Survey of French Wikipedians; first Wikipedian-in-Residence at Smithsonian; brief news
Survey finds French Wikipedians young, largely male and likely "information workers"
Wikimedia France has published the first results of a survey among "Wikipedians" (comprising both readers and editors of the French Wikipedia), conducted at the beginning of the year by Telecom Bretagne in partnership with the French chapter. It received more than 16,000 responses, 13,627 of which were deemed usable. Altogether, 30.8% identified as female and 68.3% as male; but among those who had themselves contributed, 80% were male, and among the regular contributors more than 86% were men. Wikipedians were found to be more likely than the average French Internet user to have "a 'profession' where researching information has an important place": high school and university students, and executives/white collar employees (cadres). Blue-collar workers were found to be strongly under-represented. The responding Wikipedia users were generally younger than the average French Internet user, more than 60% of them being below 30 years. While the under 30s were still in the majority among contributing Wikipedians, they were older than the readers and more likely to be employed rather than attending high school or university. On the other hand, the distribution of the year where a respondent had first used Wikipedia differed little between readers and contributors, peaking at 2005 for both. Definitive results and further analyses will be published in the coming months.
First Wikipedian-in-Residence at Smithsonian Institution
Wikimedian Sarah Stierch (User:Missvain) has announced she will be a Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Archives of American Art, which are based in Washington DC and form part of the Smithsonian Institution. She told the Signpost that her residency will last from June to August, as an unpaid internship (but gaining credit towards her Masters degree in Museum Studies). While the details are still being worked out, the aims will include:
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The first instance of the "Wikipedian in Residence" model for collaborating with cultural institutions ("GLAMs") was Liam Wyatt's (User:Witty lama's) stay at the British Museum last year. Stierch will be the first Wikipedian-in-Residence at a Smithsonian Museum. Contact between Wikimedians and the institution was established last June (Signpost coverage: "Wikimedia Washington DC reaches out to the Smithsonian"). Earlier this month, Stierch had co-presented a five-minute talk with Katie Filbert (User:Aude) at the institution's "Ignite Smithsonian" conference, encouraging an audience of museum professionals to cooperate with Wikimedians ("Be GLAMorous: Join WikiProject GLAM/SI" – video, blog post).
Briefly
- Survey of editors: The Wikimedia Foundation's Global Development department has launched a survey of Wikipedia editors (translated into 21 languages, including English) on April 20, "to get a better understanding of Wikipedia's editors and their needs". As explained on the Foundation's blog, the survey is the first of its kind conducted by the WMF (apart from the earlier UNU-MERIT study), and is intended to be repeated semi-annually.
- Milestones: The Marathi language Wikipedia reached 33,333 articles on April 24.
- Meetups: Community meetups took place last week in Mumbai (April 23); New York City (April 23); and Manchester (April 24).
- NYC "GLAMcamp" to join senior GLAM activists: On the weekend of May 20–22, Wikimedia New York City and the New York Public Library will host "GLAMcamp NYC", an event about collaborations with cultural institutions ("GLAMs"). "Rather than an open community conference like Wikimania [the event] will be a workshop targeting a small group of community-focused and technology-focused Wikimedians to kickstart the key elements of the glamwiki.org project". Among other tasks, participants will work on documentation of existing projects to facilitate new ones, and on the development of the "GLAM-Wikimedia ambassador" system (partly modeled after the Wikipedia ambassador roles introduced last year by the Foundation's Public Policy Initiative). The GLAMcamp is supported by a $10,000 grant from the Foundation.
- GLAM blogging: On the blog of the US-based "Center for the Future of Museums", Lori Byrd Phillips (User:HstryQT, the current Wikipedian-in-Residence at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis) wrote about "Museums and Wikipedia: the future of collaboration and accessibility". UK Wikimedian User:Fæ devoted the first two postings on his new personal blog to GLAM topics, a critique of the term "GLAM Ambassador" (proposing to use " e-volunteer" instead), and an appeal to institutions to "Set your digital archive free" by uploading it to Wikimedia Commons.
- Good Internet: A one-day conference titled "Good Internet" at the UC Berkeley saw appearances by the Wikimedia Foundation's Chief Global Development Officer Barry Newstead, Chief Technology Officer Danese Cooper and former Public Outreach Officer Pete Forsyth. Slides for Forsyth's presentation are available online: "Wikipedia: a model for using the Internet for good".
