Politics in the Pacific: WikiProject Australian Politics

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• The September Copyedit Backlog Elimination Drive is underway. Clean up Wikipedia and earn barnstars along the way!
• WikiProject Images and Media is sponsoring a drive to move free images to Commons this month. It's an easy way to improve the availability of free media and earn barnstars for yourself!
• Wikipedia Loves Libraries micro-conferences inspired by the GLAM WikiProjects and the Great American Wiknic will be held in cities across North America in October 2011. Find one near you!

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

This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Australian Politics. Started in May 2005, the project has built up a collection of over 8,000 pages, including 12 pieces of featured content and 17 Good and A-class Articles. Like many topics related to Australia, WikiProject Australian Politics is supported by a parameter of WikiProject Australia's unified banner template. The project is also related to WikiProject Australian Law and WikiProject Australian History. We interviewed seven of the project's members.

Pete (Skyring) is from Canberra, home to the parliament of Australia. While not as active as he once was, he still keeps an eye on political subjects because "living in the national capital, federal politics is as present as the weather to me." He deplores biased coverage of political parties and politicians, including editors wrangling over trivial information like former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd eating his own earwax.

Orderinchaos joined in 2006 when he noticed massive gaps in the coverage of several states as well as at the federal level. He admits "there's still a *long* way to go, but a lot of the foundations are there now." He thinks this project differs from others he's worked on because "it's more like a meeting space than a workgroup – several of us are or have been very very active in one area and we use the space to ask questions, raise issues or ideas, or bring anomalies to a wider audience."

Roisterer describes himself as "an Adelaide lad" but he was working as a journalist in New Zealand when he first joined Wikipedia in 2004. He studied Australian politics at university "so it was logical to work on politics articles (although I tend to stick to long-dead politicians to lessen the danger of getting embroiled in disputes)."

When Frickeg joined in early 2007, he was upset by gaps in coverage of federal politics, particularly the large number of redlinks for politicians. He's focused considerably on politics at the federal level and in New South Wales.

Canley has always been interested in politics in general and Australian politics in particular "so it was pretty much inevitable I would gravitate to this project." He sees additional challenges in improving Australian topics because "we don't have the luxury of public domain government works and images, so there's a lot more work to do to get decent articles and photos going." Despite the challenges, he enjoys doing research, "whether it's popping into the library or delving into online references such as Trove and Picture Australia, government gazettes or election and parliamentary data." He agree with Pete that "there is a tendency towards trivia and recentism, but that's pretty much the case everywhere."

Satu (SatuSuro) feels that the "ground level Local Government politics in Australia" are not covered well by both the Australian mainstream media and by Wikipedia. Because "most editors appear to be interested in the big picture, national level" he hopes to elaborate on "the forces and the issues in political activity at local government" and the many regional issues that tend to be under-reported.

Nick-D is from Canberra and began contributing to Wikipedia in November 2005. He is also an active member of WikiProject Military History and many of the Featured and Good Articles he helped build are related to the Australian military.

The last time the WikiProject Report featured a project covering Australia was in 2007 and many Australian projects are semi-active or inactive. Do you feel that Australia is under-represented on the English Wikipedia? What are some difficulties faced by Australian WikiProjects?

Nick-D: I think that Australia is adequately represented, though many articles are under-developed compared to the equivalent articles on other countries.

Orderinchaos: The Australian projects have seen a drop in activity in 2009 commensurate with the rest of the project generally – one of our earlier strengths was that we had a strong group of collaborative, experienced editors, but many of these are now either inactive or less active (including myself in the latter category) due to work or study commitments offline which may not have been as big an issue when we started editing. Australia is adequately represented – last I checked, we represent around 3% of all content on enwp, which has been fairly steady throughout Wikipedia's growth. AUSPOL, for the record, has suffered less than some of the other subprojects – we still have an active community, albeit small, and regular use of our talk page.

Roisterer: Unfortunately we have lost a number of very knowledgable editors over the past few years which has slowed the momentum of the project, and, like Orderinchaos notes, many of us remaining aren't as active as we'd like due to work commitments. However, we're slowly making progress.

