Newbies vs. patrollers; Indian statistics; brief news
Newbies and patrollers: "Every now and then a nun or a tourist wanders in front of the rifle sights"
Last week saw an extensive discussion on the Foundation-l mailing list about the "Friendliness" of Wikimedia projects to new users, a perennial topic that is seeing several new developments currently.
Discussing the effect of using pre-formulated templates to communicate with newbies, the Wikimedia Foundation's Deputy Director Erik Möller (User:Eloquence) suggested a "dedicated community effort to 1) catalogue the most widely used templates on talk pages, 2) systematically improve them with an eye on the impact they can have on whether people feel their work is valued and the environment in which they're contributing is a positive and welcoming one".
The English Wikipedia's new page patrol and its use of automated tools such as Twinkle and Huggle was subject to scrutiny too. The Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner said that she had "spent some time this weekend on New User Contributions on the English Wikipedia, reading the talk pages of new people who'd been trying to make constructive edits. I was trying to imagine the world through their eyes", but also "I used Twinkle to nominate an article for speedy deletion (or something like that, I don't remember exactly) and immediately felt awful about deterring the poor newbie, who was maybe misguided, but not a vandal" and that it had made her "wonder if patrollers find themselves over time starting to dehumanize new people, as a kind of coping mechanism, or just because they feel beleagured. The experience, for me, felt a bit like a videogame. ... To belabour the videogame analogy a little further: Zack Exley and I were talking about new article patrol as being a bit like a first-person shooter, and every now and then a nun or a tourist wanders in front of the rifle [sights]. We need patrollers to be able to identify nuns and tourists, so that they don't get shot :-)" David Gerard asked whether one should "Ban Twinkle? The tool seems to directly encourage problematic behaviour." But several users including Philippe Beaudette (WMF Head of Reader Relations) and Keegan defended the need for automated tools.
The subject was discussed in Sue Gardner's IRC office hours on February 25, too, which also touched on the idea of an article incubator, experiences from the Russian and German Wikipedia's dealing with newbies, and finding better ways of motivating Wikimedia volunteers. Sue Gardner cautioned that "one issue for us though is avoiding dark patterns, and avoiding extrinsic rewards, which are demotivating to intrinsically motivated people. [cf. motivation crowding theory ] ... we know money is out. ... I think extrinsic rewards that work for us and are authentic in our world include things like tenure support letters, or scholarships to Wikimania."
The inherent tension between efforts to improve new user experience and the work of new page / recent change patrollers became visible in an already ongoing activity by the Foundation's Outreach team last week: Its "Account creation improvement project" is currently testing different versions of the "landing page" that greets newbies after they create their account (as mentioned in last week's "News and notes"). One of them, which invited new users to create their user page according to a suggested pattern, generated much confusion and disruption for new page patrollers (discussion). Lennart Guldbrandsson, the Wikimedia fellow responsible for the tests, apologized for the inconvenience and invited feedback on a new page.
A new project called Wiki Guides is currently being set up and inviting participation, stating that "as a community we have many ideas but we’ve been thwarted by too many options and too little data. We want to run a study over the next couple of months to craft strategies, develop new users, and to get data on exactly how our new users are finding their first, and later, experiences on Wikipedia."
Stats on Indian language Wikipedias
On his personal blog, Shijualex has published a statistical report on the Indian language Wikipedias for 2010, based on the data provided by the Foundation at http://stats.wikimedia.org/. The Nepal Bhasa/Newari Wikipedia (new:) had the largest number of articles, but most of its articles were created by bots, like on several other Indian language Wikipedias – a practice criticized by Shijualex, if it is not accompanied by the building of a community. As an extreme example, the Bishnupriya Manipuri Wikipedia (bpy:) was cited, which had more than 24,700 articles in the beginning of 2010 but only grew by 10 articles during the entire year, and does not have a single active user. On the other hand, he observed that "more language wiki communities have started focusing on the quality than on the quantity". A positive example is the Malayalam Wikipedia, which had the most edits per article (30.1) and the most active (90) and highly active (16) editors among Indian language Wikipedias at the end of 2010, and also has a high ratio of new accounts who actually make edits. Shijualex argues that this example shows that "we need to have some good program to convert many registered users to actual wikipedians... The importance of advocacy programs like Wiki workshops, seminars, exhibitions, wikipedia CD, wiki meetups, participating in various programs, and so on can help to popularize wikipedia among the speakers of the respective language."
