Language analyses examine power structure and political slant; Wikipedia compared to commercial databases

An Arxiv preprint titled "Echoes of power: Language effects and power differences in social interaction"^[1] looks at the language used by Wikipedia editors. The authors look at how conversational language can be used to understand power relationships. The research analyzes how much one adapts their language to the language of others involved in a discussion (the process of language coordination). The findings indicate that the more such adoption occurs, the more deferential one is. The authors find that editors on Wikipedia tend to coordinate (language-wise) more with the administrators than with non-administrators. Further, the study suggests that one's ability to coordinate language has an impact on one's chances to become an administrator: the admin-candidates who do more language coordination have a higher chance of becoming an administrator than those who don't change their language. Once a person is elected an administrator, they tend to coordinate less.

A blog post on the website of Technology Review summarized the results using the headline "Algorithm Measures Human Pecking Order" and highlighted the fact that one of the authors is Jon Kleinberg, known as inventor of the HITS algorithm (also known as "hubs and authorities").

An article^[2] by a librarian and professor at California State University, East Bay offers a comparison of "biographical content for literary authors writing in English" between Wikipedia, "the web" (i.e. top Google search results) and two commercial databases: the Biography Reference Bank (BRB, now part of EBSCO Industries) and Contemporary Authors Online, motivated by the decision of the author's institution to cancel its subscription to the latter database (CAO) during a budget crisis in 2008–2009, which among other reasons had been accompanied by "a comment that this information is 'on the web'".

The paper starts out with a literature review on the reliability of Wikipedia and then describes how the author compiled a list of 500 authors (mostly from the US and UK) by "examining curricula and textbooks from English literature courses across the USA" and soliciting additional suggestions from peers. These names were then searched on BRB, CAO (as part of the Literature Resource Center), Wikipedia and Google.

Regarding breadth of coverage, only six of the 500 names were "absent" on Wikipedia (meaning that they had "no entry of their own or reference in any other entry"), compared to 14 for CAO, and 50 for the Biography Reference Bank.

While the study does not seem to have attempted a systematic comparison of factual accuracy, it observes that Wikipedia "entries are less uniform than those in commercial databases. The biographical information ranges from extensive to perfunctory."

The author remarks favorably on Wikipedia's searchability:

"The databases and Wikipedia deal better than the Web with variant names, pseudonyms, and names that apply to multiple people. Cross-referencing is very good. [...] Wikipedia searching is very easy.There were even cases where it was easier to search Wikipedia than the databases. [...] Wikipedia also 'disambiguates' names and offers quick descriptions to enable the searcher to find the correct individual."

A large part of the comparison consists of examining each resource's production process. Wikipedians may find parallels to their policies on biographies of living people, self-published sources and notability in the description for the Biography Reference Bank:

"Current Biography [the main content source of BRB] articles rely on secondary sources, but Wilson [the then publisher] has occasionally spoken directly with subjects or their proxies. Upon publication, many articles have been sent to subjects for review before being updated for the print annual and the databases. If subjects raise objections, misinformation is corrected, but not matters of public record. Adjustments may be made for privacy, for example omitting the specific names of children.

"To be included in World Authors [another source of BRB], authors must have published more than one critically acclaimed book. [...]"

"For autobiographies, Wilson attempted to contact subjects in Junior Authors and World Authors for a statement, but not subjects in Current Biography. [... An example offered by a Wilson employee:] For some reason, Jennie Tourel, a Russian-American opera singer, often provided false information, but, according to the Wilson biography, “passports and other documents that surfaced soon after her death helped to correct some of these inaccuracies'".

In the conclusion, the author answers the initial question by recommending that her employer "re-subscribe to a commercial biographical database" if the budget would permit it again, because "Commercial databases provide a foundation with authoritative core content authenticated prior to publication and integrated with the fabric of information in the library’s holdings. They are easy to search and reliable, although they cannot be as current as Wikipedia or the Web because of their authentication processes. Wikipedia become [sic] more impressive as searching proceeded. The focus may be on verifiability rather than authority and there may be challenges in securing contributors, but the current contributors provide citations and often include unique information." All in all she seems to favor Wikipedia and the two databases over "The web" (Google results) which "may have plenty of dross and be less reliable, harder to search, and focused on commercialism, but there are gold nuggets." She worries: "What will happen if contributors to Wikipedia and the web have no authoritative databases to use as sources?"