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Low-hanging fruit and sustainability; Qwiki on iPad; sceptic critic; brief news
IEEE magazine summarizes research on sustainability and low-hanging fruit
In its April edition, the IEEE's Computer magazine examined "The past, present, and future of Wikipedia", noting that Wikipedia is facing "real challenges in recruiting new editors and in keeping existing contributors productive." The IEEE is the world's largest professional association for the advancement of technology.
After citing results by PARC researchers who in 2009 observed that new users were encountering increasing resistance to their edits, and were frequently leaving soon after (Signpost coverage) the article summarizes growth models for Wikipedia, replacing the earlier naive exponential growth hypothesis with logistic or Lotka–Volterra equations (an "ecological" model with predators and prey corresponding roughly to editors and possible encyclopedic topics), and other research (for example, a 2007 article that found "editors are spending more and more time doing ... meta-level things such as having discussions with one another, developing policies, and fighting vandalism").
As indirect evidence for the theory "that Wikipedians might indeed be running out of things to write about" (sometimes referred to as the "low-hanging fruits" explanation for stagnating activity), the authors – Shyong (Tony) K. Lam and John Riedl from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota – quote their own earlier research which found that "on average, articles created early in Wikipedia’s life received many more hits than articles created more recently, suggesting that newer articles tend to be about low-interest topics. "
The authors conclude:
| “ | From [Wikipedia's] inception, the number of active editors had grown rapidly until recently. Millions of new editors continue to sign up every year, but corresponding millions leave, never to edit again. The most likely explanation is increasing conflict: as Suh and his PARC colleagues suggest, the ecological niche for Wikipedia is filling up, and contributors are increasingly likely to find themselves in a fight when trying to improve an article.
In principle, this increasing conflict might be fine. Properly channeled, it could lead to improved quality. ... There is a risk, though, of gridlock, with millions of editor-hours invested in negotiating changes that provide little actual improvement to the articles. We believe it is important for Wikipedia to explore new social computing tools that can aid the community in surviving these challenges by helping contributors work together happily and efficiently. |
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An upcoming article "will explore the issue of quality".
Qwiki launches iPad app
As reported earlier ("Robot reader of Wikipedia articles", "WP pages in video form") a multimedia website called Qwiki, backed by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, uses text summaries drawn from any chosen English Wikipedia article to synthesize topic-based text, images and videos into slide shows.
Qwiki recently launched an iPad app, as noted by The Huffington Post [1], TechCrunch [2] and other media outlets.
The app is available for free on the iTunes store.
Sceptic newsletter publishes article alleging "bias on Wikipedia against scientific neutrality"
On Wikipedia Review (a web forum devoted to critical commentary about Wikipedia), a user going by the name of Peter Damian announced that he had published an article about Wikipedia in the spring edition of The Skeptical Adversaria, the quarterly newsletter of the British Association for Skeptical Enquiry (ASKE), criticizing Wikipedia from a skeptical perspective. According to ASKE's web presence [3], the newsletter "is deliberately informal in tone and gives all our members a chance to air their views."
Damian also posted excerpts and a link to a PDF version of the article, according to which its introduction says:
| “ | Unfortunately the principle of crowdsourcing has not really worked for Wikipedia, for a number of reasons that sceptics, and all those who care about the scientific method, should be concerned about. ... Not everyone who edits Wikipedia has an interest in getting the facts right. This leads to a systematic bias on Wikipedia against scientific neutrality. | ” |
Among the articles cited as examples are:
- Moon landing conspiracy theories ("The talk pages are entertaining, and a testimony to the patience and fortitude of those who have strived – in this case successfully – to maintain neutrality. ")
- "The article on Levitation currently (February 2011) discusses the subject as though it were an established phenomenon" (mostly referring to a section titled "Mystical levitation in Christianity". On Wikipedia Review, Damian noted that the article has since been changed significantly by a Wikipedian to whom he circulated a draft of his article, and another one who read it after publication.)
- Electronic Voice Phenomenon and Integral Theory, as cases where an "asymmetry of interest" between "sceptics and non-sceptics" leads to bias, arguing that proponents of a pseudoscientific theory tend to focus their attention on one article, while the "handful of editors, sceptics or scientists, who have an ideological and independent commitment to the truth, as far it can be derived from 'reliable sources' ... must spread their resources across all such pages."