Briefly
- Final version of 2010–15 strategic plan published: The Wikimedia Foundation has published the summary of its 2010–15 strategic plan. It had been developed with the input of community members on the strategic planning wiki, led by Foundation consultants. The finalized version had been pre-approved unanimously by the Wikimedia Board of Trustees at its October meeting. The announcement was picked up by ReadWriteWeb ("Wikipedia's Goal: 1 Billion Monthly Visitors by 2015").
- Czech chapter report: The Czech Wikimedia chapter published its report for January 2011 (resuming its reports after a one and a half year hiatus). Among other activities, it mentions a concert on the occasion of Wikipedia's tenth anniversary featuring works by well-known Czech composers, recordings of which will be uploaded to Commons
- Swedish chapter report: The Swedish Wikimedia chapter published its monthly report for January 2011. Among other activities, it mentions the accreditation of a Wikimedia photographer at a state visit of the Estonian president to Sweden (photos on Commons).
- Wikimedia Commons milestone: Wikimedia Commons reached its nine-millionth file last week, following the resumption of the mass upload from the Geograph website (cf. Signpost coverage). Commons is growing at a very fast rate, as this milestone occurred less than two months after the eight-millionth file. The ten-millionth file is expected to be uploaded during the next month.
- Sue Gardner joins new initiative to promote women's participation in open source: The Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner has been appointed to the advisory board of the "Ada Initiative", which was recently founded with "the aim of promoting the visibility and participation of women in open-source culture".
- High school students' thoughts about Wikipedia: On her personal blog, User:HstryQT has published a "meaning mapping" showing the thoughts of 33 middle and high-school students about Wikipedia.
- Wikipedia used in Indian Valentine's Day hoax: User:Tinucherian has posted an account of Wikipedia's role in a hoax about the date of the death (in 1931) of Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh, which was alleged to have been on February 14 (Valentine's Day) in emails and on social media like Twitter and Facebook around that day. Tinucherian notes that the Wikipedia article had been changed to the wrong date even before the confusion spread, possibly part of a deliberate attempt to disseminate the rumor, but was corrected soon afterwards.
Reader comments
Egypt and Jordan likely candidates for Wikimedia office; Sanger interview; brief news
Egypt and Jordan most likely to host Arab Wikimedia office
An article titled "Wikipedia to open Arab office" in The National, a daily newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, reported statements by Jimmy Wales about the Wikimedia Foundation's plans to expand to the MENA region, with a "50–50 chance" that its second international office would open there (after India; Brazil is another option). While cautioning that this is "still a good year away" and that "we've not really entered into the beginning of a process of identifying the best location", Wales named Egypt and Jordan as the most likely countries, having called them possible "leading contenders" on Twitter. He rejected an earlier article in the Saudi Gazette that had claimed "Wikipedia chief hints at office in KSA" (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), calling it "completely untrue and based on a fabricated quote", and stating that the country's "human rights record is unacceptable". The Saudi article had been published on the occasion of his keynote speech at the "2nd International Conference on e-Learning and Distance Education" in Riyadh.
40,000 word, quarter-decade interview with Larry Sanger published
An extensive interview with Larry Sanger (known for his role in starting Wikipedia until 2002) was published this month by Dan Schneider on his website Cosmoetica (www.cosmoetica.com/DSI27.htm, currently available at [1]). Apart from long parts about Sanger's philosophical views, it also touched on topics such as citations, verifiability and credentials on Wikipedia and Citizendium.
Recalling Wikipedia's early history, Sanger said that "When it became obvious that Wikipedia was growing like gangbusters, I spent most of my limited time on it, leaving Nupedia, unfortunately, to wither."
Many questions were informed by Schneider's own criticism of Wikipedia (frequent linking of his web site has led to its inclusion in Wikipedia's URL blacklist), which Sanger even rejected at times. Asked whether he agreed with Schneider's belief that "a term called agnotology, which is about the love of ignorance, for a variety of reasons [is] prevalent in modern society, and [is] a Prime Directive of both the Internet and Wikipedia", Sanger replied: "The Wikipedians themselves seem, for all their faults, to be highly curious and frequently well-informed, even if the know-nothings sometimes make spending time there unbearable."