Among the student projects in a class on "Computational Analysis of Social Processes" at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, three analyzed social networks of Wikipedia editors:

• The write-up for a project titled "Interaction vs. Homophily in Wikipedia Administrator Selection"^[3] provides an analysis of factors related to one's participation (or lack thereof) in the Request for Adminship discussions. It confirms previous findings that many participants are drawn to the discussions by their personal contacts and experiences with others. The paper tries to analyze the impact of direct past interaction versus homophily (roughly defined as shared interests). The findings suggest that homophily plays a much smaller role compared to past interactions. Overall, it appears that administrators are often elected (or opposed) not by the community at large, but by a group of their closest peers. To quote from the conclusion of the paper: "This raises questions about the robustness of Wikipedia's administrator selection process which is then comprised of a very small interaction-selected group of editors."
• Another project write-up titled "Link Prediction Analysis in the Wikipedia Collaboration Graph"^[4] tested various models to predict the strength of the connection between two Wikipedia editors in a "dynamic collaboration graph" that measures, at a given point in time, how often they recently edited the same page, with more recent edits weighing stronger.
• A third student paper titled "Link prediction on a Wikipedia dataset based on triadic closure"^[5] likewise tested various models on a similar graph consisting of Wikipedia users as vertices, regarding the closure of triangles (i.e. if user A is connected with B, and B with C, is A connected with C as well?). Among the conclusions is that such "triadic closure, while still occurring in Wikipedia, is happening at a slower pace now than before–likely due to the influx of less active editors".

A study presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association which is to appear in The American Economic Review^[6] sets out to test whether the English Wikipedia is truly neutral, by measuring bias within a sample of 28,000 entries about US political topics, examined over a decade. The bias is identified through detecting the use of language specific to one side of the American political scene (Democrats or Republicans). To quote from the article: "In brief, we ask whether a given Wikipedia article uses phrases favored more by Republican members or by Democratic members of Congress" (in the text of the 2005 Congressional Record, using a method developed in an earlier paper by Gentzkow and Shapiro who applied it to newspapers). The authors identified, as of January 2011, 70,668 articles related to US politics, about 40% of which had a statistically significant bias. They find that Wikipedia articles are often biased upon creation, and that this bias rarely changes. Early on in Wikipedia's history, most had a pro-Democratic bias, and while "by the last date, Wikipedia's articles appear to be centered close to a middle point on average", this is simply an effect of a larger amount of new pro-Republican articles than due to the existing ones having been rewritten neutrally.

While the authors made efforts to exclude articles not pertinent to US politics (requiring the terms "United States" or "America" to appear at least three times in the article text), the sample also includes the clearly international article Iraq War. And in what Wikipedians may call out as systemic bias, the authors never question their assumption that for an international encyclopedia, a lack of bias would be indicated by the replication of the spectrum of opinions present in the US Congress. As early as 2006, Jimmy Wales objected to such notions with respect to the community of contributors: "If averages mattered, and due to the nature of the wiki software (no voting) they almost certainly don't, I would say that the Wikipedia community is slightly more liberal than the U.S. population on average, because we are global and the international community of English speakers is slightly more liberal than the U.S. population. ... The idea that neutrality can only be achieved if we have some exact demographic matchup to [the] United States of America is preposterous." Nevertheless, even if one turns the study on its head and reads it as a statement on average American political opinion compared to the rest of the world as reflected in the English Wikipedia, its results remain remarkable.

