Oliver Keyes' (User:Ironholds) defense of Wikipedia against the recent Philip Roth controversy has drawn a significant amount of attention over the last week.
The problems between Roth, a widely known and acclaimed American author, and Wikipedia arose from an open letter he penned for the American magazine The New Yorker, and were covered by the Signposttwo weeks ago. Keyes—who wrote the piece as a prominent Wikipedian but is also a contractor for the Wikimedia Foundation—wrote a blog post on the topic, lamenting the factual errors in Roth's letter and criticizing the media for not investigating his claims: "[they took] Roth’s explanation as the truth and launched into a lengthy discussion of how we [Wikipedia] handle primary sourcing."
The post quickly drew large amounts of attention, in no small part due to a tweet from Jimmy Wales ("Attention journalists: worth reading."), who has over 74,000 followers on the site.
Keyes found four major problems with Roth's piece, with most being based on factual differences between the chain of events, as documented in the article's history, and Roth's account. The fourth issue was more touchy, with Keyes asserting that Roth did not use "the normal channels"—i.e. the Open-source Ticket Requests System (OTRS)—which he claimed is on the "contact us page that readers are linked to every time they open any wikipedia page ever" (emphasis in original), but the actual email address is buried in subpages.
Keyes concludes that Wikipedia's processes worked in this case. He believes that allowing article subjects to simply email Wikipedia and have us change something, just because they said so, is wrong, because verifiability cannot be compromised—or in Keyes' words, "[we try to] ensure that readers have a hope in hell of actually checking the accuracy of our information. ... We don’t want readers to trust us. We want readers to think and be able to do their own research."
He elaborated on this view in a follow-up blog post, setting up a hypothetical situation where Wikipedia has instituted an email notification system for article subjects to provide the 'real' facts for their articles. While Keyes acknowledges the potential benefits, especially when given our current policy that values verifiability over 'the truth', he quickly showed why any model of this sort is untenable: what if an article subject wanted to falsely 'correct' their article to make themselves look better?
In what may have been the strongest language used by Keyes, he finished the post by condemning the media for simply accepting Roth's claims with no investigation of their own:
[P]eople should perhaps start having a debate about the way authors are treated in "proper" sources. The New Yorker, the Guardian, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times – all respected bodies. And all, without being able and/or willing to do their own research, happily published or republished Roth’s assertions. We rely on these organisations for reporting what our politicians do, what our armed forces do, how entities with the power of life and death over humanity are accountable to the people. And they happily gulp down the glorified press releases of anyone who offers to let them touch his Pulitzer.
And you think Wikipedia is what we should be concerned about? Fuck. That. Noise.
*drops mic*
In brief
Baltimore Sun journalist and copyeditor John E. McIntyre has published a blog post critical of Wikipedia, urging readers to "have serious misgivings about Wikipedia as a reference." His column follows a recent story by McIntyre focusing on "sham editing" as part of the Roth controversy, and is in line with opinions he has expressed in 2007 and January2009.
The chart that accompanied last month's story about code review times, the vagaries of which prompted the present investigation.
Late last month, the "Technology report" included a story using code review backlog figures – the only code review figures then available – to construct a rough narrative about the average experience of code contributors. This week, we hope to go one better, by looking directly at code review wait times, and, in particular, median code review times
To this end, the Signpost independently analysed data from the first 23,900 changesets as they stood on September 17, incorporating some 66,500 reviews across 32,100 patchsets. From this base, changes targeted at branches other than the default "master" branch were discarded, as were changesets submitted and reviews performed by bots. Self-reviews were also discarded, but reviews made by a different user in the form of a superseding patch were retained. Finally, users were categorised by hand according to whether they would be best regarded as staff or volunteers.[nb 1] Although this week's article focuses mainly on so-called "core" MediaWiki code, future issues will probe extension-related statistics.