Answering another question, Sanger said: "It does seem that Wikipedia is ripe for replacement. But what will replace it? Maybe Citizendium or something else—that remains to be seen. And maybe it will enjoy its now-dominant position for a long time. Many deeply flawed institutions live on for centuries, as you know. Like it or not, Wikipedia has a chance for long-term hegemony because it’s just so huge."
In his closing remark, Sanger said: "I shudder to think how many words I’ve written [40,000 according to his estimate on Twitter ]. This has been the weirdest interview I’ve ever had".
Briefly
- Citations needed in minister's thesis and elsewhere: On Saturday, the English Wikipedia's "citation needed" template was featured on several protest signs at a demonstration in Berlin against German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who recently lost his doctoral title after his 2006 dissertation was revealed to have been plagiarized in large parts from other sources – without the necessary citations. Examples: [2] (photographed by Wikipedian Mathias Schindler), [3] (showing one of the demonstration's instigators, Frank Rieger of the Chaos Computer Club, who had been an outspoken critic of the German Wikipedia in the past, see Signpost coverage). A Wikia wiki (Guttenplag) where Internet users collaborated to uncover the multitude of plagiarism instances in the minister's dissertation played a central role in the scandal, reaching up to 1.9 million pageviews per day, prompting Jimmy Wales to observe "huge traffic at Wikia" and even surviving an AfD on the German Wikipedia, which is not exactly known for liberal notability standards regarding new websites.
Other recent sightings of "citation needed" in the media include a CNN news report that quoted from the article Methotrexate to explain an incident with that drug, undeterred by the lack of a reference ([4], at 0:36) and the tongue-in-cheek sentence "... Although Bono is not an alien. [Citation needed]" in an article about Area 51 in the February issue of Empire magazine. See also Signpost coverage of similar signs at a US demonstration, and other appearances: "'citation needed' for sanity". - Jimmy Wales' birthday revisited: A portrait of Jimmy Wales in The Guardian (covered in last week's "In the news") quoted his earlier comment that the entry about himself in Encyclopedia Britannica had gotten his birth date wrong. In a subsequent letter to The Guardian, the Managing director of Encyclopaedia Britannica UK, Ian Grant, explained its decision to stick to the date that Wales had objected to. On Wikipedia, the issue has generated much discussion over the years, including allegations of an improper use of the oversight tool, and Wales "pushing people to think about things like circularity, sourcing, and reliability through a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor", as described by himself.
- Wikipedia printouts in state capitol: Several blogs reported on the discovery that the explanatory plaques next to two statues of former governors in the state capitol of the US state of Louisiana contained printouts of the Wikipedia articles about them, dating from 2009. The state has removed them after a tourist complained. [5], [6], [7], [8]
- Pharma COI issues explained: Wikipedian Bertalan Meskó, MD published an explanatory post about COI editing on his personal blog ("Can pharma companies edit Wikipedia?"). A reaction on Stanford University's "Scope" blog remarked that Wikipedia not requiring disclosure of COI was "different than COI policies elsewhere on the web".
- Photographer tries to insert self-portraits on Wikipedia: An article titled "Artist Infiltrates Wikipedia" on PSFK.com reported on the efforts of a US artist who photographed "himself staring out at scenic bays and standing on desolate stretches of empty beach and uploaded these photos to the corresponding Wikipedia page for each geographical location." The images, which had been inserted into several articles on the English Wikipedia (examples) and other projects, were deleted after a deletion request on Commons.
- Quiz about edit wars: A new quiz on Wikipedia edit wars on Sporcle.com gives the player eight minutes to find, for a number of contested statements, the name of the Wikipedia article where each has been edit-warred over (based on Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars). According to the site, the quiz was published on February 22nd and has been played over 43,000 times at the time of writing.
- Cartoon about academic COI editing: In a recent episode of the webcomic Piled Higher and Deeper, a hapless graduate student is assigned the task of editing the Wikipedia article about his academic advisor.
Reader comments
Arbitration Committee hearing fewer cases; longer decision times
Case duration: from open to close
The analysis of case duration counts the number of days it took for a publicly heard case to reach a motion to close, after being opened for evidence submission and workshop input. The graph averages all cases closed during a specific two-month period. This means that a spike in case duration for September and October 2008 probably accounts for cases opened several months earlier.