Frickeg: The project has certainly slowed down recently, but this is perhaps more a consequence of us having worked out many of the issues that used to take up so much time. As Roisterer said we've lost some valuable editors over the years and many of us are semi-inactive; we certainly have a very small base of editors who contribute regularly. I don't feel we're particularly under-represented, though, thanks to a generally high calibre of contributions by that small base.

Satu: Australian sub-projects had a high point some three to four years ago, and the decline in activity has been evident more in the last two years with some projects literally at a standstill. Some projects can be said to have been developed sufficiently to survive periods of inactivity – it is possible that other projects are not as lucky as the politics project which due to he state of Australian federal and state politics – new and recycled issues require attention more than some subjects in other projects – probably eliciting interest in editing to keep up with the issues.

Australia's political system shares similarities with Britain's Westminster parliamentary system and the federal system of the United States. Has there been any sharing of information, templates, or expertise with WikiProjects or individual editors from outside Australia?

Frickeg: Not really – the Australian system is different enough from both Britain and the US that it's been better to do our own thing in general. In particular our use of preferential voting has forced us to develop (or at least modify) many templates for ourselves. Having said that there have been some outstanding contributions to the area by non-Australian editors, like User:Wehwalt's excellent work bringing Gough Whitlam to FA.

Did WikiProject Australian Politics undertake any special initiatives during the 2010 federal election? Is there work still to be done updating articles after the election? Are there any steps being taken to prepare for the next election?

Orderinchaos: Not in particular – there was a spike of activity but no different practices followed. Sometimes elections serve as springboards for drives by individuals to fill holes or develop new structures – User:Frickeg created a series of electoral results articles for every division in Australia (e.g. this one) in the leadup to both the 2007 and 2010 elections. The 2008 election brought our attention to the fact some electorate articles were in a poor state and we went on a drive to replace their content – one Good Article emerged from the process, and all WA electorate articles are functionally complete. A redistribution means we'll probably need another one ahead of the 2013 state election.

Frickeg: Constant vigilance is generally needed around election time, when like all politics-related projects there tends to be an invasion of partisan editing. Apart from maintaining the election page and endeavouring to keep all articles up to date there was no formal initiative during the campaign. There are probably a few of the dustier articles that may have missed an update, but most of them are up to date for the election, if not exactly complete. The next election is (probably) a long way away so there's little to prepare for at this stage other than to continue to update for current events, although our previous elections have served to prepare us quite well.

The project is home to 12 Featured Articles and Lists, 15 Good and A-class Articles, and a variety of Featured Pictures. Have you contributed to any of these articles or images? What are some challenges of bringing Australia-related content to featured status?

Orderinchaos: I've personally written two of the good articles (Electoral district of Perth and Port Macquarie-Hastings Council dismissal, 2008). One big challenge about Australian topics – I assume this would not be specific to Australia – is that so much is not online. Anything on WA for example requires solid library research, it's simply not possible to put stuff together from what is available online. Over the years I've built a reasonable home library of reference texts, as well as a good understanding of the university and state libraries. Another related problem is that the offline information may only be present in one location, and the person with the background to research it may be in another – scanning takes time and can produce files too large to email, so we sometimes resort to the postal system to exchange information. I've made open offers to help anyone looking for sources, and I know other editors have done the same in other states.

Frickeg: I've recently shifted focus to trying to improve some of our content to recognised status, after the exhausting job of creating individual electorate results pages for every electorate. So far I've written three Good Articles: Albert Gould, John Neild and Edward Millen. As Orderinchaos said finding sufficient sources, even on fairly basic things, can be a challenge. I'd also add that the fact that official portraits of Australian politicians are not available for us to use is difficult when it comes to modern politicians; the best recourse for getting photos is generally for editors to attend an event at which the politician is speaking and request a photo personally.

Roisterer: My impact has been fairly small; I brought Wilfrid Kent-Hughes to GA some time ago and started Thomas Playford IV, which was then greatly improved upon to become an FA. Like other editors, I've had plans to build other articles up to GA/FA levels but life seems to get in the way.

Canley: My focus has been on the list-type articles (Members of Parliament for XXXX–YYYY) and statistics such as election results, as well as obscure biographies which are harder to fill out to a high quality, so I haven't really been involved in improving the prose quality of articles. I'm going for quantity over quality, basically!

