Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/In the media
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
September Engineering Report published
The Wikimedia Foundation's Engineering Report for September was published last week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. Many of the projects mentioned have been covered in The Signpost, including the switchover to protocol-relative URLs, the release of the new mobile site, and the ongoing deployment of 1.18 to Wikimedia wikis. The report's writers also chose to highlight a new roadmap of what the development team will be working on over the coming months (although the map appears considerably incomplete at time of writing).
Also announced were the successful replication of article text data from the WMF's main bank of servers, in Tampa, Florida, to the new data centre in Ashburn, Virginia; the first trials of basic Wikimedia Labs functionality; that the WMF was looking into ways of accepting text-based reviews of articles in addition to the current system of star rankings; and a recent overhaul to the system of gadgets (which will, it is hoped, allow for a WMF shared gadget repository). A test wiki that ran the very latest MediaWiki revisions (to emulate a process known as continuous integration, which Wikimedia hopes to adopt as a standard in the near future) is expected in early October, with full https support later in the month.
It was not all positive news, however. Also mentioned in the report, under the heading "lowlights", was the results of an investigation into three short outages that occurred on 26 September. The investigation concluded that the first was caused by an important cable being "accidentally knocked loose" during separate maintenance work (proposed solution: add more redundancy to the older server racks), that the second was caused by the 1.18 upgrade affecting the database cluster responsible for the CentralAuth login functionality (solution: potentially give it its own cluster), and that the third was caused by a combination of the 1.18 upgrade and a series of particularly expensive database queries being run at the time (solution: kill queries more effectively in future).
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.
- New edit visualisation tool: WikiTrip, the latest in a long line of article history visualisation tools and already described in an earlier Signpost issue, has now been released, according to a blog post on the GNUband blog. An example query results in an interface that attempts to show where edits originate, what gender editors describe themselves, the anonymous/registered editor balance, and, above all, how these changed over time for any given article.
- Alternative use for WebFonts?: Gerard Meijssen, a Wikimedian who was recently appointed to a new WMF internationalisation team, has blogged about a new use that has been found for the WebFonts extension. According to Meijssen, the extension, which had been designed with Indic scripts in mind, is now being used by a non-Wikimedia wiki to support Fraktur (a type of blackletter script most commonly associated with Germanic writing).
- Semantic MediaWiki celebrates sixth birthday: Semantic MediaWiki, a MediaWiki extension designed with adherence to the principles of the semantic web in mind, celebrated its sixth anniversary this week. The anniversary was accompanied by the news that the Free Software Directory (a project of the Free Software Foundation) has chosen to use Semantic MediaWiki to power its site.
- Renewed focus on new parser and Visual Editor: Lead Software Architect at the WMF Brion Vibber blogged about his progress with the new VisualEditor (a project deeply entwined with rewriting the MediaWiki parser to be altogether more predictable). In particular, Vibber noted that his efforts could be used to improve the existing parser, by allowing it to work asynchronously.
- To save or not to save: A discussion on the foundation-l mailing list this week focussed around the imminent collapse of the German open source hosting provider berliOS, due to financial difficulties. There were suggestions that a bailout package should be organised in order to save the expertise and networks of the site, which promotes free software development (it claims to host over 4700 open source projects). BerliOS had played an important role as a downtime backup in the early years of Wikipedia, David Gerard recalled.
- Wikibooks and Wikisource bug triage: The latest MediaWiki bug triage focussed around the Wikisource and Wikibooks projects, looking at what bugs of those projects most needed resolving and what could be done about them (wikitech-l mailing list). Among the most promising news from the triage was that LilyPond, an extension for displaying musical notation that is yet to be enabled on Wikimedia wikis due to security code, began to receive a large amount of code review after it was added to MediaWiki's central repository. A number of other bugs looked at, relating to performing the same action on a number of pages at the same time (watch, delete), also seem applicable for all Wikimedia wikis.
- Bugs:
- Interwiki bots and MW1.18 may be incompatible: There is some concern among users of the pywikipedia bot framework that their interwiki.py script - the basis for virtually all interwiki bots - is incompatible with the latest release of MediaWiki, causing all content except interwiki links to be removed from pages unexpectedly. Investigations are ongoing (wikitech-l mailing list).
- License information available via the API: after bug #17224 was fixed, any wiki's license information can now be found by simply utilising the
siteparamsoption of its API.
- RFC on the best place for new features: A renewed debate over the best place for features has broken out. Since MediaWiki can now ship with certain extensions by default, Oliver Beaton suggested in an RFC that the "core" MediaWiki installation should actually only include very basic functions relating to page editing, with everything else being modularised into extensions, some of which would be installed by default (wikitech-l mailing list).