Starting in January/February 2008, we find an average of 30 days for cases to be resolved. In these two months a total of 12 cases were closed, all of which were resolved in less than two months. The duration of cases in days steadily increased during each two-month interval (climbing from the 30s to the upper 40s) until it spiked in September/October 2008 with an average of 68 days. This can be accounted for by two cases (one which took 131 days and another taking 99). But 2008 saw another long case. The well-known Eastern European case took 115 days. Not only that, its evidence page had submissions from nearly 30 editors, in stark contrast to a case like John Gohde 2 which was resolved in less than two weeks with a third of the number of evidence submissions of the EE case.
Thus, with the first year of data reviewed we can see a clear (and understandable) correlation between large complicated disputes and the length of time to decide a case. An example of this issue is the Scientology case, which took an astounding 169 days to resolve. But the bigger question is not whether these long cases will always happen, but whether this is becoming a trend in regard to all Committee proceedings.
Going back to 2009, we see two cases at the start that already took longer than the longest average for the first half of 2008. For the entire year, only three cases took less than a month to resolve, and the duration of the shortest case approached the higher average of the year before.
While there was a decline in the average duration of cases at the beginning of the year 2009, that average remained consistently higher than for the first half of 2008. With three complex cases resolved in the middle of the year, the average jumped to 72 days. With another election on the horizon, cases were gradually resolved more quickly as the number of days dropped to the 40s by the end of the year.
The year 2010 then becomes intriguing as the number of very large cases began to decline, and the average sank (in March/April 2010) to 33 days, the lowest since the beginning of 2008. But this trend has not continued. By the end of the year, the average jumped back up to 70–80 days, with the longest case at 123 days.
From this data, as the trendline indicates, the duration of cases has significantly increased since 2008.
From 11 to one a month: decline in opened cases
The data on the number of opened cases each month was calculated in a very simple counting of when cases started. The trend here is easier to discern than in the first graph: a steep decline in the cases the Committee hears each year.
By today's standards, a surprising number of 11 cases were opened in January 2008, at the start of the graph. Comparing The Signpost's archives before 2008 also shows this high number of cases resolved by the Committee. This number very quickly dropped to only three accepted in February, and to only one or two a month by the middle of the year.
The numbers then remained in the same range throughout the whole of 2008. The only times the number of accepted cases a month rose to three or more was at the start of each year, when a new slate of Arbitrators came in (shown by a rise in January–March 2009 and the acceptance of three cases in February 2010). After August 2009, the Committee has always accepted one or two cases a month, with only one exception.
In December 2009, the Committee accepted no cases, for the first time in at least 23 months (my record goes back to 2008). Again, for four months between July and October 2010, ArbCom did not accept a single case. A deeper look at records in this long "no-acceptance" period shows that only one arbitrator voted to accept in one of the more than 10 declined cases.
The Signpost's weekly coverage of ArbCom cases is interesting to compare, as it exemplifies a dramatic decline in decisions before the Committee (2006 coverage, 2007, and 2010).
Comments from the Committee
Arbitrator Newyorkbrad says that the declining number of Committee cases is due to a greater reliance on community mechanisms to resolve disputes, such as community sanctions at the ANI board and through the blocking of a user by a single administrator, without a disagreeing admin unblocking. "Today, we get relatively few of those types of cases, and when we do get one, it's typically because there has been disagreement among administrators as to how to handle the situation." He pointed to the complexity of the issues that do make it before the 18-member Committee, which is arguably a cause for the length of decisions. While public perception may be that the Committee is too slow, Newyorkbrad says they always "[try] to keep the case lengths reasonable." In the Signpost's interview with several arbitrators last October, Roger Davies had made the same point about the changing nature of the cases ("these days, it's mostly intense, hard-core disputes that end up with ArbCom—the things the community isn't really set up to handle"), and Kirill Lokshin, while observing that the ArbCom "has traditionally been quite bad at keeping to deadlines", had noted that "an ever-increasing fraction of our workload consists of 'behind the scenes' work" that is not visible in the formal proceedings.
Looking into the future
Whether due to an evolution of the dispute resolution process on Wikipedia, or just a tightening of the requirements for the Committee's acceptance of cases, or (partly) due to a decrease in overall editing activity, the trend is unmistakable. But what does this really mean for Wikipedia and the Dispute Resolution process? In a few years' time, how much work could the Arbitration Committee have? We can only speculate as to the long-term effects.
Reader comments
In Tune with WikiProject Classical Music
- The March Copyedit Backlog Elimination Drive starts Tuesday. Participate and get rewarded with barnstars!