As further reasons for a perceived bias against skeptic views, the article posits conflict of interest ("A fringe editor has a strong reward in seeing their biased advertising in full public view"), Wikipedia policy ("The burden of proof, for those who wish to remove claims, is to prove that the claim is not supported by 'reliable sources'"), anonymous editing and sockpuppets, and the claim that "Wikipedia has an administration which is supposed to be neutral, but it was long ago infiltrated both by members of the pseudoscience establishment and sceptic groups".
In the conclusion, the author says his advice to sceptics "is emphatically not to edit Wikipedia. It is painful and one-sided and stressful. A better practice is to select some area of pseudoscience or cultism or crankism, and document its treatment on Wikipedia" (for example, in the article criticism of Wikipedia, since converted into a disambiguation page).
The newsletter's editor, Professor Michael Heap of Sheffield University, wrote that "There may be readers who contribute, or have contributed, to Wikipedia and who would like to present their own views on this important topic. If you are one such reader you are very welcome to have your views aired in the next issue of the newsletter."
Last year, Peter Damian (or someone using the same name) criticized the quality of Wikipedia's coverage in philosophy – and the humanities in general – in many postings to the Foundation-l mailing list (e.g. [4], [5]), where he was eventually moderated, following earlier blocks on Wikipedia (cf. Signpost coverage).
Briefly
- Wiktionary benefits from Google update: According to a blog posting by German SEO software company SISTRIX GmbH, Wiktionary.org was the "biggest winner" in an update of Google's search result ranking algorithm two weeks ago, as measured by SISTRIX' own "VisibilityIndex" ("an index value calculated from traffic on keywords, ranking and click-through rate on specific positions"). The change formed the second stage of Google's "Panda" algorithm update begun in February, which is interpreted as an attempt to reduce the ranking of low-quality "content farms", and was reported to have benefited Wikipedia (Signpost coverage). In the second stage, it was extended from the US to all English-speaking countries. SISTRIX commented: "Like last time, Google seems to have reached its goal: ranking quality content better than before".
- Local paper scrutinizes coverage of town: The quality of Wikipedia's article on Eugene, Oregon was examined in a column in local newspaper The Register-Guard. The quality of the column was in turn discussed on the talk page of WikiProject Oregon.
- BLP subject notes errors, still praises Wikipedia: According to Monsters and Critics, (US musician) "John Legend found out (his) Wikipedia page had been changed after he was asked strange questions", but despite the errors still said that "Wikipedia is great for quick info. I use it all the time. Just don't use it as your primary source if you're about to publish something."
- "Campus Ambassadors" pilot in India: Hisham Mundol, the Wikimedia Foundation's "India Programs" consultant, visited Pune last week to prepare the launch of a Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors program in India – outreach activists who provide training and advice about editing Wikipedia at educational institutions. As quoted in an article by local daily The Pune Mirror ("Now, you can be a Wikipedia ambassador!"), Mundol explained that "Pune is India’s education capital and the city has more than two lakh [200,000] students, ... which is why Wikipedia will be starting the programme from here." (The article's positive tone was contrasted by an article in the same paper a few days later that used Wikipedia as an example for the downsides of "crowdsourcing" to ask "Will Google Maps lead people astray, the Wikipedia way?".) As opposed to the Public Policy Initiative launched by the WMF last year, which introduced the ambassadors concept, the Indian ambassadors will not be restricted to one particular academic field. In a report posted after the visit, Mundol concluded that "there appears to be a reasonable level of interest, laced with a degree of (healthy) skepticism on how it can be made to work in India."
- Wikimedia UK conference: The Next Web covered the annual meeting of the British Wikimedia chapter ("WikiMedia UK to hire full-time staff, aims to increase content quality on Wikipedia", see also last week's "News and notes").
Reader comments
WikiProject Somerset
- WikiProject Berkshire is currently undergoing a revival. Interested editors are invited to participate.
- This is the last week of the April Wikification Drive. Wikify some articles today and you could earn barnstars for your efforts!
- The May Copyedit Backlog Elimination Drive begins Sunday. Register today!
- WikiProject Unreferenced BLPs could use your help referencing articles tagged since June 2010.