WMF bosses will, on the whole, be pleased with the final figures. 50% of revisions to core MediaWiki code submitted during August was reviewed for the first time in just 3 hours 30 minutes, with 25% being reviewed in 20 minutes and 75% within 27 hours. These figures were similar across both first patchsets and later amendments, and similar with regard to slight changes in what qualified as "a review".[nb 2] The relevant trend over time is considered in the following tables. On the left is review time across all patchsets submitted to core; with the right hand table, just the first patchset in any given changeset is included.
The data show, then, that there has been a marked improvement in getting followup patchsets reviewed quicker, while review times for "first attempt" patchsets have improved less dramatically. Other analyses are more concerning. For example, a volunteer-written patchset waits, on average (either median or mean) twice as long as a staff-written one for its first review, although the gap has closed from three times as long in June and July. Staff provide 86% of first reviews for core, with just five staff members collectively accounting for some 55% of the total.[nb 4] Moreover, even in August, more than 5% of patchsets targeted at core waited a week for their first review.
As with all large datasets, it is difficult to rule out subtle methodological issues and in any case unideal to pinpoint trends over as short a period as four months. The full data set is available upon request.
Notes
^One notable side effect of the methodology employed was the exclusion from the final analysis of patches that were abandoned or amended without review, even if the user had intended for them to be so reviewed and/or the amendments were minimal. Future analyses may wish to refine their methodology to take this into account.
^Specifically, the in/exclusion of reviews not assigning numerical scores and the in/exclusion of force abandonments and reversions.
^ abRanges indicate the possible impact of patchsets still awaiting a review.
^The equivalent figures for core plus WMF-deployed extensions are 95% and 43% respectively.
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
HTML5 problems and tolerating invalidity: After initial reports last week of problems with cell alignment, this week brought fresh reports of HTML5 problems centred on Wikipedia "pushpin" maps. The maps, which show given co-ordinates overlaid on a background map, are highly sensitive to single-figure changes in display position, which seems to be the source of the present difficulties. All broken templates are expected to be fixed by hand, although it is unclear how easily or reliably this small degree of brokenness can be identified. In related news, a consensus appeared to form on the wikitech-l mailing list in support of outputting "invalid" (but still functioning) HTML5 in preference to subject it to an automated but error-prone automatic conversion.
Search data published, retracted: The publication of "anonymous search log files for Wikipedia and its sister projects" was halted and reversed on Wednesday after the anonymised data was found to contain a limited amount of personal information (Wikimedia blog). Email addresses, credit card numbers and social security numbers had previously been removed from the dataset, which was intended to (among other things) "provide valuable feedback to our editor community, who can use it to detect topics of interest that are currently insufficiently covered". The team behind the release does not yet know when the same data might be released in a more fully anonymised form; there was also no indication in the blog post of how many copies are thought to be circulating.
French Wikipedia told: do worry about performance: The recent creation of a series of templates designed to map area codes to values on the French Wikipedia caused a significant detrimental effect on overall performance, reports Lead Performance Architect Tim Starling. The templates, which provoked the first direct WMF intervention in template content in recent times, used a switch statement that included nearly 40,000 items, all of which had to be loaded into memory on each template invocation. Using Lua, due for release in January, would partially ameliorate the situation, it was reported. "At some point in the future, you may be able to put this kind of geographical data in Wikidata. Please, template authors, wait patiently", wrote Starling, while Wikidata Project Director Denny Vrandečić added that he was "at the same time delighted ... by the capability and creativity of the Wikipedia community to solve such tasks with MediaWiki template syntax and ... horrified by the necessity of the solution taken".
Your preference over preferences?: The thorny issue of rethinking the options available at Special:Preferences was raised again this week with the creation of an RfC looking at the issue (wikitech-l mailing list). Even slight amendments to certain preferences have previously caused controversy; for example, the removal of preferences tends to provoke anger among those users reliant upon them, while the renaming or repositioning of preferences tends to cause confusion. The work links in with moves to create "global" gadgets, which could then replace static preferences such as alterations to link colours.