What are the project's most pressing needs? How can Wikipedians living inside and outside Australia help the project's efforts?

Orderinchaos: The main thing we need is more people. We have most of the sources we need to develop more content but haven't, between us, the time to do it. Our experience with newer editors who want to write about politicians who've historically represented their own area, or who went to their former school, or whatever, has been good. Another pressing need is photographs of politicians – we would love to be able to illustrate articles, but the dogged enforcers of fair use policies have led to many images, rightly or wrongly depending on the case, being deleted and in some cases (Joh Bjelke-Petersen – premier of QLD 1968–1987 – and Gough Whitlam – prime minister of Australia 1972–1975), photos are taken from well before their peak notability in public life simply because those photos are pre-1954 and therefore free. Only a handful of politicians have been willing to donate photos under a free licence – it would be good to either have a US-style setup where government-produced artefacts are in the public domain, or even just an agreement from either parliaments or state/federal political parties to licence one photo of each parliamentarian.

Pete: Wikipedia's policies on co-operation and conflict need to be more scrupulously observed here, to encourage new editors to stay and contribute, rather than being chased away by the old bulls defending their territory... Case in point: in 2010 the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was toppled by his hitherto loyal deputy Julia Gillard... According to our article, he had merely "stepped aside, after announcing a leadership ballot." There was no mention of why on earth a sitting Prime Minister would do this, even though the Australian media had chronicled his disasters and downfall for months previously... Our articles should not reflect hype and scaremongering, but neither should they give a false impression.

Nick-D: I agree with all the points Orderinchaos raises, and especially the one about there being a shortage of active editors. Due to the large number of articles which fall under the project's scope and the fact that many of them are BLPs, a lot of the active editors' time is tied down with maintenance and reverting vandalism and/or POV-pushing. On the topic of POV pushing, it is a problem at times, and especially in the lead up to elections (and I think that people from both sides of politics are equally at fault here – and by this I'm not talking about the regular editors). I've personally seen a number of articles about Australian politicians which were obviously written by their staff, and the situation got quite problematic for a while in the lead up to the New South Wales state election, 2011.

Frickeg: Again, I agree with the points above. We are suffering something of a dearth of active editors at the moment (I know I'm not nearly as active as I used to be, for various reasons), which is leaving many things undone. At the moment there aren't really enough editors to patrol recent changes in our many BLPs, let alone other pages. The POV-pushing thing is still a problem and likely always will be, although it seems to have died down somewhat recently (I noticed far less during the 2010 election than there was in 2007, although New South Wales state politics is something of an exception in this regard). I suspect many of our articles are written from a somewhat insular perspective and could probably benefit from non-Australian eyes to clarify some aspects.

Canley: I would like to see more sources of information and imagery available online, and under free or copyleft terms rather than Crown copyright or non-commercial use. There is some move towards CC licences for government information in Australia which is great, but we're very much constrained by onerous licence terms on things like electoral boundary data and politician's profile photos. It really varies from state-to-state the level of online or even archived data available to the public, from biographical databases to election results, some is behind paywalls as well, although I'm one of the lucky ones who has a university account through which I can access a lot of journal material. I would really like to see Wikimedia Australia and the Australian government co-operate in getting historical data and information out to a wider audience. As others say, there's plenty of information to keep us working for years, but not enough active editors.

Satu: Following on from Canley's comments; the relative disinterest, antipathy and inactivity on the part of some Australian states and some Federal government departments needs to be reversed – specially when seeing how wikipedia friendly Trove is. Also as he says it (the project, the subject) requires active editors.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Roisterer: The Australian political system has had a number of firsts: We were the first to introduce the Secret ballot, the first parliamentary socialist government in the world (at both state and federal level) and in 1861 women in South Australia were voting in local elections. Anyone who gets involved in the project will likely find all sorts of other tidbits.

Next week, we'll find a better excuse than "my dog ate it." Until then, visit the library's secret archive while you're cutting class.