• Calls for papers have appeared this month for
  • WikiSym 2012, the eighth instance of this annual research conference on wikis and open collaboration
  • Wikimania 2012, the eighth annual global conference of Wikimedians
  • Wikipedia Academy: Research and Free Knowledge, a conference organized by Wikimedia Germany
  • "Academic research into Wikipedia: Beyond English Wikipedia and towards comparative perspectives", an upcoming issue of the e-journal Digithum
• New effort at comprehensive wiki research literature database: Wikipedian emijrp has announced the launch of WikiPapers, a Semantic MediaWiki-based wiki dedicated to the "compilation of resources (conference papers, journal articles, theses, books, datasets and tools) focused on the research of wikis". The task of creating such a database has seen several efforts before and its difficulties were explored in a well-attended workshop at last year's WikiSym conference (see the October issue of this newsletter). Researcher Finn Årup Nielsen (who last year published an overview of such literature,^[7] mentioning well over 1000 publications) pointed out the possibility of exchanging content between the new wiki, the existing (likewise Semantic MediaWiki-based) Acawiki and his own Brede Wiki.
• Review of Good Faith Collaboration: Sociological journal The Information Society reviewed^[8] Joseph Reagle's 2010 book Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (which was recently released online under a Creative Commons license), praising it as "an accurate account of this sociocultural and sociotechnological phenomenon that Wikipedia is". The reviewer calls Wikipedia a "virtual tool and reference jim-dandy [which] is another flashpoint in our path of social anxieties" and holds that "nobody can think of a true rival [of Wikipedia] in this knowledge contest. The sins are there: lightness, temporary reliability, questionable scholarly approaches, sometimes oversimplification, sometimes data excess; however, these are venial sins and easily absolved." Somewhat cryptically, he observes that "the European Union is trying to adapt this part of Western academia to the global university system (though inevitably Anglo-American inspired)". He commends the book as an "accessible analysis [which] makes it clear that Wikipedia is not wasted knowledge; it is human thirst for knowledge and we are simply gathering scattered pieces". Gentle criticism includes that "though [...] inaccuracies are stated, two other important worries — that it is not financially sustainable, and that Wikipedia has lost touch with its founding ideal—are not as openly dealt with".
• Predicting categories from links: In a paper titled "Using Network Structure to Learn Category Classification in Wikipedia"^[9] (the write-up of a class project for an Autumn 2011 Stanford course titled "Social and Information Network Analysis"), three students describe the construction of a classifier algorithm that tries to predict from an article's ingoing and outgoing wikilinks whether it is a member of the Category:American actors – "We chose this particular category because it is one of the largest on Wikipedia (almost 25,000 pages)".
• Wikipedia vs. library catalogue: An article in Library and Information Research titled "Searching where for what: A comparison of use of the library catalogue, Google and Wikipedia"^[10] analyzed search queries from users of Google (using Hitwise data) and Wikipedia, and a state library in Australia, unsurprisingly finding that the library catalogue is used much less frequently than the former two, but positing that the "fact that popular culture queries accounted for [a very] substantial proportion of Google and Wikipedia queries and almost no [library] catalogue queries indicates that, indeed, people do turn to different information resources for different subjects."
• "Lexical clues" predict article quality: A paper was presented at the 3rd Symposium on Web Society (SWS) last October^[11] which sought to predict article quality based on eight different ratios derived from counting the number of sentences, words, diverse words, nouns, verbs, diverse nouns, diverse verbs and copulas in the article text. They trained a decision tree on a sample of 200 start-class and 200 featured articles (truncating each of the latter to 800 to 1000 words to arrive at a typical start-class article length) and then tested it on a different sample of 100 start-class and 100 featured articles, achieving precision and recall of more than 83% each.

2012-01-30

Digging Up WikiProject Palaeontology

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By Mabeenot

WikiProject news

News in brief

• The new WikiProject Normandy is seeking members.
• The Teyler's Museum in the Netherlands is sponsoring a contest from now until May with real-world prizes. The competition is open to contributors of any language of Wikipedia and is part of the Teylers GLAM project.

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

This week's subject, WikiProject Palaeontology, first appeared in June 2008 and covers nearly 6,000 pages. Among them are 14 Featured Articles, 2 A-Class Articles, and 30 Good Articles. The project fosters task forces for paleontologists, lobe-finned fishes, geological periods, and the Cambrian explosion. Sister projects handle dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and "sea monsters". We interviewed Kevmin, Obsidian Soul, Smokeybjb, and the project's founder Enlil Ninlil.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Palaeontology? Do you have any education or work experience in paleontology?

Kevmin: I have always been interested in earth sciences and never really grew out of the "dinosaur phase" that many many kids go through in elementary school. When I first started exploring Wikipedia in early 2006, I saw a lack of paleo articles beyond the big sexy ones like dinosaurs and mammoths. So I started writing article content. I'm now finishing out working on my Natural Sciences associates degree in preparation for moving into a biology/paleontology program. I also work at a fossil dig site for six months of the year.

Obsidian Soul: I'm a [very] amateur fossil collector. Like Kevmin, I too simply never grew out of the dinosaur phase (as well as the beetle, fish, slug, etc. collecting phases!). These days, I'm more interested in obscure fossil taxa (particularly invertebrates and plants) rather than with dinosaurs though.

Smokeybjb: I don't have any formal education in paleontology; for me, it's mostly a hobby that developed from the "dinosaur phase". When I joined Wikipedia back in 2008, I was shocked to see that we had quality articles for nearly every kind of dinosaur, but the coverage for almost all other prehistoric creatures was very skimpy. Most articles were either unsourced stubs or were sourced with questionable information from children's books like dinosaur encyclopedias. I remember looking at lists, seeing all the red links, and thinking that this should be fixed. Since then I spend nearly all my time with non-dinosaurian creatures, creating new pages and adding more information to these stubs.

Enlil Ninlil: I decided to start the collaborative project on Palaeontology as the other projects were either too broad or narrow in scope in relation to the topic. Although I have not been able to contribute much I have a fascination with the fossil flora and fauna of Australia, especially that of Victoria, although the periods of the Carboniferous to Jurassic are minor, with glacial abrasive surfaces the most extensive. I will always be fascinated with Palaeontology.

