A dalliance with the dismal scientists of WikiProject Economics

WikiProject news

News in brief

• Voting is now open for the Guild of Copy Editors coordinator election. The election lasts until December 31.
• The December 2011 Wikify Drive is underway. As always, barnstars are awaiting those who help reduce the backlog.
• The December 2011 Good Article Nomination Backlog Elimination Drive has begun. There are barnstars to be earned!
• WikiProject Images and Media is holding a drive in January to move free images to Commons. There are lots of prizes to earn. Sign up now!

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

This week, we interviewed the outspoken members of WikiProject Economics. The project was created when WikiProject Business and Economics split in February 2007, also resulting in the creation of the sister project WikiProject Business. WikiProject Economics is home to 12 pieces of featured material, 2 A-class articles, and 47 Good Articles. Our interviewees this week were Kiefer.Wolfowitz, Fifelfoo, and Protonk.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Economics? Do you have any academic degrees or work experience in economics?

Fifelfoo: The amazing economic history article, Economy of England in the Middle Ages made me interested in WikiProject Economics. Academically, I come from a labour history and Marxist political economy background so I felt I could contribute in some areas where I have a little expertise.

Kiefer.Wolfowitz: Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker's 1980s recession impressed upon me the importance of economics, and motivated me to study its language, mathematics and statistics. Professionally, I am a statistician and mathematical scientist interested in optimization; economics remains an interest.

On Wikipedia, my economics contributions have been to mathematical economics, particularly convexity and non-convexity: My best article, the Shapley–Folkman lemma, explains why the concept of economic equilibria is useful even when the simplifying assumptions of undergraduate economics are replaced by more realistic assumptions; it should be ready for FA nomination soon. Another topic is game-theoretic voting, especially the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem and Robin Farquharson. Finally, I work on biographies of economists: Jacques M. Drèze, Leonid Kantorovich, and (with David Eppstein) Graciela Chichilnisky and Andreu Mas-Collel

Protonk: I started editing articles on crises: Tulipmania, Panic of 1907, LTCM related articles. Those articles are great because they combine interesting historical tidbits with economic theory. We can talk about the Panic of 1907 as a fixed event in the past but we can also point to more current research on the causes and impact of certain events in the banking sector and government. Tulipmania was especially intriguing because our current folk understanding of what happened may not actually comport with the historical record. Unlike Kiefer Wolfowitz I don't have a great deal of mathematical aptitude so I had to focus on historical events, figures and history of economic thought. I have a BA (and progressing through an MA) in Economics but for many of the articles I don't think my experience or degrees are necessary for contributing meaningfully to the articles.

The terminology and concepts behind economics can be overwhelming to a layperson. How do you approach writing or rewriting articles that are sufficiently detailed but can be understood by readers who do not have prior knowledge of the subject? What role does the project play in helping non-experts write articles about economics?

Kiefer.Wolfowitz: The premise of this question seems wrong-headed. Economic principles are needed to understand the newspaper as well as other disciplines. How does one make sense of the Great Depression or the contemporary financial crisis without an understanding of effective demand and other concepts from macroeconomics? Economic models that describe how much insurance we purchase also describe how much time an alligator devotes to protecting its eggs (versus foraging for food).

To understand supply and demand curves requires only junior-high school mathematics. What is needed is the will to learn and the discipline to read and to think.

The intellectually impoverished can find amusement elsewhere on Wikipedia.

Fifelfoo: Much of political economy is accessible to the lay person. Adam Smith, Ricardo, Karl Marx, Veblen and the Austrian school of economics all wrote in prose, with comprehensible anecdotes. In addition, economic history reads much like normal history! Our economic history articles could do with love and improvement, and users need similar apparatus to writing history articles: a willingness to read books and synthesise what the scholars say.