This week, we visited the English county of Somerset, the primary subject of WikiProject Somerset. Started in September 2007 with fewer than 10 members and over 1,700 unassessed articles, the project has grown to include 24 editors maintaining nearly 2,600 articles, all assessed (see the chart below for a timeline of their accomplishments). A child of WikiProject UK geography and WikiProject England, WikiProject Somerset maintains connections to several sibling projects for other counties in the United Kingdom. The project has built a portal, works on a to-do list, and provides editors with a variety of templates and resources. We interviewed Rod (Rodw), Reaper Eternal, Jaguar, and Derek Andrews.
Rod lives in Bath and North East Somerset, a Unitary Authority within Somerset. He discovered Wikipedia in 2004 and has previously contributed to other UK-related projects, like WikiProject Bristol (he works in Bristol). He became involved in WikiProject Somerset when the project's creation was suggested in 2007 and he focuses mainly on local history, geography, and the various towns and villages in the county.
Reaper Eternal was invited to the project by Rod after working on several articles pertaining to the project. He lives in Ohio and has never been to the United Kingdom, although his "ancestors did emigrate from the British Isles." He tends to focus on Somerset's geography and archaeology.
Jaguar "was never invited to join the project - I joined it in supreme envy because I knew that it was one of the best and most active projects around in the whole of England." He lives in Hampshire, but he has been active in a variety of UK-related projects including WikiProject Somerset, WikiProject Wiltshire (which he started with the help of Rod), and several areas of South East England. Jaguar focuses on articles about settlements and local geography.
Derek Andrews was one of the founders of WikiProject Somerset, although he gives considerable credit to Rod who "has done a great job over the years keeping on top of all the tasks and showing great leadership." Derek Andrews was born and raised in Wells, but he now lives in Nova Scotia. He tends to edit articles with a historical aspect, but will work on anything that catches his attention.
The project is home to 13 featured articles, 14 featured lists, two featured topics, a featured portal, and 50 good articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? Were you involved in promoting Somerset to FA status?
- Rod: I have been involved in several of these. They are a collaborative effort often involving many editors over the years with different people adding content (and appropriate references, pictures etc) and others providing helpful copyediting, checking and updating. Getting the Somerset article to FA has been number 1 on the projects list of goals from the very beginning as it is the highest priority for a project about the county.
- Reaper Eternal: I contributed most of the content to Worlebury Camp, but it took a team effort to get it to GA since I was not very familiar with the procedure at the time. I can fully affirm that had I not been helped with that article, I never would have made any of my three GAs. Somerset was already a featured article by the time I had started editing six months ago.
- Jaguar: I haven't been involved in bringing Somerset to FA (I hadn't joined the project back then) but ever since I have helped around with improving a lot of articles. I took a look through Somerset Levels and I wanted to see if I could help with it bringing it up to FA, but there were already many people helping with it so I decided to back out with that one. However, I have helped a lot with other things such as starting lots of new articles for hill forts and I have recently been helping bring List of hill forts and ancient settlements in Somerset to FLC. I have also brought a couple of articles to DYK.
Despite the small geographic area covered by this project, 24 editors contribute to the project's efforts and the project's talk page remains very active. What strategies would you suggest to other regionally-focused WikiProjects?
- Derek Andrews: Somerset may be small, but it has hundreds of communities, often with a rich history and including many notable buildings and residents, so it is by no means a small task. Although I have not lived there for 30 years, I still have a deep interest in the county, probably deeper than when I was there and couldn't wait to move away!
- Rod: When editing is focused on a particular geographical area it is easier to become familiar with the frequently used sources, such as the books and local government web sites etc. Many editors are also motivated when they see articles about the area in which they live or work improving and may be more willing to contribute.
Share with us some of the work that went into the featured Somerset Portal. How often is the content updated? To what audience is the portal intended to appeal?
- Rod: The portal was another of the projects goals. It was set up in 2007 as a basic page with the content being changed every six months or so (however this often got forgotten. In November 2010 inspired by some of the other portals I had looked at, this was changed to a dynamic system which rotates different content every time a reader visits. It now includes all FA, GA & DYK content (36 articles, 13 biographies, 9 pictures, 23 settlements & 20 DYK sections - each with 5 DYKs which have appeared on the main page). I add new content when articles are GA, FA etc promoted.