WikiProject Palaeontology is home to 14 Featured Articles, 2 A-class Articles, and 30 Good Articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? When improving articles for GA or FA status, what are some challenges unique to paleontology articles?

Kevmin: I have started two of the articles that are now GA. Both on rather obscure fossil fungi. It was hard to take the technical papers in which the fungi were described and translate what was said into prose that is more accessible for a general audience. Often the original description of a genus or a species is the only information that has ever been written about it. Mostly what I have concentrated on since starting work on wiki is the writing and expanding of articles about fossil plants and insects, though I occasionally create articles for other extinct things.

Obsidian Soul: Nope. GA is still somewhat daunting to me and I haven't created that many paleo articles yet anyway (my editing activity on Wikipedia has been somewhat scattered on various WP:TOL projects). I do try my best to get those I write/expand as near as possible. I simply don't take the additional step of submitting it to GAN. The biggest challenge for me is simply the lack of access to academic journals. I'm not connected to an academic institution, nor can I afford the paywall prices for the articles. While I can request them at WP:WikiProject Resource Exchange, sometimes it's hard to judge which source would be the best one to use, and I certainly wouldn't want to post a laundry list of paywall sources just so I can sort through them. Sometimes it's a deal-breaker; no matter how interested I am in a subject, the fact that I can't access the most important sources means that I have to sadly forego writing it. Journals like ZooKeys (which if I recall correctly Kevmin and Ruigeroeland also use) which publish text and high quality photos under a CC-BY license are invaluable in these instances.

Smokeybjb: Like I said before, I mostly focus on stub articles because there are so many of them needing improvement. So far I've worked two articles up to GA status, both on relatively large groups of extinct reptiles and amphibians. The greatest challenges seem to be getting enough information, and conveying that information in a way that isn't overly technical. A long article about the intricacies of an organism's anatomy and classification can quickly become boring to most readers, so I try to word these articles as simply as possible without sacrificing information. My favorite part about improving these articles is writing about the history of study of these groups. In many articles, historical interpretations are often overlooked in favor current knowledge of paleontology. Often times this overlooks a really cool cast of paleontologists whose interpretations of these animals date back over 150 years in an intriguing narrative of discovery. I love going into online databases and exploring old paleontology books from the 1800s, but like Obsidian Soul said, sometimes I have trouble accessing these older publications.

When we spoke with WikiProject Dinosaurs two years ago, they mentioned that their project has very close connections with WikiProject Paleontology. They also mentioned that your project had begun an image review process modeled after the one at WikiProject Dinosaurs. Do you agree? How else do the two projects work together? Are there other projects that work closely with WikiProject Palaeontology?

Kevmin: In a lot of instances members of both projects will work on articles that fall into on project or the other. I also tend to work with the relevant project that covers the living relatives of the article I am writing, such as the work I am doing currently with the new WikiProject Bivalves as I try to expand the coverage of extinct bivalve families.

Obsidian Soul: I think it's fair to say that members of WP:WikiProject Dinosaurs are members of WP:WikiProject Paleontology as well, since WP:PALEO is the umbrella project for it. And all WP:TOL projects overlap with each other regularly. Most paleontological articles feature two or more WikiProject templates on their talk pages. Paleobotany-related articles for instance, belong to both WP:PLANTS and WP:PALEO.

Smokeybjb: WikiProject Paleontology and WikiProject Dinosaurs are closely linked. In fact, I think I was a member of WP Dinosaurs before I was a member of WP Paleontology. Over the past few years I've drawn many pieces of paleoart, and when it came to drawing dinosaurs the expertise of WP:DINO members at the dinosaur image review was a big help. FunkMonk created the paleontology review a few years ago, and since then all my non-dinosaurian paleoart (in other words, most of it) goes through the review.

How difficult is it to find images for palaeontology articles? Would you prefer to see more photographs of fossils or depictions of extinct life in paleoart? Can the GLAM project play a role in providing these images?

Kevmin: It can be very hard to find images for the articles; only a few taxonomy journals currently release their article images under wiki compliant licences. Many of the fossils out there are only found in museums so it involves going to the institutions and seeing if the Museum is willing to have the fossils photographed for release to the wikis. I have no problem with either fossils or illustrations as both are informative to the reader. If an illustration is used it should be checked to make sure it isn't inaccurate and thus misleading.

