Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/In the media
Trials and tribulations of image rotation, Article Feedback version 5, and new diff colours
Image rotation change mishandled?
Questions were asked this week about the handling of a bug fix, deployed weeks ago with MediaWiki 1.18 (and reported at the time), that aimed to correct MediaWiki's display of photographs taken with the camera upside-down or sideways.
It has now been calculated that the number of images which had been relying on the previous behaviour numbered in the tens of thousands, according to lists generated on 4 December. Human tagging followed up on by a bot has since been able to reduce the number substantially, leaving approximately 3000 at the time of writing, although many more may still be tagged. Although the potential for this kind of problem had been discussed since deployment, it only attracted great attention after thumbnail deletions begun earlier this month revealed the issue on hundreds more images. One Commons contributor commented that they had "trouble thinking of any single act of vandalism we've ever suffered that rivals the amount of damage to Wikimedia done by this [change]".
The criticism has prompted suggestions that greater care should be taken with future fixes to any problematically large existing corpus such as photographic images. Proposals include relying on future projects such as the parser rewrite to "ancestor" existing pages and images, that is, leaving them untouched by fixes until they can be dealt with at a later date. Developer Bryan Tong Minh admitted on the wikitech-l mailing list that it looked like "automatic image rotation [was] not as good an idea as Brion and I originally thought".
ArticleFeedback version 5
Later this week, version 5 of the ArticleFeedback extension will be deployed to approximately 10,000[1] articles on the English Wikipedia. The version differs from its predecessor insofar as it moves away from an emphasis on participation and quality, and instead is set to focus on "finding ways for readers to contribute productively to building the encyclopedia".
Visitors to the 10,000 articles will, after deployment, no longer see the existing interface for "star rating" pages, but instead find alternative designs at the bottom of articles. The four such designs being trialled include a freetext suggestion field, an invitation to edit, and a series of more directed text fields that the user can select between. Visitors to the pages will be allocated at random to one of the four designs and the designs compared.
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.
- Visual Editor testing begins: A sandbox version of the new WYSIWYG visual editor will be created on MediaWiki.org later this week. The testing period allows users to get a feel for the interface and to try out its handling of various formatting structures, but does not support the saving or loading of existing wikitext. In future, it is hoped that the Visual Editor will be able to take advantage of the new parser currently in development to render and edit increasingly complex wikitext structures.
- New diff colours: The default colours presented in diffs are going to be changed from green (added) and yellow (removed) to blue (added) and green (removed). The new colours, which have been in place on the French Wikipedia for some time, are believed to be easier to read for those suffering from certain types of colour blindness (revision #105280). The change is likely to go live when MediaWiki 1.19 is deployed to Wikimedia wikis and can be overridden via a gadget.
- Internationalisation developer needed: Bugmeister Mark Hershberger appealed this week for a developer to take on the task of internationalising the SpecialUploadLocal extension. The extension is beta-graded and promises easier mass image imports for both Wikimedia and non-Wikimedia wikis. In unrelated news, the Wikimedia Android app received its first interface translations this week, courtesy of translatewiki.net, based on the language the user has chosen to view the rest of the Android interface in (Words and What Not blog).
- WebFonts soft launched: As discussed in a post on the Wikimedia blog by internationalisation team member Gerard Meijssen, the WebFonts extension was soft launched on 12 December to wikis particularly in need of it. As Meijssen explained, the extension "ensures that the readers of our wikis will always see the intended characters on their screen" despite the fact that "many devices do not provide the necessary fonts" by default. Although the launch itself was successful and the extension was deployed to "virtually all" the intended wikis, several bugs quickly became apparent and will now need to be fixed before the extension can be deployed further. A major upgrade to the Narayam extension was also deployed.
- Mobile browsing improvements in the pipeline: Lead Software Architect Brion Vibber devoted a series of posts on his blog to noting his work to improve the rendering of various Wikimedia pages when displayed on narrow screens such as those used by mobile devices. These included file description pages and portals, with the latter changes live already.
- TIFF thumbnailing filesize limit to be lifted: Work on integrating a new image scaler to handle particularly large TIFF files will see the upper filesize limit abolished this week, according to the WMF software deployments page. Upcoming deployments also include a version of the "timed text" media handler, which allows for better subtitling of videos and a host of other improvements to video integration, the deployment of which has now been scheduled for January after months of development work.
Corrections
- ^ An earlier version of this article gave an earlier estimate of 100,000; the number of articles affected has since been reduced.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/Opinion
Research project banner ads run afoul of community
CentralNotice research project taken down over community opposition
For several hours on Thursday of this week, 10,000 experienced editors and 30,000 new contributors were exposed to a CentralNotice message advertising a 25-minute survey of Wikimedia participants. Put together by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and Sciences Po in Paris, the study, aimed to "better understand the dynamics of interactions and behavior in online social spaces", was sanctioned by the Wikimedia Foundation, and had been on the CentralNotice calendar for the past month.