- Editors are looking for help to revive WikiProject Viruses and grow the Viruses Portal.
- Check out the new WikiProject Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
This week, we listened to WikiProject Classical Music, a mid-level project under the umbrella of WikiProject Music (see our 2009 interview). WikiProject Classical Music was started in May 2004 to expand articles, sort stubs, source statements, and document historical and musicological analysis of classical music from many time periods (not just the classical period). It does not rate articles by quality or importance, although child projects like WikiProject Composers are allowed to maintain their own rating systems. The project maintains a portal, task forces on composition and contemporary music, and a variety of to-do lists.
We interviewed three project members. Gerda Arendt "came to Wikipedia to fill the red link for a composer and cellist, then proceeded to related articles." When not editing Wikipedia, she sings in three choirs and plays piano. She likes Bach and rues the fact that about 100 of his cantatas are missing from Wikipedia. Melodia is a (bass) clarinet and former piano player, among other instruments. She listens to a lot of classical music, but if she had to pick just one composer, it would be Sibelius. Ravpapa is an amateur violinist and violist who plays a lot of chamber music. He is also interested in the music of Israel.
The talk page at WikiProject Classical Music is very active. What attracts people to discussions at the project? Do you have any tips for projects that might have a less social atmosphere?
- Gerda Arendt: I raise questions there and get answers most of the time. That's the secret.
- Melodia: I think it's just a matter of people needing to start discussion when it needs to be started, instead of keeping issues to individual talk pages when there's overlying issues that could affect many others.
What are some of the challenges of finding media for classical music articles?
- Ravpapa: I have found finding media samples one of the most challenging tasks in preparing an article on classical music for the Wikipedia. In my view, an article describing a composition – take, for example, String Quartets, Op. 20 (Haydn) would be much less valuable to the reader without the snippets of the pieces to illustrate the points made in the article.
- However, Wikipedia's very strict rules on using only free media make finding these sound bites very difficult. In the case of the article on the Opus 20 quartets, I had to get my quartet – amateur and not very good – to record them. That is why, if you listen to them, a lot are out of tune and choppy. In other articles, I tried to use excerpts from recordings with a Creative Commons license (that allows everything except commercial use), but the excerpts were removed because the media was not absolutely free.
- I hope that other players joining the project can provide their own recordings to illustrate some of the articles.
The project does not assess articles, instead relying upon daughter projects to provide assessments. Why was this decision made? How has it impacted the project's goals and direction?
- Gerda Arendt: I don't know why, but I see that the quality of articles is improved by peer editing rather than assessments. I like that.
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new member help today?
- Gerda Arendt: Fill red links, improve referencing, participate in discussions.
- Melodia: The majority of articles on individual works stink, yet are probably very often easy to find info on. CD liner notes, nowadays often available free online from Naxos, Hyperion, Chandos, and others are a gold mine of info about pieces. More popular composers tend to have large 'fan' websites with huge amounts of info as well. Another one, one that's hugely in my interest, is the works lists. There's very little standard between them, and the problem with "notable" or "important" ones only compounds it. (Disclaimer: I admit I don't do much grunt work like this, but for those who are willing, I'll glady help out where I can).
- Ravpapa: I think Melodia is being a bit extreme when he says these articles stink. But I do want to reemphasize the point I made above. The greatest added value of an online encyclopedia is that it is multimedia – you can not only read about a work, you can hear it at the same time. Far too few of our articles have illustrative sound clips. That is something I would love to see new members work on.
Next week, the Signpost will chat with the women of Wikipedia. Until then, visit the archive.
Reader comments
The best of the week
New administrators
The Signpost welcomes The Bushranger (nom), from the US, as our newest admin. He is an active member of the MilHist and Aircraft WikiProjects, participates in the battleships project WP:OMT, and has many DYKs under his belt. He has expertise in templates and categories.
At the time of publication there are three live RfAs: Boing! said Zebedee, Kudpung, and Neelix, due to finish on 1, 2 and 3 March, respectively.