Obsidian Soul: There is one factor that invariably gets me interested in starting an article on anything – a good illustration/photo. If it has none, I usually won't bother. I'm a 3d artist by trade, which is useful when I come across an interesting taxon that has no picture. But reconstructions are time-consuming and some taxa are simply too difficult to recreate at my skill level. So yes, definitely more photographs please. Especially for the more unique specimens. It's in the best interests of museums to donate high quality photographs as it also publicizes their own exhibits. We have really talented artists in Wikipedia:WikiProject Palaeontology/Paleoart review though (FunkMonk, Smokeybjb, and MMartyniuk being the most prolific), which balances that lack somewhat.

Smokeybjb: Although I'm an amateur paleoartist, I prefer seeing photos of fossils rather than paleoart as the lead images for our articles. Fossils are real and they are the raw material of paleontology. Although paleoart can give a lot more information on how an extinct creature looked or acted, it's limited by the artist's interpretation and there will always be details like the color and behavior must be guessed at (although it is always good when we know a bit about color already). Occasionally there's been discussions here that artistic interpretation makes Wikipedia's paleoart a form of original research, but as one of Wikipedia's paleoartists I strongly disagree. Wikipedia paleoart must be accurate and based on current scientific knowledge; that is why we encourage artists to submit their illustrations for review and provide sources for their work. GLAM can be a big help if we can get more photos of fossils in museum collections. Many museums pose restrictions on photography, so the number of photos we have to use right now is limited.

What can the average editor contribute to paleontological articles, even if they don't have specialized knowledge in the field?

Kevmin: One of the things to do is go out and get photographs of identified fossils and upload them to commons so they are usable in articles. when you do take a picture of not only the fossil but also of the identification tag that tells what it is and where/when it is from.

Obsidian Soul: Yep, photos. Anyone with a camera, access to a nearby museum, and an afternoon off can contribute a great deal to paleontological articles. Care should be taken to note the identity of the fossils though.

Smokeybjb: Photos! Most of our articles lack them, so new pictures taken from museums or anywhere else will be a great help. Also, if editors ever stumble upon one-liner paleo stubs, even the most basic information they can find like a brief comment on description or classification would help as long as it's sourced. You don't have to be an expert to contribute. When I started out on WP:Paleo, I didn't know much about some of the subjects I wrote about, especially things like mammals and invertebrates which I still don't know much about. I just had access to information and some time to help out.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Smokeybjb: We've made great progress since WikiProject Paleontology was first created, but there's still lots to do. Most of our members come from WikiProject Dinosaurs, and so most of our expertise/interest is limited to big reptiles. Unfortunately, prehistoric invertebrates still have little coverage: just look at all the red links in list of trilobites to see what I mean. Even extinct mammals are underrepresented, and they're much more sexy than fossilized bugs and snails (no offense to the invertebrate paleontologists out there). Anyone with interest and knowledge in these groups is encouraged to join, because we need your help!

Next week, we'll take a familiar swirl around the tropics. Until then, take shelter in the archive.

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2012-01-30

Featured content soaring this week

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By Crisco 1492

This week's "Featured content" covers Sunday 22 – Saturday 28 January

Featured articles

Eight featured articles were promoted this week:

• "Halo" (Beyoncé Knowles song) (nom) by Jivesh boodhun and Tbhotch. "Halo", a song by American rhythm and blues artist Beyoncé Knowles from her third studio album I Am... Sasha Fierce, is a power ballad that deals with a sublime love in its lyrics. Well received by critics, "Halo" – the fourth single from the album – won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 52nd Grammy Awards and reached the top five in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the US; it topped the charts in Brazil, Norway and Slovakia.
• Martha Layne Collins (nom) by Acdixon. American politician Martha Layne Collins—born in 1936 in Bagdad, Kentucky and a graduate of the University of Kentucky in the late 1950s—became a schoolteacher. Drawn into politics in 1971, she worked on several campaigns before serving as secretary of the Democratic Party of Kentucky in 1975 and as a clerk to the Kentucky Court of Appeals (later the Kentucky Supreme Court). In 1979, Collins was elected lieutenant governor under John Y. Brown, and as the first female governor of the state in 1983, serving until 1987. She is currently executive scholar in residence at Georgetown College.
• Ray Farquharson (nom) by Nikkimaria. Canadian doctor and professor Ray Farquharson, born in 1897 in Claude, Ontario, enrolled at the University of Toronto's medical school before enlisting in the Canadian Field Artillery as a gunner; not sent to the front, he was recalled and finished his education in Canada. Marrying in 1931, Farquharson worked as a medical consultant and by 1934 was head of the therapeutics department at Toronto. After serving on several medical advisory boards during World War II, Farquharson and fellow researcher Arthur Squires discovered the endocrinological "Farquharson Phenomenon"; he went on to become a member of the National Research Council of Canada and to play a role in the establishment of the Medical Research Council of Canada. Farquharson died at age 68 after a heart attack
• Hector Waller (nom) by Ian Rose. Australian naval officer Hector Waller, born in Benalla, Victoria in 1900, entered the Royal Australian Naval College at the age of 13 and served in the Royal Australian Navy at the tail end of World War I. Spending the post-war period specializing in communications, in 1937 he received command of HMS Brazen; this was followed by command of the "Scrap Iron Flotilla", including HMAS Stuart, in 1939. Two years later he was given command of HMAS Perth; he went down with the ship in the Sunda Strait on 1 March 1942. Now with a submarine named in his honour, in 2011 he came under formal consideration for the award of the Victoria Cross.
• Charles Villiers Stanford (nom) by Tim riley. Irish composer, teacher and conductor Charles Villiers Stanford, born in Dublin in 1852, was appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambridge, while still an undergraduate. In 1882 he became one of the founders of the Royal College of Music, where he stayed as a teacher for the rest of his life and taught famous composers such as Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Seeing most of his success at the end of the 19th century with choral works for church performance, he was eclipsed in fame by Edward Elgar and his former pupils during the 20th century. Stanford died in 1924 in London from the aftereffects of a stroke.
• The Monster (novella) (nom) by Yllosubmarine. The Monster is an 1898 novella by American author Stephen Crane. Published two years before its author's death, The Monster follows the trials and tribulations of African-American coachman Henry Johnson, who is disfigured when rescuing a white child from a fire, and the boy's father who protects him. Possibly based on an 1892 lynching in Port Jervis, on which the setting in Whilomville was based, the novella dealt with the paradoxical study of monstrosity and deformity and race and tolerance. Initially receiving mixed reviews, The Monster is now considered one of Crane's best works.
• W. E. B. Du Bois (nom) by Noleander. American sociologist William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (right), born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868, was raised in a tolerant community and became the first African American to graduate with a doctorate from Harvard. After becoming a professor of history, sociology, and economics at Atlanta University, Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. An adamant peace and civil rights activist, he later rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement and through his writings on the widespread racism in the US. He died in Ghana in 1963, having become a Ghanaian citizen after the US government refused to renew his passport while he was in Africa.
• HMS Temeraire (1798) (nom) by Benea. The British 98-gun warship HMS Temeraire was built at the Chatham Dockyard and served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Mostly on blockade duty, she only fought in one fleet action at the Battle of Trafalgar; however, further depictions gave her the nickname "The Fighting Temeraire". In 1813 the Temeraire was converted into a prison ship and moored in the River Tamar, where she stayed until 1819. She served in various other capacities until being broken up in 1838, the depiction of which (right) was voted Britain's favourite painting in 2005.

Featured lists

Four featured lists were promoted this week:

• List of papal elections (nom) by Savidan. Since mandatory elections were instated in 1059, 112 elections or conclaves for the office of the Pope, the most powerful office in Catholicism, have been held. Although the Catholic Church is headed in Rome, several elections have been held in other cities and towns.
• Timeline of the 2002 Atlantic hurricane season (nom) by TropicalAnalystwx13 and Yellow Evan. The 2002 Atlantic hurricane season produced 14 tropical depressions, which produced 12 tropical storms. Four of those tropical storms became hurricanes, half of which were major. Hurricane Lili was the strongest storm of the season; the other major storm was Hurricane Isidore.
• List of Category 4 Pacific hurricanes (nom) by Hurricanefan25. At least 95 hurricanes (tracks pictured at right) in the northeastern Pacific basins have attained a Category 4 rating on the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale, the second-highest classification. Of these, 22 have made landfall; only four of these made landfall while still Category 4 storms. The most recent Category 4 hurricane in the Pacific basin is 2011's Hurricane Kenneth.
• Latin Grammy Award for Album of the Year (nom) by Jaespinoza. The Latin Grammy Award for Album of the Year, established in 2000, recognizes performers, producers, and audio engineers who produce new or mostly new Latin albums. Most nominees are Spanish-language, although Portuguese-language albums are also nominated and have won. Several albums that won this award also won a regular Grammy.

Featured portals

One featured portal was promoted this week:

• History (nom) by Resident Mario. The discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events, history is a field of research which uses a narrative to objectively examine and analyse the sequence of events as well as their causes and effects. The portal features 22 selected biographies, 21 selected articles, 20 selected quotes, 19 selected pictures, 16 selected portals, 10 did you knows, and a transclusion of on this day.