Nonetheless, as Wikimedia Foundation Senior Research Analyst Dario Taraborelli explained on the foundation-l mailing list, the banner was poorly received by Wikimedians, who found it confusing and reminiscent of a commercial venture. It was taken down hours later, having incited much discussion at the Administrators' noticeboard, the village pump, foundation-l and internal-l mailing lists, and even an RfC.
The study's research team first approached the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedians in January 2010, proposing to post messages on user talk pages; editors suggested they scrap the method, and make a minimally invasive CentralNotice banner to registered editors instead. The proposal went through a review by the Wikimedia Research Committee in July of this year, which resulted in the project's current parameters, namely, only for logged in users, only on the English Wikipedia, and only for at most a week.
Soon after, the Wikimedia Foundation invested in added functionality for the CentralNotice extension; the new backend now extends to editor databases, allowing its users to target specific subsets of users. Using this functionality, the banner was created, put on the CentralNotice calendar a month ahead of launch, and finally launched on 8 December at 11:00 UTC, garnering 800 responses before being shut down.
While the notice was live, it garnered both negative and positive response from the Wikipedia community. According to ErrantX, "One of the criticisms was the lack of discussion/input the English Wikipedia community was granted – and the lack of notification prior to the launch. Feedback on the mailing lists seems to suggest that the Foundation and various committees are not aware of the communities preferences regarding Central Notices, partly because it has not been discussed before."
As explained by Taraborelli, "We realize that despite an extensive review, the launch of this project was not fully advertised on community forums. We plan to shortly resume the campaign ...after a full redesign of the recruitment protocol in order to address the concerns raised by many of you over the last 24 hours." The Foundation is now moving to provide better information on the project, by creating an FAQ and linking to the study directly from the banner, redesign the banner to be less "ad-like", and make privacy terms more transparent, as participants were not aware that they were sharing their usernames, edit counts, and user privileges with the study team.
Brief notes
- US Cultural Partnership Coordinator announced: The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the hiring of Lori Byrd Phillips as United States Cultural Partnership Coordinator for 2012. With this new position within the Global Development department, Phillips will "lead the charge" in building the infrastructure and support needed to accommodate growing interest in Wikimedia partnerships among cultural institutions in the United States; her ultimate goal is to make the process self-sustaining by 2013.
Phillips had previously served as the Wikipedian in Residence at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis since August 2010, as part of the GLAM-wiki initiative; cultural partnerships between Wikimedia and cultural institutions have generated much interest in the United States, most significantly a dedicated panel discussion at the upcoming American Association of Museums annual conference and Museum Expo.
- Call for Wikimedia Fellowships open: The Wikimedia Foundation is now seeking applicants and ideas for its Wikimedia Fellowships program. The program is open to all members of the Wikimedia community, and applicants are encouraged "to focus on the theme of improving editor retention and increasing participation in Wikimedia Projects." Applications for Spring 2012 are open through the 15 January deadline. Those selected as fellows will receive financial and logistical support from the Foundation towards their projects.
- Wikimedia Foundation Report for November published: The Wikimedia Foundation has published its report for November, 2011, covering all of the activities of the Foundation for the month. "Highlights" (linked to relevant Signpost articles) include the WikiConference and Hackathon in Mumbai, India, the new Feedback dashboard, the ongoing annual fundraiser, and Sue Gardner's annual European trip.
- New administrators: The Signpost welcomes The Blade of the Northern Lights to the ranks of Wikipedian administrators.
- Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this week: the Russian Wikipedia has reached 800,000 articles with Постолюк, Александр Павлович, the Afrikaans Wiktionary has reached 100,000 page edits, the Hebrew Wikiquote has reached 100,000 page edits, and the Dutch Wikipedia has reached 900,000 entries.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/In focus
Betacommand 3 workshop revived, two cases set for acceptance and the ArbCom elections finish on a whimper
There is but one case open at the time of writing: Betacommand 3, which proceeded into its seventh week with substantial activity in the workshop.
Two requests for cases were submitted this week. TimidGuy, who was banned by Jimbo Wales in September for conflict of interest, is appealing his ban to the committee, which looks set to accept it (the specifics of the case are private), and a large dispute over Muhammad Images also looks to be trending towards acceptance.
The big issue of the week was the conclusion of the annual elections for the Arbitration Committee. Results will be released pending confirmation from the election scrutineers of the integrity of the voting process. A "rather low" voter turnout was noted, with 734 editors participating this year compared to 854 in 2010 and 994 in 2009, a decline of approximately 14% year-on-year. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-12-12/Humour