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2011-09-12

Wikipedians explain two new featured pictures

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87

"You have been riding for hours among quiet richly wooded scenery, winding up along the side of some kind of gorge, ... then suddenly you come round a corner where the view opens up the valley, and you are almost struck senseless by the blinding splendour of that vast face of ice-hung precipices and soaring ridges, sixteen thousand feet from top to toe ...", from Mistress of Mistresses (1935) by E.R. Eddison, describing the grand Nanga Parbat in the Pakistani Himalaya. The Nanga Parbat was captured in this new featured picture by Wikimedian Waqas.usman, who spoke to The Signpost about it (see below). Please use the horizontal scroller if necessary.

This week's "Featured content" covers Sunday 4 – Saturday 10 September

Two new featured pictures explained

* Nanga Parbat (nom; related article), also known as the "killer mountain" for the number of climbers who have died trying to conquer it, is displayed at the top. At 8,125 metres (26,658 ft), it's the ninth-highest peak in the world and the second-highest in Pakistan, and forms the western anchor of the Himalayan Range. The image includes a clear view of several glaciers.

Wikimedian User:Waqas.usman told The Signpost, "I took the component images of this panorama mid-afternoon on 28 June 2005, using a 35 mm Panasonic Lumix FZ15. The field of view—that is, the angle captured from left to right as you scroll across—is between 120º and 150º (the full 180º image consists of 17 images stitched together, but was reduced to provide a uniform horizontal dimension). The panorama shows the north face of Nanga Parbat from a point just north of the base camp. We later descended to the closest village, Beyal, which lies between Fairy Meadows camping ground and the base camp on this southbound trek.

"We arrived at this vantage point shortly after crossing the combined width of more than 500 metres (1600 ft) of the two glaciers you can see in the right half of the picture (Ganalo Glacier, and another referred to as 'Old Branch of Rakh Glacier' on Google Earth). In the left half of the image is the much bigger Rakhiot (Raikot) Glacier. This was at about 3,900 m (12,800 ft)—an altitude that takes several days to get used to, with the oxygen down to about 70% of its sea-level proportion; altitude sickness can be a real problem up there if you're not used to trekking that high. 35°14′15″N 74°35′21″E .

"The image might deceive you as to the real distances involved. The straight-line distance from us up to the peak of Nanga Parbat was about 8 kilometres (5 mi), with a gain in altitude was more than 4.2 kilometres (2.6 mi)! To get an idea of the scale, take a look at the image at full res: to the right of the left-side glacier, not far from the bottom of the image and below a patch of green, you can just make out a small brick-and-mortar shelter—a pretty decent sized building, probably more than 3 × 4 m (10 × 15 ft). To its left is a tiny light-blue object, which is a two-to-three-person tent. The hut and tent were probably about 1.5 kilometres (close to a mile) from where I set up the camera."

* Arnold Genthe: autochrome nude (nom; related article). Arnold Genthe was an early exponent of Autochrome Lumière, the principal colour photography process in use before the advent of "subtractive" colour film in the mid-1930s. Patented in 1903 and first marketed in 1907, the autochrome was loaded into the camera with the bare glass side facing the lens, so that the light passed through the mosaic filter layer before reaching the emulsion—a completely different method from black-and-white plates.

This image, displayed at the right, was edited before nomination by Chick Bowen, who explained the rationale and the process: "We do not have a single featured autochrome, nor do we have a single photographic nude, nor anything by Genthe, who was one of the best-known California photographers before Adams." Chick Bowen set out to overcome what he called "this triple oversight" by choosing this image for artistic reasons. "As nudes go, I feel this one makes particularly clear the goals of modernist, artistic nude photography; the circular form with one hand over the head calls to mind the famous Edward Weston picture of Bertha Wardell. It also shows the way the imprecise color of an autochrome can be an aesthetic strength." This was a tricky edit, apparently (here is the original). 

"Autochromes have a typical grid-like chromatic pattern, which is visible in a high-resolution scan of the plate, but this wasn't the way they were traditionally viewed (which was in a small handheld viewer, sort of like half a stereoscope). To reduce the obviousness of this pattern, I applied a very slight blur and downscaled a little bit."