Featured pictures

Eight featured pictures were promoted this week:

• Lina Rafn at 2007 Danish DJ Awards (nom; related article) by Jepsen. Rafn (born 12 August 1976) is a Danish singer, songwriter and producer active with the band Infernal. Originally a professional dancer, she entered singing in 1997. Together with Infernal she has released four albums and is best known for the song "From Paris to Berlin".
• Mark Satin counselling draft dodgers (nom; related article), created by Laura Jones and nominated by Babel41. The new featured picture (right) depicts American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher Mark Satin (born 16 November 1946) counselling American draft dodgers. During the late 1960s, with the Vietnam War in full swing, Satin was hired as the director of the Anti-Draft Programme of the Student Union for Peace Action. After changing how the programme dealt with draft dodgers to be more receptive, Satin published the best-selling Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, which provided further information to draft dodgers.
• Red-necked Stint (nom; related article) by JJ Harrison. One of the smallest waders, the Red-necked Stint measures 13–17 cm (5.1–6.7 in) in length and weighs 21–51 g (0.74–1.8 oz). These migratory birds breed in eastern Siberia and Alaska, but spend their non-breeding season in South East Asia and Australasia as far south as Tasmania and New Zealand. They are classified Least Concern.
• Shy Albatross in water (nom; related article) by JJ Harrison. The Shy Albatross is a sea bird endemic to Australia and New Zealand that averages 90–100 centimetres (35–39 in) in length; it is one of the largest of the small albatrosses. Classified as Near Threatened after being exploited for their feathers, the Shy Albatross currently has an estimated population of 26,000 breeding birds.
• Buller's Albatross in flight (nom; related article) by JJ Harrison. Buller's Albatross (above) is a small mollymawk from the seas near Australia. Measuring an average of 79 cm (31 in), the bird was named for the New Zealand ornithologist Walter Buller. Formerly classified as Vulnerable, its status was downlisted to Near Threatened in 2008 after studies revealed greater numbers than previously thought.
• Poster for Plan 9 from Outer Space (nom; related article), created by Tom Jung and nominated by Crisco 1492. Plan 9 from Outer Space, an American film directed by Ed Wood, follows earthlings fighting against alien-resurrected zombies (called "ghouls") in the film. Infamous for reusing footage of Bela Lugosi from unrelated films, poor special effects, and numerous continuity errors, the film is often cited by critics as the worst film ever made.
• Parque del Este, Caracas (nom; related article) by Paolostefano1412. The Parque del Este in Caracas, Venezuela (below), was designed by Brazilian landscaper Roberto Burle Marx. It consists of three differently designed areas: an open grass field, a densely forested landscape, and a series of paved gardens. The new featured picture depicts the South Lake.
• Rembrandt self-portrait (nom; related article), created by Rembrandt and nominated by Crisco 1492. Self Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar, by Dutch artist Rembrandt, was painted in 1659 and is currently found in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Depicting "the stresses and strains of a life compounded of creative triumphs and personal and financial reverses", the painting continues to draw critical commentary and has been restored several times.

The new featured picture of the Parque del Este, in Caracas, Venezuela

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2012-01-30

Five open cases, voting on proposed decisions in two cases

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By Lord Roem

The Arbitration Committee opened one new case and closed no cases, leaving five open.

New cases

Article titles and capitalization (Week 1)

This case, originally filed by SarekOfVulcan, was opened 29 January to review alleged disruptive editing on WP:MOS and article naming pages. Arbitrators noted upon opening the case that it is a "messy dispute" and has become "protracted". The case's evidence and workshop phases will take place through February, with a proposed decision by drafters AGK, David Fuchs, and Casliber due on 26 February.

This is the first case opened by the Committee this year.

Open cases

Muhammad images (Week 6)

This case was opened to address user conduct over a dispute concerning which depictions of Muhammad, if any, are appropriate to display. Last week, arbitrator AGK published a proposed decision that listed a series of principles to guide editors in disputes regarding the inclusions of controversial content. A specific proposal on dealing with such disputes by arbitrator Newyorkbrad looks set to pass, with the support of 11 arbitrators. In the principle, the Committee would affirm that "A consensus for inclusion or exclusion should be sought based on the community's collective editorial judgment, well-informed by knowledge of the relevant subject matter and, where applicable, by Wikipedia's policies and guidelines." Along with principles to guide the community, the Committee is discussing a set of remedies. A final decision in that regard is yet to be announced.

Betacommand 3 (Week 13)

The Betacommand 3 case remained at the proposed decision phase this week. The case was opened to address the multitude of sanctions in effect on this editor. Until this week, none of the proposed remedies had garnered enough support to pass. However, a remedy detailing that the community sanctions are 'superseded' has garnered the support of a majority of arbitrators. The text of the remedy allows for voting on specific changes to sanctions "individually" but provides a clearer foundation for what is actually being amended.

Civility enforcement (Week 5)

This case, which has been one of the most active at present, was initially opened due to the actions of several administrators in relation to a user who was blocked over perceived incivility. The evidence and workshop pages were closed after submission deadlines passed. A proposed decision is due to be posted within days.