Protonk: I'll disagree with my esteemed colleagues here on this subject. While writing Mathematical economics, I effectively hit a wall by the 1930s. Substantively summarizing the progress of mathematical econ. in the 20th century is basically impossible without a good working understanding of topology and set theory. Obviously what constitutes a "working understanding" may vary for different people and mathematical economics is a rather rarefied subject, but it is difficult to do justice to the subject without a good understanding of the underlying math. It is nearly impossible to make the math tractable for a layperson without an exceptional understanding--though this is true for any technical discipline. These issues crop up in areas where econometrics and statistics intersect. Making an article on the normal distribution useful, true and comprehensive for a practitioner will almost assuredly make it incomprehensible to a layperson unless a simple explanation is relegated to one section or subsection.

Charts and diagrams are often used to illustrate articles about economic concepts. How easily can someone contribute graphics like these? How can new contributors find articles that need charts or diagrams? Are there any photographic images that would be appropriate in economics articles?

Fifelfoo: One problem with contributing diagrams and charts is to avoid original research. In areas of macro-economics and micro-economics charts and diagrams would be very helpful. Negotiating what the "facts" are to be illustrated on the talk page, or with the project helps. In addition, users who can edit LaTeX math codes on Wikipedia could supply a great deal of help, both to "mainstream" economics, and to political economy areas like Marxism where circuits of capital and reproduction schema need illustration.

Protonk: Problems with original research exist with any subject area when talking about illustrations. What we really need is a reliable, open source sketching system for simple economics diagrams which can output both images (preferably SVGs) and source code. the source code matters because updating or editing graphs is difficult without basically recreating them. The graphics capability of R fits the bill for this but an economist unfamiliar with R would hit a steep learning curve well before being able to produce meaningful graphs and charts. There are a number of proprietary products out there (e.g. Excel and Gapminder) but those may be unavailable to all contributors or simple static image export under a free license may be impossible.

Further complicating this is the history of limited data disclosure in economics publications. Some of the big journals are slowly turning around on this front but merely recreating a graph or chart from a paper (rather than scanning the image and uploading it as a fair use file, which will often not meet our non-free content criteria) is a challenge without access to the original data.

There are four Wikipedia books that fall under the scope of WikiProject Economics: Economics, Macroeconomic Theory, the Federal Reserve System, and World Trade. Have you contributed to any of these books? What are your feelings on the future of Wikipedia books?

Protonk: I have pretty much zero interest in Wikipedia books with the exception of using the books interface as a handy PDF exporting tool.

What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?

Kiefer.Wolfowitz: Contributors should have passed M.A. sequences in mathematics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics, so that they know what they are talking about.

Economics suffers from POV-pushing, obviously by fringe/"heterodox schools" (e.g. Austrian economics, Marxist economics), zombie-lands of the intellectually dead; unfortunately, these topics are often emphasized in the (weak) literature of the history of political economy, which is viewed with contempt by most professional economists. Some Marxist models, e.g. by Richard M. Goodwin. or Perry Mehrling, remain interesting, in particularly for understanding that investment is driven by expected profits and that excessive wage demands are self-defeating.

Economics as a discipline also suffers from faddishness, being dominated by 4 U.S. departments in two cities; macroeconomics is dominated by MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Economics departments run their Ph.D. programs like trade schools/Ph.D. factories, teaching techniques like dynamic programming or cointegration, which then are applied in dull theses. An educated person who follows any science is shocked to see how changes in economics follow faddish technique rather than experimental/econometric triumph (in competition against competing theories or methods) or mathematical progress: Some pseudo-scientific fads are visible in the history of macroeconomic thought, which neglects progress in mathematical economics and assessment by econometrics.

Recently, economists have been embarrassed by "econometric methods" that estimated exposure-effects (for having participated in a labor-market training) as positive, when randomized experiments found negative or zero average treatment effects. As a result, funding agencies are encouraging or mandating designed experiments to evaluate treatment effects---forcing economists to do more than raid databases with Stata and inflict more of their idiotic "econometric models" on the public.

Lately, economics textbooks have been shamelessly replacing their previous editions' claims about the efficacy of so-called "econometric methods" for observational data with new sections on the importance of experiments---this is like economics textbooks previously having replaced sections about the virtues of economic planning---again without confession or shame!