There are a variety of requested photographs in Somerset. Has there been an effort to fulfill some of these requests? How might people in Somerset and surrounding areas be able to help with requested photography?
- Rod: This is a constantly changing category. Many of the pages needing images have been provided with them, either by editors going and taking the photos themselves or from the excellent collection (licensed under creative commons) on Geograph Britain and Ireland, however others are added to the list. Recent work on List of hill forts and ancient settlements in Somerset has added quite a few to the list, some of which are quite inaccessible. Other problems relate to the Caves of the Mendip Hills which need specialist skills or equipment to get into them. Any contributions other can make to providing illustrations for Somerset related articles would be great.
Has there been an effort to recruit people from outside Somerset, perhaps to work on the project's to-do list which includes addressing 40 articles needing cleanup, checking external links, adding alt tags to images, and other background tasks?
- Rod: The cleanup list changes weekly and has been brought down massively from the 250+ when the new bot started to update this a few months ago. Several of the articles are "As of" tags for items which need to be updated when new news becomes available and others are incomplete lists which may never be complete. Several of the project members don't live in the county and any others to help out with the tasks identified (and others) would be very welcome. I'm not aware of any active attempt to recruit them & how this could happen - although I do add a project invitation to the talk pages of those I see frequently editing articles within the remit of the project. I think most people find the project if the project banner is on the talk page of articles which interest them.
- Reaper Eternal: I live outside Somerset (in Ohio, USA). I am slowly working on the cleanup listing, and have recently managed to clean up a couple sourcing issues. I also regularly copyedit articles, and I am familiar with British English despite living in America. The project invitation induced me to join.
Does WikiProject Somerset collaborate with any projects covering the other ceremonial counties of England? Does the project collaborate with any of the larger country-wide projects?
| Date | Number of articles | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 FA
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FL
|
 GA
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B | C | Start | Stub | Unassessed | Total | |
| Sept 2007 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 4 | - | 4 | 1 | 1760 | 1778 |
| 1 Feb 2008 | 5 | 3 | 12 | 67 | - | 607 | 985 | 0 | 1691 |
| 8 Sept 2008 | 6 | 3 | 17 | 73 | 18 | 644 | 1027 | 0 | 1802 |
| 1 Mar 2009 | 8 | 3 | 21 | 66 | 56 | 1005 | 608 | 0 | 1794 |
| 1 Sept 2009 | 8 | 9 | 24 | 63 | 77 | 1099 | 850 | 0 | 2153 |
| 1 Mar 2010 | 8 | 11 | 29 | 64 | 98 | 1118 | 904 | 0 | 2410 |
| 1 Sept 2010 | 10 | 13 | 41 | 68 | 108 | 1138 | 926 | 0 | 2484 |
| 1 Mar 2011 | 11 | 14 | 50 | 70 | 144 | 1320 | 795 | 0 | 2597 |
- Rod: There has been some collaboration with wikiprojects for WP:Bristol, WP:Devon and the newish WP:WILTS particularly on rivers, canals, railways etc which cross the counties borders. Parent projects include WP:England and WP:UKGEO which help with guidelines etc such as WP:UKCITIES helping to achieve consistency in format and coverage across the whole of the country. There are other topic specific wikiprojects (eg Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Waterways, Wikipedia:WikiProject UK Railways) where specialists in particular areas are often willing to help.
What are WikiProject Somerset's most pressing needs? How can a new member help today?
- Derek Andrews: There are plenty of Open tasks. I would encourage new members to work on whatever aspect most appeals to them, or is within their skillset. It is much more rewarding for volunteers to do something they enjoy, than asking them to do drudge work that will turn them off.
- Rod: Over the last year or so we have had an ongoing collaboration to bring each of the settlements with over 5,000 population to GA status. This has resulted in Bridgwater, Burnham-on-Sea, Chard, Cheddar, Clevedon, Crewkerne, Frome, Glastonbury, Keynsham, Midsomer Norton, Minehead, Portishead, Radstock, Shepton Mallet, Street, Taunton, Wellington, Wells, Weston-super-Mare and Yeovil being promoted, often with the work being lead by an editor who lives there, however Backwell, Comeytrowe, Nailsea, North Petherton, Peasedown St John and Yatton still need work to bring them to this standard. The projects high importance articles include the five districts (Mendip, Sedgemoor, South Somerset, Taunton Deane & West Somerset) and two unitary authority areas (Bath and North East Somerset & North Somerset) within the county. High importance is also given to county wide articles such as Geography of Somerset, Culture of Somerset, Economy of Somerset, Geology of Somerset, History of Somerset, Transport in Somerset etc but everyone is obviously welcome to work on whatever areas interest them.