TimidGuy ban appeal (Week 7)

This case was brought to the Committee by an editor to appeal a site ban that was imposed by Jimmy Wales. The expected proposed decision, as mentioned in previous Signpost coverage, is yet to be posted. The tentative date for release had been 16 January, but has now been moved to the end of this month. This case had attracted a great deal of discussion on its workshop page.

Other requests and committee action

• A Request for Amendment in the Race and intelligence case is under discussion.
  
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2012-01-30

Why "Lua" is on everybody's lips, and when to expect MediaWiki 1.19

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By Jarry1250

Lua chosen as new template scripting language

Reducing the inefficient complexity of complicated templates has long been on the wishlists of those who design and maintain them. It is a complexity that can put a significant drain on server resources, not to mention one that makes accurate duplication of templates between wikis incredibly time consuming and error prone. This complexity is caused by a number of factors, but it has long been recognised that the introduction of certain constructions found in full programming languages (among them loops, arrays and a full range of string functions) would drastically simplify matters.

Of course, the introduction of a programming language would bring with it a number of other problems, particularly with regards to privacy, security and memory footprint. As a result, the long term consensus was that the introduction of a programming language would be a major undertaking, including time for discussing which languages would work best in a heavily sanitised environment. The project as a whole has been discussed at regular intervals, but it was only this week that a consensus seemed to emerge in favour of Lua, a lightweight but relatively unheard-of language generally regarded as being "easy to learn" (wikitech-l mailing list).

The preferred implementation at this time is via a separate namespace for scripts, perhaps augmented by the overloading of the double-curly-brace notation to incorporate both Script and Template namespaces. Work is expected to start after the release of 1.19 and could well centre around the Berlin Hackathon, held annually in May.

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.

• 1.19 target missed: An end-of-the month target for 1.19 code review will be narrowly missed, but a short delay is unlikely to cause problems, says WMF Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier (wikitech-l mailing list). Even a burst of code review activity on Friday proved insufficient to bring the number of revisions left to be checked (now around 70) within touching distance of zero; projects with many revisions left to review include recent work on the way files are stored. In a separate post on the same list, Volunteer Development Coordinator Sumana Harihareswara reiterated the Foundation's intention to deploy the latest version of the software between 13 February and 1 March this year. A post on the Wikimedia blog carried an appeal for more testers.
• Wikimedia compares favourably on usability: Data extracted from a survey of Wikipedia readers show that they rate the user interface of Wikimedia sites higher than those of Facebook and YouTube (Wikimedia blog). The data, based on responses to two questions ("How appealing do you find the interface or look of the following sites?" and "How easy do you find it to navigate the following sites?") also showed lower comparative scores from countries where right-to-left languages predominate, apparently confirming earlier suspicions that this was an area that deserves developer attention. The potential for bias within the survey was not examined.
• Looking back on the Google Android app release: WMF Director of Mobile and Special Projects Tomasz Finc used a post on the Wikimedia blog to explore the implications of the recent release of a Wikipedia app for devices running the Android operating system. Finc described how the new app was built using a cross-platform library known as PhoneGap and is therefore likely to form the basis for apps for other operating systems (including a future replacement to the existing Wikimedia iPhone app). The app is already available in 25 languages and has been downloaded 500,000 times.
• FeaturedFeeds deployed: The FeaturedFeeds extension was deployed this week, exposing content such as "Today's Featured Article" and "In the news" via RSS and ATOM feeds (Wikimedia blog). "For now, links to the feeds only appear in page metadata; in the future, we will add them to the sidebar on main pages, if communities wish so", wrote the extension's developer Max Semenik.
• Translation tutorial sessions: An online translation tools workshop was held via WebEx video conferencing on Saturday 28 January 2012, as announced by Localisation team member Gerard Meijssen on the Wikimedia blog. The workshop included "an introduction of use cases and features, as well as a Q&A". Another workshop will be held only if there is enough interest.
• Wikimedia Foundation Director of Product Development: The Wikimedia Foundation announced that Howie Fung has been hired as Director of Product Development. He has previously been a consultant for the Wikimedia Foundation on usability projects and has been Senior Product Manager since May 2010. The Wikimedia Foundation is also internally restructuring its teams, formally creating a Product Development department, focusing on "Editor Engagement, Mobile, Analytics, and Internationalization/Localization". Erik Moeller said that the team is to include "Phil Chang, Brandon Harris, Fabrice Florin, Diederik van Liere, Siebrand Mazeland, Dario Taraborelli, Oliver Keyes, and the new Interaction Designer, when hired."
  
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