Fifelfoo: Contributors need to understand WEIGHT and NPOV policy. Economics as an academic discipline has a very firm idea of what is current scholarly practice, including current scholarly minority view points: the Keynesian/neo-liberal positions. However, editors with experience in areas of political economy, such as Austrian economics and Marxist economics are welcome to contribute. Editors with backgrounds in political economic traditions need to avoid claiming that their analytical perspectives are factual, avoid adding too much weight, and most importantly: find elements of their own tradition that aren't written very well and reliably source them from scholarly works. Everyone is welcome, but, Wikipedia needs to represent the economic mainstream with central weight and focus — if the scholarship changes, the scholarship changes, but, we're not scholars, we're encyclopaedists.

Personally, I'd prefer seeing more economic historians contributing! We need articles on economic modelling and theory; but, we also need articles on how past economies actually worked. Editors who are intimidated by advanced micro-economics or macro-economic theory could certainly help write on the economic history of transatlantic trade; or, the economic history of Indian Ocean trade; or, the economic history of primary production in Australia. Noel Butlin's monographs are waiting to supply us with excellent articles. The biographies of economists are also in need of love.

Protonk: NPOV is a big issue. Many large economics articles have what are essentially forks dedicated to explaining or promoting the Austrian school point of view on a subject. This is especially problematic on articles relating to central banking, inflation and big macro issues like demand or government spending. Why the Austrian school is so over-represented on Wikipedia is a question for another day, but suffice it to say the model Wikipedian is right in the wheelhouse for Austrian demographics: male, young and technologically inclined. Consequently disputes on Wikipedia over areas of interest to the Austrian school grow well out of proportion to their significance within the discipline.

I don't know what solves this problem. Credentialism won't work. Even if we could reliably enforce standards for contributors it would run counter to the mission of Wikipedia and foreclose opportunities for talented and interested amateurs to improve articles. We also don't have the strength or consensus to apply a strict content rule (similar to the way fringe theories are treated in science or medicine). We could vote on a rule and ban contributors who run afoul of it but that would just invite complaints of censorship and create a negative environment for everyone. The only real potential solution is to signal members within the discipline that Wikipedia is a worthy, malleable resource as Prof. Erik Olin Wright has to the American Sociological Association.

On the subject of econometrics vs. experiments there was a symposium in the Spring 2010 JEP discussing this very issue. Movements away from econometric dominance in general are good but I agree somewhat with Christopher Sims that economics will never be an experimental science. This has always been broadly claimed at the outset of every intro/intermediate course with trivial examples (e.g. we can't experiment with large scale fiscal policy) but it is true even in more meaningful fashions.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Kiefer.Wolfowitz: With all of its problems, economics still has the highest mean I.Q. of any social study, and it and (non-clinical) psychology have the best intellectual standards in the social studies---sad but true.

One problem is that educated economists are less likely to contribute pro bono than they would if they were e.g. medical doctors or biologists. In particular, the study of microeconomics reduces students' propensity to cooperate, according to experiments by Cornell's Robert Frank. (Robert Frank, Thomas Gilovich & Dennis Regan: Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation? in: Journal of Economic Perspectives. Volume 7, Number 2. Spring 1993. pp. 159–71.) The gloomy science's WikiProject has a gloomy future!

Fifelfoo: Our economics articles could really do with an influx of high quality articles written from the mainstream weighting and perspective. If you have a degree in economics, why not fine tune an article using scholarly sources?

Protonk: Economics suffers from a dearth of practitioners who have general interest knowledge on many subjects in the discipline and maintain a professional interest in keeping the average reader informed on basic research. Contrast this with medicine (as exemplified by the great WikiProject Medicine) where practicing physicians benefit from their patients reaching only quality content from google searches for drugs, symptoms or disease name. Every preconception disabused online is a question they will not have to answer in a clinic. By contrast most practicing economists have no direct contact with the public (save professors). They may be interested in spreading knowledge about research or techniques but the intended audience will be very different and in many cases they have already found outlets outside of Wikipedia to host their contributions. There are a number of contributing factors to the low level of professional contributions to economics articles but lack of an external interest in an informed public is most persistent.

Next week, we'll decorate the tree of life. Until then, categorize every living thing in the archive.

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2011-12-19

Panoramas with Farwestern and a good week for featured content

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By Crisco 1492

This edition covers content promoted between 11 and 17 December 2011.