- If we were to work on the projects most popular articles then it would include a lot of biographies (as opposed to history or geography), however some of these people despite being born or living in the county, are better known for other things.
Let's get physical next week. Until then, decide which projects matter the most in the archive.
Reader comments
The best of the week
New administrator
The Signpost welcomes RHM22 (nom) as our newest admin. He specialises in numismatics and has collaborated to bring three articles and one list to featured status. RHM, from the US, will focus among other things on merging mistitled pages and helping to work through administrative backlogs.
Featured sounds
- JFK establishment of the Peace Corps (nom; related article), John F. Kennedy's announcement of the March 1, 1961 signing of Executive Order 10924 to mark the establishment of the Peace Corps.
- Amar Rabbi Elazar (nom; related article), performed by Cantor Meyer Kanewsky and choir in 1919 for Edison Records. The text begins, roughly, "Said Rabbi Elazar, quoting Rabbi Chaninah, Scholars increase the levels of peace in the world." In Judaism, this passage is commonly used in the Sunday morning service.
- Attention bugle call (nom; related article), traditional (four seconds long), performed by the US Army Ceremonial Band.
- Hail to the Chief (nom; related article): four "ruffles and flourishes" followed by the long version of Hail to the Chief, composed 1812 by the English songwriter James Sanderson. It is commonly played as a fanfare for the US President, as in this performance by the US Army Band.
- Bill Clinton's statement on the Monica Lewinsky scandal (nom; related article). The presentation, in 1998, is known for his statement "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." (6:07).
- "Basse et dessus de trompette" (nom; related article). From Suite du premier ton (Suite in C major), for organ, by Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676–1749), published in his Livre d'orgue (Book of the Organ, 1710). Performed by Ashtar Moïra.
- Woodrow Wilson's address to the American Indians, 1913 (nom; related article), containing the memorable phrase, "The great white father now calls you his brothers". Noise reduction by User:Adam Cuerden.
- Four marches performed by the US Air Force Band for their 1998 album Front and Center: A Collection of American Marches, conducted by Colonel Lowell E. Graham (nom): Veni, Vidi, Vici (related article), a march written by Robert Browne Hall in 1896; Troopers Tribunal (related article), a circus march written by Henry Fillmore in 1905; Regimental Pride (related article), written by John Clifford Heed in 1913; and The Outlook (related article), written by Fred Jewell, a popular circus musician, in 1913.
Featured articles
This week saw no new featured articles.
Featured lists
Four lists were promoted:
- First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union (nom) (Nominated by Trust Is All You Need.)
- List of Alabama Crimson Tide bowl games (nom) (Nominated by Patriarca12.)
- Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance (nom) (Nominated by Another Believer.)
- Latin Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Album (nom) (Nominated by Jaespinoza.)
Featured pictures
Five images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":
- Electric locomotive Škoda ChS8 (nom; related article), a Czech-built electric locomotive. (Created by User:George Chernilevsky.) picture at right
- Zirconium (nom; related article) in the form of highly structured crystal bars, with a pure 1 cm3 cube of the same element for comparison. (Created by User:Alchemist-hp.) picture at right
- Bird blinking (nom; related article), the nictitating membrane of a Masked Lapwing, as it closes; the photograph also shows the bird's spectacular yellow skin. After comments by a reviewer, the image was sharpened, sun reflection removed, and chromatic aberration corrected. (Created by User:99of9.) picture at bottom
- Motorcycle policeman (nom; related article), an Australian motorcycle policeman on a BMW. (Created by User:Jjron.)
- Mt Buffalo Plateau and The Horn (nom; related article), at 1,723 m (5,653 ft), the highest point in the area. In the full-resolution version, the safety railing for walkers can be seen at the top. In winter, the area is usually covered in snow. (Created by User:99of9.) picture at top
Featured topic
One topic was promoted: New York State Route 28 (nom), with two featured articles and two good articles. This state highway extends for some 280 miles (450 km) in the shape of a "C" (nominator Mitch32). picture at right
Reader comments
Request to amend prior case; further voting in AEsh case
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases and closed no cases. One case is currently open.