Featured articles
Eight articles were promoted to featured status:
- Mantra-Rock Dance (nom), a musical countercultural event held in 1967 at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. (Nominated by Cinosaur)
- Morgan dollar (nom), one in a long line of US dollar coins that proved unpopular with the general public. Today the coin is probably most famous for its widespread use in Westerns, but the true story of its origin and production is probably just as interesting. (RHM22)
- Leslie Groves (nom), the man behind the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bombs. (Hawkeye7)
- Empire of Brazil (nom), a 19th-century nation that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom Pedro I and his son Dom Pedro II, both members of the House of Braganza—a branch of the thousand-year-old Capetian Dynasty. (Lecen, Astynax, Hchc2009, and Arthur Holland; picture at right)
- Johnstown Inclined Plane (nom), the world's most steeply inclined railway, was built after the catastrophic 1889 flood; it fulfilled its purpose as an escape route for future floods in 1936 and 1977. It is now primarily a tourist attraction. (Nominated by Niagara)
- Grand Coulee Dam (nom), the largest power station in the US and one of the largest concrete structures in the world. (NortyNort; picture at right)
- Pipe Dream (musical) (nom), which nominator Wehwalt says "is a musical derived from a rather raunchy novel by Steinbeck, and even though Rodgers & Hammerstein toned it down considerably, it is probably the most sexualized plot of their joint works. There is just no getting around the fact that the female lead is a prostitute, and her madam is a major character."
- Clathrus ruber (nom), a species of fungus in the stinkhorn family, with striking fruit bodies that are shaped somewhat like a round or oval hollow sphere with interlaced or latticed branches. (Sasata)
Featured lists
Seven lists were promoted:
- List of New York Cosmos seasons (nom) (Nominated by Cliftonian.)
- List of Alabama Crimson Tide football head coaches (nom) (Nominated by Patriarca12.)
- List of Armillaria species (nom) (Nominated by Sasata.)
- 2010 Asian Games medal table (nom) (Nominated by Chrishmt0423.)
- 2010 IIHF World Championship rosters (nom) (Nominated by Salavat.)
- Grammy Award for Best World Music Album (nom) (Nominated by Another Believer.)
- List of Cincinnati Reds first-round draft picks (nom) (Nominated by Courcelles.)
Two featured lists were delisted:
- List of Telecaster players (nom: [Comprehensiveness, style, and formatting])
- Wilco discography (nom: [Lead, referencing, style])
Featured pictures
Six images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
- Batak warriors (1870) (nom; related article), created by early Danish photographer Kristen Feilberg (1839–1919), edited by User:Peter Weis. The Batak comprise a number of groups in North Sumatra.
- African bush elephant (nom; related article), a male African bush elephant in Serengeti; the image was promoted after much discussion about whether the animal had an erection at the time. (Created by User:Ikiwaner.)
- CG image of espresso tamper (nom; related article), an image using the Cobalt computer-aided design program, of a high-end espresso tamper, based on a 3D solid model that allows objects to be easily viewed from different perspectives and yields realistic shadowing. (Created by User:Greg L; picture at right)
- McKinley "Prosperity" campaign poster (nom; related article), used by William McKinley in the 1900 US presidential election. He is depicted as campaigning on the gold standard as a policy, with support from soldiers, businessmen, farmers and professionals, claiming to restore prosperity at home and victory abroad. (Unknown creator, restored by User:NativeForeigner; picture at right.)
- Frogmouth - Cryptic Pose (nom; related article), an Australian variety of Frogmouth, which when threatened will stay perfectly still with eyes almost shut and bill pointed straight. (Created by User:Benjamint444; picture at bottom)
- Old fort of Zanzibar and Stone Town (nom; related article), a panorama of the Old Fort of Zanzibar and the Stone town as seen from the House of Wonders in Zanzibar, Tanzania. One reviewer pointed out that the fort is nearly rectangular. (Created by User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim; picture at top.)
Featured sounds
Seven featured sounds were promoted.
Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.
Reader comments
AUSC applications open; interim desysopping; two pending cases
The Committee opened no new cases during the week. Two cases are currently open.
Open cases
Monty Hall problem (Week 3)
During the week, another 20 kilobytes of content was submitted in on-wiki evidence. Several proposals were submitted in the workshop by several editors; drafter Elen of the Roads commented on some of the proposals, while drafter SirFozzie proposed a standard discretionary sanctions remedy as well as three standard principles.
Kehrli 2 (Week 3)
During the week, another 5 kilobytes of content was submitted in on-wiki evidence. Several proposals were submitted in the workshop by several editors. Earlier today, David Fuchs and Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry were assigned as drafters of the decision.