An example of post-edit feedback from the first trialResults in from first "post-edit feedback" trial: The results from the first trial of post-edit notifications (example pictured) have now been published on the Wikimedia blog. The trial, undertaken by the Foundation's "Editor Engagement Experiments" (E3) team, trialled displaying the messages to new editors after every save, finding an overall increase in quantity of edits and no change in editor quality. The same team is now testing messages only after "milestone" edit counts have been reached, to compare the effect on enticing new editors to edit more. In related news, the Foundation's "page curation" project saw its first stable release this week, with users given the green light to use Special:NewPagesFeed and its toolbar on a day-to-day basis.
Roger Bamkin applies his smartphone to the plaque at Gibraltar's convent.In the second controversy to engulf Wikimedia UK in two months, its immediate past chair Roger Bamkin has resigned from the board of the chapter. The resignation last Wednesday followed a growing furore over the conflict of interest between two of Roger's roles outside the chapter and his close involvement in Wikimedia UK board's decision-making process, including the access to private mailing lists that board members in all chapters need. But the irony surrounding Roger's resignation is its connection with efforts by Wikimedians and collaborators to strengthen the reach of Wikimedia projects through technical innovation.
The first potential conflict involves a contract between Roger Bamkin's company Victuallers Ltd and the government of the UK territory of Gibraltar, through the Gibraltar Tourist Board. The contract is to provide the enabling technology and the associated training of local participants for GibraltarpediA, a project launched just two months ago by the Gibraltar government after it signed a trademark agreement with the WMF. The slogan for the project is "Bridging Europe and Africa". A second COI issue concerns the use of the English Wikipedia's DYK process to gain front page exposure for a number of articles related to Gibraltar, including 17 in August.
Wikipedia towns
What are quick-response (QR) codes? Central to the two Wikipedia town projects is QRpedia, a mobile Web-based system for using QR codes to deliver Wikipedia articles to visitors – often tourists – in their preferred language. Specialised plaques, each containing a unique code, are installed at locations of interest; when a visitor holds their smartphone in front of the plaque, this triggers instant access to a Wikipedia article about the location. QRpedia was conceived by Roger Bamkin and coded by Terence Eden last year, and is also in use at institutions including museums in the UK, the US, and Spain.
The aim of GibraltarpediA is to build on the highly successful MonmouthpediA project, launched in May in the Welsh town of Monmouth using QR codes. That first "Wikipedia town" project – a collaboration between WMUK and Monmouthshire county council – was greeted with strong approval by senior Wikimedians: shortly after the launch, Jimmy Wales is quoted as saying: "Bringing a whole town to life on Wikipedia is something new and is a testament to the forward-thinking people of Monmouth, all of the volunteers and the Wikimedia UK team. I’m looking forward to seeing other towns and cities doing the same thing."
According to Gibraltarpedia.org (which redirects to an English Wikipedia page), the more recent project "aims to cover every single notable place, person, artefact, plant and animals [sic] in Gibraltar in as many languages as possible", and will be "at least three times the size of MonmouthpediA".
[O]nce all the landmarks are equipped with codes and all the articles are written, other factors need to be dealt with for the project to take off. Roaming charges may deter visitors from connecting to the web – and the government of Gibraltar says it is considering the possibility of free wi-fi. Also, tourists should be familiar with QR codes and be willing to use them. Although people may be used to seeing them, not many in the Western world actually scan them.
On the upside, the article says that QR technology "will be integrated into Apple's Passbook ticket/coupon wallet service, available on the forthcoming iOS6 operating system".
DYK
However, things started to unravel with a post at the DYK talk page on 14 September regarding multiple nominations for coveted main-page exposure through that forum, in which Roger promoted an article he himself wrote. This is contrary to DYK rules, although Roger has pointed out that he rescinded the nomination. Apparently 17 Gibraltar-related nominations were pushed through during August, and it appears that the DYK procedures have been used in a way that minimises the review process and maximises the promotion to the main page of articles on this topic – chiefly by cross-nomination and cross-reviewing. This comes after a succession of disputes during the past few years about the practice by some editors of launching large numbers of nominations on the same topic-areas at DYK.