Open case
Arbitration Enforcement sanction handling (AEsh) (Week 7)
Voting has continued during the week as to which proposals will form the final decision. More votes are likely to be made in the coming week.
Closed case
On 21 April 2011, YMB29 (talk · contribs) requested that the Committee lift the topic ban that was imposed on him at the conclusion of the case. YMB29 is currently banned from editing articles about the Soviet Union and former Soviet Republics, and all related articles, broadly construed, for a period of no less than 6 months. As of 00:05 of 25 April no motion has been passed.
Reader comments
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
What is: Semantic MediaWiki?
Wikimedia Labs: soon to be at the cutting edge of MediaWiki development?
23 April 2012
MediaWiki 1.20wmf01 hits first WMF wiki, understanding 20% time, and why this report cannot yet be a draft
16 April 2012
What is: agile development? and new mobile site goes live
12 September 2011
The bugosphere, new mobile site and MediaWiki 1.18 close in on deployment
29 August 2011
Code Review backlog almost zero; What is: Subversion?; brief news
18 July 2011
Wikimedia down for an hour; What is: Wikipedia Offline?
30 May 2011
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
25 April 2011
What is: localisation?; the proposed "personal image filter" explained; and more in brief
21 March 2011
Over time, a large number of extensions (over 1500) have been written for the MediaWiki software on which Wikimedia wikis and other sites are based. A small percentage of these (approximately 80, in fact) are enabled on Wikimedia wikis. Today's What is? section looks at Semantic MediaWiki (official site), a package of extensions that are not currently enabled on Wikimedia wikis.
| “ | What are the hundred world-largest cities with a female mayor? Wikipedia should be able to provide the answer: it contains all large cities, their mayors, and articles about the mayor that tell us about their gender. Yet the question is almost impossible to answer for a human, since one would have to read all articles about all large cities first! ... Computers can deal with large datasets much easier, yet they are not able to support us very much when seeking answers from a wiki: even sophisticated programs cannot yet read and understand human-language texts unless the topic and language of the text is very restricted [which is not the case on Wikipedia]. | ” |
Semantic MediaWiki (shortened to SMW) allows those writing an article to use tags like "[[Has population::82,060,000]]" to allow automated tools to understand the answers to these sort of questions. In practical terms, many such tags would be included in infoboxes. Once it's there, a new breed of maps, calendars and graphs can be generated from it, and the data can also be passed on to third party users easily and in a machine-readable format.
Several hundred wikis do use the software, however, and there have long been calls to deploy it to at least some of the Foundation's wikis. Several SMW developers were invited to give presentations at the WMF's "Data Summit" in February (Signpost coverage). Though developers at the WMF are not yet satisfied that SMW can scale to meet the demands of the many millions of users Wikipedia and other WMF wikis get (Deputy Director Erik Möller recently called it "still a big heap of 'untrusted code' ... that we're not prepared to host on our main cluster yet"), many will undoubtedly be interested to see how SMW adoption progresses over time.
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.
- Wikimedia wikis have a new 404 error page (view template, bug #17316).
- Wikimedia sites experienced an unusually high level of server errors from April 19 onwards which system administrator Ryan Lane blamed on "upgrading too many" Squid caching servers at the same time (wikitech-l mailing list). As a result, several servers were temporarily downgraded again (server admin log).
- The addition of new sections to a page can no longer be marked as a "Minor" edit (bug #27860).
- The independent website translatewiki.net, which handles the translation of the MediaWiki interface (see previous Signpost coverage for context), is celebrating its sixth birthday (Niklas Laxström).
- As of 19 April a new developer, Patrick Reilly, has been hired to rewrite the mobile site,
m.wikipedia.org. The fundamental problems with the site were highlighted in a post this week to the wikitech-l mailing list. - Including a non-existent file will now trigger addition to a tracking category, in a similar way to existing cite-errors (bug #23816).
- Wikis can enable account resetting by entering solely an email address in the event of a user forgetting their username, though a decision has not been taken on whether this will be enabled on WMF wikis due to performance concerns (bug #13015). In addition, for all wikis, registered users' IP addresses will not be sent in the password reset emails (bug #18347).
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