A 360-degree panorama of the crater of Mount St. Helens, photographed by Farwestern, who gives us background information and suggestions on the art and technique of the panorama

This week, The Signpost interviews Farwestern, who has contributed numerous panoramas to the project (many of them featured pictures). He gives some background information on his new featured picture (above), and shares his favourite panoramas and his tips for those who wish to make better panoramas.

The new featured picture: This new featured picture was the best shot from three climbs of the mountain. I tried earlier in August 2009 and made the summit but the conditions were very smoggy due to a wildfire in north eastern Oregon. In this October attempt, conditions were just perfect (and that doesn't happen very often in Washington State): right after a snowstorm and with a temperature of 24 °F (−4 °C). A subsequent attempt yielded footage that didn't have the "wow" factor that this one did. So, you see, the physical energy, time, and effort expended was truly only something that a dedicated artist might expend a few times in a lifetime.

The mountain has a special place in my family's story. My father was once a mountain climber and journalist for the Tacoma News Tribune. He climbed the mountain both before and after the explosion. In 1980 he rode with President Carter and select members of the press, via helicopter, to survey the site to educate the president about the disaster. My father considers his coverage of the event to be the highlight of his career, and my brother and I grew up exploring the wilderness around the mountain and grew to love and respect it.

Favourite panoramas: It's hard for me to choose a single favorite. I aspire to communicate the essence of a place as holistically as possible, and that inspired me towards capturing everything; in the form of many 360-degree panoramas, which are like virtual worlds and capture a special time and place in a way that really wasn't possible before recent technology. However, if I had to choose only four images it would be the new featured picture, this one of Mount Ellinor, and two on my own site: Hurricane Ridge covered in snow and El Capitan at night. I'm working on a project to create an interactive experience that captures many of the highlights of the western United States. A lot of these images aren't yet published on Wikipedia, but they will be soon.

Creating panoramas: My suggestions for those interested in capturing panoramas are threefold:

1. I spend huge amounts of time studying topographical maps of various outdoor areas. When I have a good understanding of the geography then I can usually predict places that will yield good results. You can usually tell where sunsets will look best by looking at where the sun will be relative to the environment. Then you can plan adventures around ideal setups. There is always that random-inspiration factor that sometimes happens but I find I am more "lucky" when I plan or do research about the place before going.
2. Worry less about the camera and more about composition. Panoramas are a different art because the idea is to capture as much as possible in a creative, beautiful way. Anyone can find a single, beautiful angle in almost any place, but imagine how hard it must be to take an ordinary place and make everything there interesting or beautiful. The classic tricks apply, like framing, rule-of-thirds, lines, contrast, but some new ones also, like how to get the sun in the shot without flare (by stitching two photos together: one with the sun blocked, and one without, so the top-half can be inserted over the non-flaired bottom).
3. Go places that other people aren't going. This is probably the biggest thing I try to do. A lot of the art is in getting to, and returning safely from distant, remote places. Images that offer something new are interesting. You can change a perspective by showing a common thing at night, or from a strange projection.

Featured articles

Eight featured articles were promoted this week:

• Oswald Watt (nom) by Ian Rose. Watt, born on 11 February 1878 in Bournemouth, England, moved to Sydney as an infant. After receiving his education in Britain, Watt returned to Australia and in 1911 became the first Australian to qualify for a Royal Aero Club flying certificate. During the First World War he first fought in the French Foreign Legion, later transferring to the Australian Flying Corps in 1916. After receiving numerous awards for his service during the war, Watt left the military to pursue business interests. He drowned at Bilgola Beach, New South Wales, on 21 May 1921.
• Piano music of Gabriel Fauré (nom) by Tim riley. The new featured article, dealing with all piano compositions by Gabriel Fauré, was created by Tim as "Fauré's piano works are not so very numerous, and [I] think a single article covering them all is probably better than a series of short articles on the various pieces". The article covers 13 nocturnes, 13 barcarolles, six impromptus and four valses-caprices, which are rich in classical restraint and understatement.
• M-185 (Michigan highway) (nom) by Imzadi1979 and Mitchazenia. M-185 circles the tourist destination of Mackinac Island in Michigan, stretching for 8.004 miles (12.881 km). The highway is unattached to any others and is said to be the only one in the United States from which cars and other motor vehicles are banned. For a period it was also the only highway in the US never to experience an automobile accident. All that ended in 2005, when the island's firetruck nicked the island's ambulance on the highway while responding to a call.
• Warkworth Castle (nom) by Nev1. Warkworth Castle in the English county of Northumberland is a ruined castle founded in the 12th century. King Henry II gave the castle to Roger fitz Richard and it descended through his heirs until 1345, when it was taken over by the Percy family, one of the most powerful dynasties in northern England. Parts of the stone castle date from the 14th and 15th centuries when various owners added and remodelled parts, but it has been in ruins since the English Civil War. Today it is cared for by English Heritage and open to the public (pictured on right).
• RAF Uxbridge (nom) by Harrison49. RAF Uxbridge was a Royal Air Force base located on a 44.6-hectare (110-acre) plot of land in Uxbridge on the westernmost border of Greater London. Open to the public until 1939, after the start of World War II the base was secured and its flight squad, No. 11 Group RAF, was put in charge of the aerial defense of London during the Battle of Britain. The base closed in 2010, with many of its units relocated to RAF Northolt.
• Hurricane Gert (1993) (nom) by Hylian Auree and 12george1. Gert, a Category 2 tropical cyclone, originated from a tropical wave in the south-western Caribbean. It struck Central America and Mexico in September 1993, causing 96 deaths as it hopped between sea and land, eventually dissipating over the Pacific ocean. The damage was estimated at US$170 million (pictured on right).
• 68th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment (nom) by Coemgenus. The 68th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment consisted mainly of German immigrants and was organized three months after the start of the American Civil War. Under several commanders, including one fired for drunkenness and a German prince, the regiment fought in both the eastern and western theatres, seeing heavy losses at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. It was disbanded in November 1865.
• 1689 Boston revolt (nom) expanded by Magicpiano and nominated by DCI2026. A popular uprising on April 18, 1689, the Boston revolt involved provincial militia and citizens revolting against Sir Edmund Andros, then governor of the Dominion of New England. Andros and his followers, defended by only 25 soldiers and a frigate, were quickly swept from power in a bloodless struggle; they were then replaced by members of governments that existed before the dominion.

Featured lists

Two featured lists were promoted this week:

• Kansas City Cowboys (AA) all-time roster (nom) by Neonblak. The American Association baseball team the Kansas City Cowboys had only 44 players in their two-season lifespan, from 1888 to 1889. One of these players, "Slidin' Billy" Hamilton, went on to enter the National Baseball Hall of Fame. After two losing seasons, the Cowboys joined the Western Association as the Kansas City Blues in 1890.
• K-Ci & JoJo discography (nom) by Michael Jester. Brothers Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey and Joel "JoJo" Hailey, better known by their stage names K-Ci and Jojo, have released five studio albums, four compilation albums, fifteen singles, and fifteen music videos since their debut in 1995 with the single "If You Think You're Lonely Now". Of these, the best-performing were their earlier albums; their most recent album, Love, failed to chart.

Featured pictures

Eight featured pictures were promoted this week:

• Poster for Island of Lost Men (nom, related article), restored by Centpacrr and nominated by Crisco 1492. This original poster for the 1939 film Island of Lost Men, direct by Kurt Neumann and starring Anna Mae Wong, J. Carrol Naish, and Anthony Quinn, advertises "Thrills! Mystery! Adventure!". Although the film received mixed critical reception, the featured picture nomination was passed unanimously.
• Musk duck (nom, related article), by JJ Harrison. Hailing from southern Australia and Tasmania, the Musk Duck – subject of our new featured picture – lives most of its life in water and is known to have difficulty taking off and landing. The only living member of its genus, the Musk Duck is not considered endangered despite a dwindling population. This specimen was photographed in Sandford, Tasmania.
• Yellow-throated Honeyeater stealing hair (nom, related article), by JJ Harrison. Another picture from JJ Harrison's trip to Malaleuca (see previous coverage), this new featured picture depicts a Yellow-throated Honeyeater stealing hair from a Tasmanian Pademelon for lining its nest. The behaviour, previously mentioned in Did You Know? in February 2009, extends to collecting hair from dogs, horses, and humans. In the words of reviewer Chick Bowen, "a photograph illustrating behavior that's documented and significant (as opposed to something silly as [sometimes seen at featured picture candidates]) seems ideal for an FP" (right).
• Tasmanian Scrubwren (nom, related article), by JJ Harrison. Another featured picture from Maleuca, this image depicts a Tasmanian Scrubwren perched on a branch. The Tasmanian Scrubwren is endemic to Tasmania and King Island. Its familial relations are unclear, with some suggesting that it is in fact a subspecies of the White-browed Scrubwren.
• Crepuscular rays at Sunset near Waterberg Plateau (nom, related article) by Alchemist-hp. Raising opposition at featured picture candidates due to the existence of two featured pictures (and a former featured picture) of the phenomenon, the nomination passed 9 to 4. It depicts crepuscular rays, rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from a single point in the sky. The rays often appear near dawn and dusk, when columns of sunlit air separated by darker cloud-shadowed regions are more apparent (below).
• Panorama of Mount St. Helens (nom, related article) created by Farwestern and nominated by Dusty777. Mount St. Helens, located in Skamania County, Washington, is a 8,365-foot (2,550 m) tall volcano most famous for its 1980 eruption. Farwestern gives us background information on the picture above (above).
• Oratoire Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal (nom, related article) by Paolo Costa. The new featured picture (right) depicts Saint Joseph's Oratory, the largest church in Canada. The building, constructed beginning in 1904, has a prominent dome that is the third largest of its kind.
• BNSF GE Dash-9 C44-9W Kennewick - Wishram WA (nom, related article) created by Kabelleger and nominated by Tomer T. After consternation on behalf of reviewers about coloration of the subject, several BNSF GE Dash 9-44CW locomotives pulling cars, it was established that the shade of orange was accurate. The nomination passed unanimously, with the original picture (right) strongly preferred over an edited alternative.

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2011-12-19

The community elects eight arbitrators

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By Tony1 and Skomorokh

ArbCom elections come to a close, with eight successful candidates elected

At 20:20 UTC Sunday, almost eight days after the close of voting, the stewards Bencmq, Trijnstel, and Vituzzu announced the results of the ninth annual election for the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee. Of the 17 candidates, 10 achieved a support percentage-ranking of more than the required 50%, and thus all eight vacancies were filled—seven for two-year terms, and one for a single year to fill the vacancy created by a late resignation.

What made this election notable was the continuation of the downward trend in voter numbers, to just 729, down from 854 in 2010 and from nearly a thousand in 2009 and 2008. The number of candidates too has fallen steadily, from 28 in 2008 to just 17 this year. Opinions varied on why the voter participation rate is so low, from the overall sagging in editor retention to the decision not to run a site banner advertising the election.

The pie graphs to the right show the aggregate proportions of the support, oppose, and no vote/neutral votes by all voters. They indicate the marked effect of SecurePoll in increasing "voting intensity". Before the use of SecurePoll, which made expressing an opinion on each candidate mandatory, more than three-quarters of voters' potential to support or oppose went unused.^[1] In 2009, the first year of software-assisted voting, this fell to less than 45%, then 38% last year, settling on 35% this year. Because of this increase in voting intensity, the actual number of supports this year was 4,312 (an average of almost 6 supports per voter), whereas in 2008 that number was only 3550 (3.6 supports per voter). We do, in fact, have much more voter engagement than we used to, in this respect.

In 2011, Courcelles was the most popular candidate: 59% of voters clicked Support for him, while the seven other successful candidates achieved 55, 51, 51, 48, 42, 47, and 43% support respectively. Again, voters appeared to favour editors who have already had experience on the Committee: five of the eight new arbitrators have already served in that capacity.