Other featured pictures

Three other images were promoted, and can be viewed in medium size by clicking on "nom":

* Marabou Stork (nom; related article), a massive bird species that probably reaches a height of 150 cm (60 in) and weighs more than 9 kg (20 lbs), with a wingspan of at least 3.5 m (10.5 ft). This specimen was photographed in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania by User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim in June. It breeds in Africa south of the Sahara, occurring in both wet and arid habitats, often near human habitation, especially waste tips. It is sometimes called the "undertaker bird", due to its shape from behind: cloak-like wings and back, skinny white legs, and sometimes, a large white mass of "hair."

* Crowned Lapwing (nom; related article), with its characteristic black crown intersected by an annular white halo. The species occurs from the Red Sea coast of Somalia to southern and southwestern Africa. It is adaptable and numerous, with bold and noisy habits. (Created by User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim)

* Pied Oystercatchers (nom; related article), taken at Austin's Ferry, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia (created by User:JJ Harrison, who says, "The one on the left has just flicked a small mussel towards its mouth.").

Featured articles

Five articles were promoted to featured status:

* 1991 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), the first season in over 24 years in which no hurricanes[nb 1] developed from tropical waves, which are the source for most North Atlantic tropical cyclones. Nevertheless, the season featured Hurricane Bob, which at the time was among the ten costliest US hurricanes, caused billions of dollars in damage, mostly in Massachusetts, and 17 deaths. (Nominated by Hurricanehink)

* Northrop YF-23 (nom), a single-seat, twin-engine fighter aircraft designed for the United States Air Force in the 1980s. An unconventional-looking aircraft, it had diamond-shaped wings, a profile with substantial area-ruling to reduce drag at supersonic speeds, and an all-moving V-tail. The cockpit was placed high, near the nose of the aircraft. The aircraft featured a tricycle landing gear configuration with a nose landing gear and two main landing gear. (Sp33dyphil) Picture at right

* Caroline of Ansbach (nom), 1683–1737, the queen consort of King George II of Great Britain. She put up with his mistresses, and became involved in generational family rows among the Hanoverians. She and Robert Walpole—the first British prime minister—were credited with jointly exerting great control over the King. (Ruby2010 and DrKiernan)

* USS Constellation vs La Vengeance (nom), an action between frigates of the French and US navies during the Quasi-War, in 1800. The battle resulted in severe damage to La Vengeance, which was forced to flee. (XavierGreen)

* SMS Grosser Kurfürst (1913) (nom), the second battleship of the four-ship König class. Grosser Kurfürst served in the German Imperial Navy during World War I. Her name refers to Frederick William I, the Prince-elector of Brandenburg. (Parsecboy)

Two featured articles were delisted:

* Point Park Civic Center (nom: referencing, prose, and lead).

* T-34 (nom: referencing, comprehensiveness, and image compliance)

Featured lists

Three lists were promoted:

* List of NK Maribor seasons (nom) (Nominated by Ratipok.)

* List of Florida Marlins team records (nom) (Albacore.)

* List of World Heritage in Danger (nom) (Bamse.) Picture at right

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2011-09-12

Ohconfucius sanctions removed, Cirt/Jayen466 closure, and a call for CU/OS applications

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By Jorgenev

Two cases are currently open:

• Senkaku Islands, which looks at the behavior of editors involved in a dispute over whether the naming of the articles Senkaku Islands and Senkaku Islands dispute is neutral, moved into its fourth week. It is alleged that the content dispute has been exacerbated by disruptive editing.
• Abortion, a dispute over the lead sentence of Abortion and the naming of abortion-related articles, also said to have been exacerbated by disruptive editing, similarly moved into its fourth week.

There are pending requests for clarification for three cases: Transcendental Meditation movement (since August 26), Digwuren (since August 24), and Ireland article names (since August 19). There are also two cases with pending requests for amendment: Race and intelligence (since September 3) and Russavia-Biophys.