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Italian Wikipedia shuts down over new privacy law; Wikimedia Sverige produce short Wikipedia films, Sue Gardner calls for empathy
Italian Wikipedia shuts down over new privacy law
Editors of the Italian Wikipedia have shut the site down in protest against a law currently going through the Italian parliament. User:Vituzzu, an editor on Italian Wikipedia, explained the reasons behind the debate:
Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built – neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents – are likely to be sunk permanently by paragraph 29 of an Italian Law also known as "DDL interception".
This legislative reform proposal, which the Italian Parliament is debating currently, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request without comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to their image. Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge: the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required in order to impose such correction to any website.
Conversely, anyone who feels offended by any contents published on a blog, an online newspaper and most likely, even on Wikipedia, can directly request the removal of such contents and its permanent replacement with a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the veracity of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.
Discussion in the "Bar" (equivalent to the English Wikipedia's Village Pump) resulted in broad support from editors for a "blackout", with all pages redirected to a page based on Vituzzu's words. This was done on October 4 and is still in force as of publishing time. The blackout has received some mainstream attention from various international news outlets; notable English-language reports include the BBC and the Washington Post. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) issued an official statement supporting the Italian Wikipedians. In notable individual reactions from the Foundation-l mailing list, Sue Gardner tentatively supported the move, and Mike Godwin, the former legal counsel for the WMF, applauded the news, saying "It's very hard to get a government to change its mind. You have to challenge government officials in a big, dramatic (and usually longer-lasting) way to get their attention and make them responsive." However, there were also dissenting views. Kat Walsh, a WMF board member, believed that a complete blackout may have been going too far:
I agree that for a protest to be effective, it must cause real disruption, enough to cause people to see the effect and get attention. I'm not even sure what I would suggest as an alternative--perhaps a shorter duration of complete blackout, and a gigantic sitenotice afterward (or beforehand)? Advertising the existence of mirrors? Allowing people to access articles in a tiny window below a gigantic notice? I'm not sure. I think the action that was done may be too much, that maybe something could have been done to generate as much attention without cutting off access as much.
Discussion among community members is continuing at Meta's Wikimedia Forum.
Three short films from Wikimedia Sverige
For the second largest book fair in Europe, Swedish chapter Wikimedia Sverige produced three short films about why different target groups should edit Wikipedia. These films covered librarians, teachers and senior citizens respectively. Wikimedia Sverige has offered to help out anyone who wants a version in their own language. More information and localization efforts here.
Brief notes
- Steward elections drawing to close: Voting in the second steward elections of the year is due to end on 6 October 2011.
- Gardner on the controversial image filter: Wikimedia Foundation chief executive Sue Gardner posted on her personal blog an entry entitled "Editorial judgement and empathy", where she describes what she feels is a lack of imagination from participants in the image filter discussion.
- Wikimedia UK outlines activity for 2012: Wikimedia's UK chapter has published a 2012 Activity Plan which outlines on what activities and programmes they intend to spend money on next year, although they stress that it is not a budget. In the next few weeks, the chapter has scheduled an extraordinary general meeting to amend the chapter's constitution as part of a longstanding effort to get formal charity status in the UK.
- New administrator: The Signpost welcomes Wikipedia's newest administrator, bot operator Anomie. A veteran with over six years of editing, Anomie runs three active bots. There are no current Requests for Adminship at the time of writing.
- Wikimedia Indonesia pilot project: On Friday October 7, the first session will take place in a new three month collaboration between Wikimedia Indonesia and the Lontar Foundation hoped to result in 300 new articles about Indonesian writers, their works, and related foundations and organizations.
- Milestones: The Macedonian, Kyrgyz, Zeelandic and Gagauz Wikipedias reached milestones this week, with 50,000, 2,000 and 1,000 and 1,000 articles respectively. The Simple English Wikipedia celebrated its 200,000 registered editor.
- Second time around for Wiki Loves Monuments: The Wiki Loves Monuments project enjoyed great success in its pan-European second annual contest, accounting for a haul of over 165,000 images added to Wikimedia Commons. Around 80% of the 5,000 participants are estimated to be new contributors to Wikimedia projects. In the coming months, judges will undertake the process of narrowing down the entries, culminating in an announcement of the winners in early December.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/In focus
Last call for comments on CheckUser and Oversight teams
Two cases remain open, Abortion and Senkaku Islands; the second is very close to finished.
Last call for comments on candidates for appointment to the CheckUser and Oversight teams
The Arbitration Committee is still seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates presented for appointment to the CheckUser and Oversight teams (see previous Signpost coverage). Comments concerning the suitability or unsuitability of the individual candidates may be made publicly or submitted privately via email to the committee until 23:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC). It is expected that by October 10 appointments will be announced from the list of approved candidates:
CheckUser: 28bytes • AGK • Courcelles • Elockid • HelloAnnyong • Keegan • Kww • Mentifisto • WilliamH
Oversight: Courcelles • Fluffernutter • WilliamH Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Humour