Roger told the Signpost:
John Cummings and I are not being paid to edit wikipedia. We are being paid to organise the project, enabling and helping individuals within different communities to join together, the global, virtual world of Wikipedia editors, and the people of Gibraltar and the surrounding regions in Europe and Africa. My motivation is to inspire people and organisations to acquire and distribute knowledge freely throughout the world.
I did make a mistake in creating articles on DYK – two articles this month that included a Gibraltar cave that tourists cannot go into and a WWII destroyer named after an old name for Gibraltar. I did this out of enthusiasm and interest in a new subject. I have volunteered to not edit DYK on Gibraltar related subjects.
Jimmy's talk page
The official GibraltarpediA logoThree days later, tensions spread to Jimmy Wales' talk page. Jimmy's only reply at that page: "It is wildly inappropriate for a board member of a chapter, or anyone else in an official role of any kind in a charity associated with Wikipedia, to take payment from customers in exchange for securing favorable placement on the front page of Wikipedia or anywhere else. ... [T]he honorable thing for anyone with a conflict of interest driving them to act on behalf of a client in the manner I discussed above is resign from the board of Wikimedia UK, or resign from the job with the client. Anything else raises the appearance of impropriety at a minimum."
The Signpost notes that this statement was made despite the fact that paid editing is currently permissible on the English Wikipedia.
Discussion on Jimmy's talk page has since grown in size and vitriol ("whore", "witch hunt"). There have been accusations that Roger "may be slanting information in a fairly subtle way in some Gibraltar-related article[s]", and a proposal that he "suggest edits rather than making them himself on any topic related to Gibraltar". One editor wrote that "while it is possible that what Roger is doing may be legal in the most narrow of senses, it is totally unethical: it is clear that he should step down NOW from any position of trust or responsibility in any Wikimedia operation, AND should cease to edit any article where he is operating as a paid agent of the subject ...". Roger also received strong support from some editors ("One fact that I am certain of is that Roger is an honourable man, and I would expect him to be perfectly capable of giving paid advice to Gibraltar without taking on any of the editing obligations that you seem to imagine").
Gibraltan government statements
The situation, by now a swirling quandary concerning the relationship between WMUK, the Gibraltar government, Victuallers Ltd (and Roger's associates), and his role as a Wikipedia editor, has not been helped by statements by Gibraltar's minister for tourism, Neil Costa, as reported in the Gibraltar newspaper Vox. At the same time as encouraging Gibraltans to open an account on Wikipedia to contribute "photos and information on the sites, history and so on", Costa apparently said, "We will have millions of people onto the GibraltarpediA once the product has spiralled. ... So one of the great decisions the Tourist Board has is effectively marketing but done at the lowest possible cost, and this is exactly what this achieves in a very revolutionised way. ... GibraltarpediA will encourage tourists to come to Gibraltar without having to do so through a package tour."
To make matters worse, Gibraltar's Director of Heritage, Professor Clive Finlayson, is reported in the Gibraltar Chronicle as noting that concern was expressed that volunteers who do not have Gibraltar's best interest at heart may write untrue or negative articles. (The continued British claim to ownership over the territory has been the subject of friction with the Spanish authorities for decades.) Finlayson said, "The people from Wikipedia UK have guaranteed to us that this has an element of self-regulation and we want to encourage many local volunteers to keep an eye on what is going on, and if things go on that is nasty, then it is very easy for them to go back to the earlier page in seconds."