Date-delinking case amended

The two-year-old date-delinking case, concerning the automated removal of date-autoformatting in articles while the relevant WP:MOSNUM guideline was still in flux, has now been amended. Ohconfucius, who was sanctioned in the original case, requested that the last remaining sanctions be removed, arguing they were outdated and that this was a matter of simple housekeeping. Arbitrator opinion was cautious: Jclemens wrote that "The last time we lifted sanctions on an editor sanctioned under this case, I regretted it, because the future behavior in the area was problematic." Risker was strongly of the view that "this should be going in the opposite direction". However, Xeno felt that, if there were any current issues, they appeared to be outside of the intent of the original sanctions and agreed with Ohconfucius that rescinding those was simply housekeeping—an opinion that carried the day 8 to 5.

Cirt and Jayen466 case closure update

In addition to the remedies covered last week, Cirt has also been desysopped (for "admitted violations of the neutral point of view and biographies of living people policies"), but may reapply for adminship by filing a new request for adminship at any time. This additional remedy eventually passed 6 to 5 in support; Cirt has since said that he is "not considering" applying for his admin bit back at this time.

Call for applications for CheckUser and Oversight

The committee announced today that they were seeking applications from suitably qualified users to serve on the CheckUser and Oversight teams. Editors were encouraged to self-nominate by emailing arbcom-en-blists.wikimedia.org. The application period is scheduled to close on 18 September 2011; then the committee will review the applications to decide which candidates will move forward to the community consultation phase. Of note, the committee indicated that due to "increasing activity from the South Asian, Southeast Asian, or Middle Eastern regions, CheckUser applications are particularly sought from people ... familiar with the ISPs and typical editing patterns of any of these regions." Further information on the process is available on a special 2011 CheckUser/Oversight appointments page.

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2011-09-12

What is: agile development? and new mobile site goes live

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By Jarry1250

What is: agile development?

Related articles

What is...?

Wikimedia Labs: soon to be at the cutting edge of MediaWiki development?
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16 April 2012

What is: agile development? and new mobile site goes live
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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
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Wikimedia down for an hour; What is: Wikipedia Offline?
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More articles

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

On Thursday, the WMF Fundraiser Engineering team posted an update on how preparations for this year's fundraiser were progressing. They reported recent improvements in logging changes to CentralNotices, expanding the number of payment providers (for example, to allow donations in more currencies to be accepted), general bugfixes and other improvements. According to the team's project tracking software, Mingle, progress this year has resulted in at least 22 additional features (known as "cards") being implemented. With a number of tests and trials already being run, the advanced state of the project prompted the WMF's Philippe Beaudette publicly to commend the seven-person team, describing them as "enormously talented young... men and women".

Perhaps more controversially, the Fundraiser Engineering team have been trialling a development framework as yet uncommon in Wikimedia cycles. "Agile development" focusses on short iterations, each including their own design and production stages, improving the product iteratively. Iterations, known as sprints, are separated by retrospectives during which problems are analysed. The benefit of such a scheme, agility, can be described as responsiveness to changing requirements and priorities as designers, software engineers and managers work (normally literally) side-by-side. By contrast, under the waterfall model, the incumbent framework at Wikimedia, product changes are put through a lengthy but comprehensive design process before coding begins. In doing so, requirements are fixed early, tasks divided between teams and deadlines set; not so with agile development, now in use in Fundraiser Engineering, supported by Mingle. Although early signs look promising, critics of the agile development framework will no doubt wait for the fundraiser to come and go before judging its success.

“	Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation [e.g. design specifications] Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan	”
— The Agile manifesto

MobileFrontend taking production traffic

Since Thursday, a percentage of visitors to Wikimedia's mobile site will have experienced a slightly different browsing experience. The old Ruby site has been converted into a newer PHP implementation that replicates the existing feature set. Nonetheless, the extension was built not merely to mimic, but to entirely surpass, existing functionality. New features, such as basic editing and uploading interfaces, are scheduled for next year; at the moment, visitors wishing to edit must transfer to the main site, which is not customised for display on slow connections and small screen sizes. The new extension is also built to take better advantage of Wikimedia's existing technical infrastructure in order to filter out and handle requests from mobile devices more effectively.

As such, the project forms an important part of the Foundation's vision of expanding its editor base into "Global South" countries such as Brazil and India, where mobile phone (and mobile Internet) usage can be considerably higher than traditional forms of Internet access. As a result, "Wikimedia should have a strategy that allows Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects to be easily read and edited using mobile technology" according to the Foundation's white paper. The white paper, published in March this year, outlined ways of achieving the targets outlined in its five-year plan, including halting the decline in the number of editors.