The eight successful candidates are:

• Courcelles, who takes up a seat for the first time. He has been an admin on en.WP for 18 months, a member of the Audit Subcommittee for almost seven, and was confirmed as a permanent Checkuser and Oversighter a few months ago. He is also an admin on Commons and Meta, and a member of the Volunteer Response Team. He has contributed to the promotion of 23 featured lists, 2 featured articles, and a featured topic.
• Risker, who has been an arbitrator since 2008. During this time she has contributed to the development of a community-based checkuser and oversighter corps, as well as the development and functioning of the Audit Subcommittee. Her work has ensured that checkusers, oversighters and auditors are expected to be available and active, and has put the management of the checkuser mailing list and data on a better footing.
• Kirill Lokshin has served on the Committee for nearly five years, concentrating on the drafting of case decisions, of which he has written more than 60. He was coordinating arbitrator from February to July 2009, and deputy coordinating arbitrator since February 2010.
• Roger Davies has been active at both the Military History WikiProject and Featured Article Candidates. He has been an arbitrator for three years, has heard about 50 cases, and has drafted or co-drafted decisions for ten. He served for a year on the Ban Appeals Subcommittee and had a four-month stint on the Audit Subcommittee. He helped draft the committee's checkuser and oversight procedural policy. He was instrumental in drafting the new arbitration policy that was ratified by the community this year. He has been the coordinating arbitrator since July 2009.
• Hersfold served as an arbitrator from January to May last year, when he was forced to resign because of real-life commitments. He is an admin, a checkuser, a bureaucrat, and ArbCom clerk, and has been active at the Bot Approvals Group. He is highly experienced in sockpuppetry investigations, unblock requests, account creations, and bot management.
• SilkTork will be new to ArbCom. He is an all-round Wikipedian, with experience ranging from Good Article nominations and reviews to administrative tasks such as maintenance and backlogs.
• AGK has experience on the Mediation Committee and has been its chair since April 2010. He is a checkuser, has oversight access, has been a member of the Audit Subcommittee, and has worked in Arbitration Enforcement and as an ArbCom clerk.
• Jclemens served a one-year term with the Committee this year. He has experience as a checkuser, in oversight and high-profile OTRS queues, and with other, non-public tools such as the arbitration wiki and various mailing lists. He has just posted his first case decision as a primary drafter.

Footnote

1. ^ These abstentions are counted as "Neutral" for purposes of these graphs, while the default option of "Neutral" in 2009 and 2010 was renamed after objections to "No vote" in 2011.

Cases and motions

A case was requested this week concerning Muhammad Images, after long-festering discord over which depictions if any of the prophet Muhammad are appropriate to showcase appeared to be beyond the community's ability to resolve. Fourteen parties were named and at the time of writing no arbitrators have voted to reject the case, while 7 have indicated their wish to see it opened, and a binding RfC has been mooted as a potential solution to the underlying dispute.

TimidGuy ban appeal and Betacommand 3 remained in the evidence phase, while requests for clarification were sought regarding Fringe theories, the Eastern European mailing list case and the Abortion motion.

The Signpost is seeking a regular writer for the Arbitration Report. If you have an interest in the Arbitration Committee and its proceedings and would like to see the report continue, consider applying either by emailing wikipediasignpostgmail.com or by leaving a message in the newsroom.

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2011-12-19

Visual editor demo launched, hailed as "most important change to our user experience ... ever"; but elsewhere over-hasty deployments criticised

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By Jarry1250

Visual editor demo impresses

“	There is plenty of evidence that wiki-markup is a substantial barrier that prevents many people from contributing to Wikipedia and our other projects. Formal user tests, direct feedback from new editors, and anecdotal evidence collected over the past several years have made the need for a visual editor clear ... It’s the biggest and most important change to our user experience we’ve ever undertaken.	”
— The Visual Editor Team, Wikimedia Foundation

Tuesday saw an announcement at the Wikimedia tech blog of the deployment to a sandbox of what many see as having the potential to be a major breakthrough in making it easier to edit Wikipedia. The Visual editor project, which will provide an integrated "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) interface for wikitext, may well be in its early stages, but its demonstration version (released this week) has already attracted a great deal of attention (see "In the news" for media reaction).