WMUK board and conflict of interest
Government of Gibraltar press conference on Gibraltarpedia, 18 July 2012
On the same day, Chris Keating, Chair of WMUK, put out a statement on the matter, saying among other things that:
Wikimedia UK's sole involvement with [GibraltarpediA] to date has been the despatch of a few booklets. ... An agreement between Roger and Terence on the one hand and Wikimedia UK on the other is in the works, shouldn't take more than a few weeks to finish off, and will provide a firm basis for the growing use of Wikipedia-linked QR codes in future. ... Our conflict of interest policy is available here and is supported by the Declarations of Interest register here. The Conflict of Interest policy is modelled quite closely on Charity Commission guidance and is very clear that [if board members] have a conflict of interest ... they have to recuse themselves. We have followed this policy in all discussions related to the subjects mentioned in this thread. ... There is some debate on the Board about whether we need to develop this policy further, and members' views are welcome. [Links piped by the Signpost]
Roger declares his paid consultancies for both Monmouthshire county council and the Gibraltar government; this includes a statement that "there is no known COI as WMUK does not have a relationship with this Government but it is hoped that one may develop." A press release by the board last Friday states:
Roger has always been open with Wikimedia UK about his commercial interests and has declared them in public at appropriate times. He has not voted in any Wikimedia UK decisions about Monmouthpedia since the start of his consultancy relationship with MCC or on any decisions about Gibraltarpedia or QRpedia. ... Roger has not received any Wikimedia UK funds for any of these projects, except for out-of-pocket expenses incurred in his role as a volunteer in the early development stages of Monmouthpedia before becoming a consultant, paid in line with our normal expenses policy.
However, a member of WMUK has told the Signpost he believes the board is naive about conflict of interest, and that all chapters and the foundation need to learn lessons from this scenario. It is not good enough, he said, to disclose potential conflicts and to have COI policies if people in leadership positions don't understand COI.
This appears to be confirmed by the fact that by 30 June, Roger had already offered his resignation to the board twice, clearly perceiving that there might be a COI in his emerging extra roles. A single diff, then, is evidence that the problem is systemic, and at least partly exonerates Roger from responsibility for COI – at least in relation to his continued board membership. Further, he stated on 19 September on Jimmy's page: "When I stood for the board last time I clearly made the point that I would have COI issues but I wouldn't have undeclared COI issues."
That the problem might be systemic resonates with recently blogged complaints by ex-WMUK treasurer Thomas Dalton that for WMUK "too much happens without proper thought and oversight, which has resulted in serious mistakes being made"; and that the chapter needs to give itself "the time to think about where we are and where we are going otherwise everything will spiral out of control".
The Signpost asked Geoff Brigham, the foundation's chief counsel, whether the foundation has any formal relationship with the Gibraltar Tourist Board:
The Wikimedia Foundation signed a trademark agreement with the government of Gibraltar, as represented by the Gibraltar Tourist Board, for a limited term use (one year) of the Wikipedia trademarks as part of the Gibraltarpedia project. As with most trademark agreements, the Foundation protects its marks by a detailed license which among other things, requires compliance with any reasonable requests of the Foundation, as well as with the Foundation’s Trademark Policy. This ensures that use of the marks upholds the reputation of the Foundation and limits confusion as to affiliation, and enables the Foundation to end relationships where there has been a material breach of the agreement or where use of the mark is out of line with the Foundation's mission.
We understand that QR plaques are being used in the UK, the US, India, Germany, Spain, Russia, Serbia, Estonia, Australia, and Hungary. Usage appears to be encouraged by a how-to page, complete with a gallery of examples that include the WMF trademark. Nowhere on that page or WikiProject QRpedia is there mention of the need to obtain trademark agreements from the WMF to use the Wikimedia trademarks on QRpedia installations.
The Signpost asked Geoff Brigham whether the foundation has a legal agreement concerning all uses of its logo on the plaques that are enabling components of the QRPedia technology:
There are no legal agreements in place between the Wikimedia Foundation and QRPedia. We would encourage anybody using Wikimedia trademarks for plaques to contact us so we can review and hopefully give approval in appropriate cases that advance our mission.
We have had several email exchanges with Roger, who pointed out the enormous advantages to the movement that are likely to flow from the innovations for which he and his colleagues have largely been responsible.
In brief
Wikimedia India board elected: The Indian chapter has announced the result of their recent board election, with five people elected out of nine candidates: Karthik Nadar, Nikita Belavate, Pranav Curumsey, Srikanth Ramakrishnan, and Viswa Prabha.
Main-page redesign competition: 24 proposals have been lodged, and discussion about the issue continues on the competition talk page. Editors are welcome to submit their own proposals until 30 September.
Milestones: Wikimedia Commons, the file hosting site for Wikimedia Foundation projects, has reached 14,000,000 files, just 109 days after reaching 13,000,000.
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