Motion
Two days ago, the Committee announced that it passed a motion: Rodhullandemu (talk · contribs)'s administrator privileges are revoked and he may apply for adminship by the usual means to the community. As background, it noted that the "user has engaged in conduct unbecoming an administrator...." As with other announcements by the Committee, a link to discuss the announcement was provided which sparked discussion. Active arbitrators added that this action was taken in accordance with interim desysop procedures, and that Rodhullandemu may, if he desired, make a request for a public arbitration case or for Jimbo Wales (talk · contribs) to intervene.
Other
AUSC
Seeking to appoint at least three non-arbitrator members to the Wikipedia:Audit Subcommittee (AUSC), the Committee made a call for applications last week.
- What is AUSC?
AUSC is a subcommittee of the Arbitration Committee which should review and act upon concerns received by the community about CheckUser and Oversight activities. AUSC is made up of three arbitrators (who typically serve six-month terms) and three non-arbitrator members who are appointed for one-year terms. All AUSC members are subject to the relevant local and global policies and guidelines concerning CheckUser and Oversight. Active and/or sitting AUSC members:
- are given CheckUser and Oversight permissions.
- will have access to several mailing lists as well as the oversight-en-wp OTRS queue.
- should be prepared and available to discuss cases promptly so they may be resolved in a timely manner.
- are expected to actively participate in AUSC proceedings and may be replaced should they become inactive.
- Applications
Applicants must be at least 18 years old and willing to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation. Applicants should self-nominate by email to arbcom-en-b@lists.wikimedia.org and will receive an application questionnaire which should be completed and returned to the same email address. This should include a nomination statement, to a maximum of 250 words. Applications will close on 7 March 2011.
- Candidates
The Committee will have one week (after applications close) to review the applications, and notify the applicants who will be candidates going forward for community consultation. The candidate's nomination statement (which was submitted with the application) will be posted on a candidate subpage on-wiki.
In the following week, in addition to a few standard questions, the Community may pose additional questions which candidates will answer. While there will be no formal voting, comments will be invited publicly, or privately by email to arbcom-en-b@lists.wikimedia.org. Ideally, community members will outline in detail their rationale for supporting or opposing a candidate in either case.
- Appointments
Should a sufficient number of suitably qualified candidates apply, the committee will appoint three primary non-arbitrator members along with a number of "standby members" (who would stand in, should a primary member become inactive or be unable to hear a particular case). Successful candidates will be required to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation prior to receiving AUSC permissions.
Reader comments
HTML5 adopted but soon reverted; brief news
HTML5 adopted but soon reverted
HTML5-mode was briefly switched on for Wikimedia wikis this week, from the afternoon of February 23. This would begin the process of Wikimedia supporting features available in the newest browsers, and would generally put it on a better footing for the future. HTML5 had been the default for external installs since MediaWiki 1.16, but had been disabled on WMF sites due to the nature of some custom code in use. Version 1.17, now used on WMF sites, was thought to be much more stable in this regard (bug #27478).
However, after deployment, a number of errors were soon noted. As expected, virtually every tool which relied on "screen-scraping" (analysing the HTML source of Wikipedia pages) broke in some way. Though this method has been known to be vulnerable to changes in the underlying source code for many years – and MediaWiki provides an alternative, the much more stable API, for this purpose – no-one had yet seen a need to update many of the tools frequently in use on Wikipedia sites, including Twinkle and Friendly on the English Wikipedia. Even after HTML5-mode was reverted, work continued on these gadgets to move them over to the API before another attempted deployment. Just as pressing was a knock-on problem where the encoding used in citations and anchors changed subtly, breaking links which relied on them (bug #27694). It is not known when HTML5-mode will be tried again.
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.
- As of the time of writing, file description pages for images on Wikimedia Commons are no longer being transcluded into local file namespaces. The cause remains unknown (bug #27767). Update: this bug has been resolved.
- With the WMF install of MediaWiki 1.17 complete, developers have been "sprinting" to get it ready for release to other sites. The main point of contention has been the new installer (wikitech-l mailing list).
- The upload of 1.8 million images from the United Kingdom-based Geograph project has resumed after technical difficulties brought complaints (Gerard Meijssen).
- XML dumps have been restarted after the 1.17 deployment. Reusers should be aware that their form has been updated slightly (wikitech-l mailing list).
- Shiju Alex [9] and Gerard Meijssen [10] blogged about a new MediaWiki extension called "Narayam", which provides input methods for Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Sanskrit, and Bengali, making contributions in those languages much easier.
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