At the moment, the visual editor team have focused on support for basic formatting such as bold, italics, section headings and lists, though they are continually adding to the list of supported wikitext structures. Having found native browser support lacking, they have also been forced to reimplement many features that people take for granted, including arrow-key scrolling, cut/paste, and undo/redo. A number of bugs with the editor have already been found in this round of early stage testing; many have since been fixed.

The WMF team responsible for the editor were keen to stress that the editor, which is set to launch to its first wiki in June, will allow for the seamless switch between visual and old-style direct editing modes. Nonetheless, it seems likely that hand-constructed pages will be subject to a one-off normalisation program, after which all manual edits will be silently normalised. Whole wikitext-template structures could also be phased out as part of the transition process.

The most significant limitation with the demonstration is undoubtedly that the interface only allows users to edit a small number of predefined articles, thus avoiding the problem of understanding potentially difficult wikitext. It has been this concern over backwards compatibility that has long been seen as the challenge for developers of WYSIWYG editors, of which a number of competing designs are already available. The difference this time, developers say, is that the introduction of the radically improved new parser will make all the difference when it comes to the provision of a truly comprehensive editor.

[See "In the news" for reactions from outside of the Wikimedia universe.]

WMF takes flak over deployment times

While the visual editor project may have received little criticism so far, it seems that a number of other projects have not been so treated.

On Wednesday, Siebrand Mazeland – the project manager attached to the WMF localisation team – reported in his summary of the preceding WebFonts deployment (covered in brief last week) that he had received complaints over the speed of the deployment. Srikanth L, a self-admitted "critic" of the deployment, explained that one issue was whether "sufficient testing to a large user base" had really been carried out before the rollout. Mazeland responded by stressing that the Localisation team had for some time been trying to build up dedicated "language support" teams to consult with, although to little avail.

The comments came only hours after Lead Platform Architect Tim Starling relayed that he "had been hearing a lot of resentment from community members about the features team deploying extensions" without taking the time to "properly consult the community". On Monday, the recent change to image rotation had also led one upset commentator to deplore a state of affairs where staff developers seemed to make design decisions unsupported by reason (see also previous Signpost coverage). (Starling later pointed out that the recent image rotation adjustment had been a volunteer-led project that WMF developers had only been involved with in a review capacity.)

Starling's comments were made in a wider discussion about the deployment process faced by volunteers and staff developers. He recommended that to restore parity, staff developers focus on gaining wider community input, which would also yield "a huge amount of design input".

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.

• 

  ArticleFeedback version 5 goes live: As trialed last week, on 19 December the fifth version of the ArticleFeedback extension went live to a little over 11,000 articles. A number of bugs (one of which forced the extension to be temporarily disabled) were quickly identified and fixed; the extension will now undergo a series of technical tests before being rolled out further. The performance of the various interfaces will also be compared during this phase, with the winning interface going onto phase 2 of the testing.
• Git migration takes step forward: The migration from SVN to Git, scheduled in September this year, has taken a step forward with the creation of a test repository holding core MediaWiki code (wikitech-l mailing list). Changesets pushed to the test Git repository can be viewed on gerrit.wikimedia.org. IRC meetings to discuss the Git migration are in the process of being held this week, with a preference for many, smaller repositories emerging in the first such meeting (full IRC log).
• Android app nears release candidate: Lead Software Architect Brion Vibber noted on his blog the imminent release of a release candidate of the official Wikimedia app for Android phones. However, in a second post later in the week, he also confirmed worries that much of the code powering the app would need substantial revision for compatibility with the latest version of the Android operating system (4.0, codenamed "Ice Cream Sandwich").
• A code review Christmas ahead?: Official figures show that, as many Wikimedia developers enter holiday periods in their part of the globe, code review figures for MediaWiki 1.19 are considerably behind target. As of 19 December, over 500 revisions are left to review, 200 (or approximately 10 days) off the figure of 300 penciled in as a target (full statistics).
• No more planetary problems on https: With the resolution of bug #32028, visitors attempting to view certain Wikimedia blog "planets" will no longer be redirected away from the main site when trying (manually or automatically) to switch to the secure, https version of the site.
  
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