writing of the encyclopedia".
• Elonka 13/8/0: Requires admin access, integrity, experience with article-writing, and hands-on knowledge of the dispute resolution processes
• Heimstern 4/5/ (and 12 undecided): "Making [the decision] more difficult is the draconian regime the current election coordinators are running that is stifling attempts to ascertain information".
• Lar 6/11/3: Lists three important criteria—willingness to support "the increased structure and repeatability of processes that the committee has instituted"; attitudes to the BLP issue; and a growing problem with generally unhelpful behaviour from long-time contributors.
• Ncmvocalist: "My primary criticism of the committee is that it is generally so focused on our conduct policies that it ends up leaving the actual encyclopedia behind." Concerns about POV pushing, particularly WRT "nationalist troublemaking".
• NuclearWarfare 10/9/2: Wants "to see evidence that they have thought hard about the scope of the [BLP] problem and perhaps even how to address it." Concerns about "a governance model on Wikipedia" and how the project has traditionally addressed content disputes.
• Offliner 5/9/ (plus 9 undecided): time availability, consistency, importance placed on process, trustworthiness with sensitive information, communicativeness, and openness.
• Privatemusings: unclear tally; comments provided on specific candidates.
• RegentsPark 7/10/4: "too much drama, too much adherence to the letter of the policy – bad; lots of reasoned content additions, productive personality style – good".
• Rschen7754 9/7/3 (plus 2 "on hold"): points system.
• SandyGeorgia 8/13/0: longevity and wide active involvement; trustworthiness, balance, fairness, respect, and diligence; [harder] position on editors who evidence lack of maturity with respect to the pillars of Wikipedia; support for the "reform of RFA, RFC/U and Wiki processes to deal with admin actions"; knowledge of and support for content contributors; strong enforcement of BLP policies, and knowledge of high-quality sourcing and responsible writing in BLPs and science/biomedical articles.
• Secret 13/7 (plus one undecided): experience in dispute resolution, issue of how to handle administrator abuse, content work.
• Vyvyan Ade Basterd (incomplete numbers): mature, calm and focused on reducing drama; support for the rigorous enforcement of the BLP policy; experience with complex dispute resolution
• WereSpielChequers 12/3/1 (plus 5 undecided): responsibility and trustworthiness; a record of both correctly reading evidence and of making good judgements; clear communication about decisions; compassion;
• Wizardman 9/9/3: the likelihood of burnout/inactivity; main areas of expertise. (i.e. content, bots, dispute resolution); trustworthiness with sensitive information; "thinkers" or "doers"?; the letter vs. the spirit of the rules.
  
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2010-11-29

New case: Longevity; Biophys topic ban likely to stay in place

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By Ohconfucius

The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, leaving a total of one case open.

New case

Longevity

On the petition of John J. Bulten (talk · contribs), the Committee accepted a case on Longevity on 22 November. The filer named 18 editors, including himself, as parties. The case centres on the alleged uncivil and disruptive behaviour of Ryoung122 (talk · contribs) within the sphere of articles related to longevity (such as Longevity myths, Longevity claims, and List of the verified oldest people) as well as the creation and deletion of biographies and lists relating to centenarians. Issues include gross incivility, POV-pushing, deliberate use of unverified information, and breaches of WP:COI, WP:OWN and WP:CANVASS. Thus far only four editors, including the petitioner, have submitted evidence.

Closed case

Russavia-Biophys

In a request for amendment filed 7 November, Biophys (talk · contribs) sought to be freed from his topic ban six months after it was imposed, in exchange for a 1RR restriction. The five Arbs who have commented so far have indicated they were inclined to revisit the matter again in three months, leaving it unchanged for now.

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2010-11-29

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250 and Tilman Bayer

Should Wikimedia Commons host .zip files?

Late October saw a discussion on the Wikitech-l mailing list about whether allowing users to upload their own .zip files was desirable and/or possible from a technical point of view. Since Wikimedia has a strict anti-proprietary and generally pro-standardisation mission, files with direct use (e.g. .svg files) have tended to be given priority over files that are useful only for editing purposes (e.g. .ai files). Since these do have a use in terms of Wikimedia's wider vision of enabling the free sharing of information, it was proposed that the upload (and download) of zipped bundles of these files be allowed. Generally, broadening the ranges of files users could upload to Wikimedia sites could also prove useful on projects such as Wikibooks, by allowing interactive examples. It was also pointed out that some of these files may have a direct use in future, if only a proper extension were built into the MediaWiki software.

Former CTO Brion Vibber summarised the concerns about this approach when he wrote:

“

In all cases we have the worry that if we allow uploading those funky formats, we'll either a) end up with malicious files or b) end up with lazy people using and uploading non-free editing formats when we'd prefer them to use freely editable formats.... I don't really relish the thought of checking image source data for warez archives.

”

Last week, the Wikimedia Foundation's Deputy Director Erik Möller restarted the discussion with reference to a new Commons proposal: Commons:Restricted uploads. In general though, the technical concerns about the idea were substantial. MZMcBride, for example, noted that the solution was "horribly hackish".

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.

• On the strategy wiki, Deputy Director Erik Möller this week posted a proposal for a "Media review" toolset that would allow easier importing of images from free content sites such as Flickr or PLoS, or various Smartphone apps. This would utilise the new upload wizard's temporary "stash" are to transfer new media using interface plug-ins hooked into sites' APIs, etc., onto Commons for review and annotation before being finally published.
• Block expiry times are now available via the API (bug #26089), as are the number of pages in a given DjVu file (bug #26125).
• With changes resulting from bug #21911, the role of the warning message "This page is x kilobytes long, some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb." is evolving. Specifically, now that the share of browsers with that 32kb limit has shrunk to an almost negligible level, some people are arguing that it would make more sense to use the warning to direct users to Wikipedia:Article size where the page size exceeds 70 or 80kb.
• Special:Mypage and Special:Mytalk are going to support the oldid, diff and dir parameters when used inside a URL - e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Mytalk&diff=cur will point to the latest change on a logged-in reader's talk page (bug #25829).
  
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