The English Wikipedia served approximately 580 million pages customised for display on mobile devices last month, up more than 90% compared to August 2010 (full statistics). Since the switch was made, a number of bug fixes have also gone live (a full list of bugs found in the new extension, and possible new features, is also available).

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.

• The problems of packaging software: WMF bugmeister Mark Hershberger blogged about the problems he is experiencing in packaging HipHop for PHP for wider distribution, including to Wikimedia's own servers. In unrelated news, Hershberger also oversaw this week's bug triage, which focussed on bugs relating to the UploadWizard extension, which facilitates uploads to Wikimedia Commons (wikitech-l mailing list).
• Debate over data storage: In light of the news that developer Niklas Laxström is preparing to work on MediaWiki's action logging infrastructure, there was a discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list about the proper format for storing PHP arrays in databases. For example, some users suggested JSON as a storage format, whilst others preferred the output of PHP's own serialize function.
• 3D molecule viewer closer than before?: There are renewed efforts to get some form of 3D molecule viewer enabled on Wikimedia wikis. According to developer Magnus Manske, the feature "has been on wishlist[s] since ... forever".
• Does MediaWiki need a skin language?: At the moment, all skins are written in the programming language PHP, making them a security vulnerability. Such a weakness effectively prevents letting users write their own skins, writes developer Daniel Friesen, who argues for the introduction of a "template language", effectively limiting them to a safe subset of functions (wikitech-l mailing list).
• Pre-trial bot runs to be recorded: A bot was approved for use on the English Wikipedia this week to make a note of unauthorised trials on a bot's BRFA. Although such edits are common on other wikis in order to prove functionality, bots on the English Wikipedia must have approval before they begin any edits. A bot task to move hatnotes to the very top of articles is currently being discussed, as are a number of other tasks.
• JavaScript bug fixed: The use of protocol-relative URLs no longer breaks some JavaScript functionality when using Internet Explorer version 7 (bug #30825).
  
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2011-09-12

The Walrus and the Carpenter

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By Rd232

Rd232 was an active editor and administrator on the English Wikipedia from late 2004 until August 2011, when he retired. The following humorous poem reflects the experiences and interactions of new users and the established community, and was written shortly after retirement from the project.

The views expressed are those of the author only. Other editors will often leave opposing views and potential corrections in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds. If you have one in mind, please leave a message at the opinion desk.

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With apologies to Lewis Carroll (The Walrus and the Carpenter)

The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of junk: "If this were only cleared away," They said, "it WOULD be grand!" "If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose," the Walrus said, "That they could get it clear?" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear. "O Readers, come and walk with us!" The Walrus did beseech. "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, On the wiki page: We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each." The eldest reader looked at him. But never a word he said: The eldest reader winked his eye, And shook his heavy head— Meaning to say he did not choose To leave the reader-bed. But four young newbies hurried up, All eager for the new: Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, Their fingers were clean and flew— And this was odd, because, you know, They hadn't any clue. Four other newbies followed them, And yet another four; And thick and fast they came at last, And more, and more, and more— All chopping through the frothy text, And blundering by law. The Walrus and the Carpenter Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock Conveniently low: And all the little newbies stood And waited in a row. "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the newbies cried, "Before we have our chat; For some of us are blocked already, And the rest of us a bit unsteady!" "No hurry!" said the Carpenter. They thanked him much for that. "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed— Now if you're ready newbies dear, We can begin to feed." "But not on us!" the newbies cried, Turning a little blue, "After such kindness, that would be A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said "Do you admire the view? "It was so kind of you to come! And you are very nice!" The Carpenter said nothing but "Cut us another slice: I wish you were not quite so deaf— I've had to ask you twice!" "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick, After we've brought them out so far, And made them type so quick!" The Carpenter said nothing but "The butter's spread too thick!" "I weep for you," the Walrus said. "I deeply sympathize." With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size. Holding his pocket handkerchief Before his streaming eyes. "O newbies," said the Carpenter. "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?" But answer came there none— And that was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one.

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