Arbitrator election — stewards release the results
ArbCom results "a healthy balance between continuity and turnover"
Seven days after the close of voting, the results of the recent Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections have been announced by two of the four stewards overseeing the election, Mardetanha and Pundit.
Of the 21 candidates, 13 managed to gain more supports than opposes, and the top eight will be appointed to two-year terms on the committee by Jimbo Wales, exercising one of his traditional responsibilities. Three of the 21 candidates gained the support of more than half of the 824 voters: Newyorkbrad, with 70.1%, NuclearWarfare, with 55.1%, and Worm That Turned, with 54.1%. Unlike last year's results, only two sitting arbitrators were returned. Four will be first-time arbitrators, two are sitting arbitrators, and two will be returning members who served in the past. Three of the four first-timers have participated at ArbCom as clerks, so seven of the eight members have already exercised official ArbCom-related roles.
Arbitrator Newyorkbrad commented, "I think it's fair to say that no one was selected who was a complete stranger to the arbitration pages and process. ... On the other hand, several of the new arbitrators have not exactly been supporters of everything the Committee's done in the past couple of years. I also think there will be a healthy balance between continuity and turnover within the Committee from year to year, which is generally for the best." Retiring arbitrator Casliber said, "Having worked with (and seen) lots of folks who ran, I can say there is a diversity of opinion which probably trumps whether the person has been a clerk or [arbitrator] previously".
The eight candidates elected are drawn from many areas around the English Wikipedia:
- Newyorkbrad, a lawyer from New York and an arbitrator since the beginning of 2008.
- David Fuchs, the second returning arbitrator, is an American editor and noted author of featured articles, including the Star Trek film series. His Guide to featured writing is a valuable page for FA writers.
- Carcharoth, named for the fearsome wolf of Tolkien mythology, was one of two new arbitrators this year to have formerly served on the committee (in Carcharoth’s case, from 2009 until 2010).
- Coren, who served on the committee from 2009 until 2011, is a system administrator from Quebec.
- NuclearWarfare is an ArbCom clerk and a university student from the United States.
- Worm That Turned, also known as Dave, is a British editor who specializes in dispute resolution.
- Timotheus Canens is a sockpuppet investigations clerk.
- Salvio giuliano is a former arbitration clerk and current member of the Audit Subcommittee.
This election saw 824 editors cast votes (with a further 34 ballots found to be invalid), a figure consistent with what Electoral Commission member Lord Roem told us last week: "While we had a one-day delay in getting the poll up, we've seen consistently higher turnout than last year; 800 votes by the end is a realistic goal." Surprisingly, the number is higher than those for the previous two years, despite the decline in the size of the active community; but it is lower than in 2008 and 2009, when more than a thousand people voted.
Among interesting patterns, a graph by SmokeyJoe shows that the voting for three candidates—Elen of the Roads, Beeblebrox, and Jclemens—was relatively polarised, with a significant dip in their "no vote" (red line). Hahc21 produced a table that displays a rough numerical summary of voter-guide support against the actual election results. This shows a remarkably close match, whether or not by coincidence, in which only one of the eight slots turned out to be different: only Guerrillero was among the top eight candidates in terms of voter-guide support numbers but did not gain a term; and only Coren was not among those eight, but did gain a term.
In brief
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- Israel modernizes the status of government-copyrighted images: In a move that the Israeli chapter has pushed for since 2010, the Israeli cabinet has decided to allow limited free use of all images uploaded to government websites for which the state holds the copyright. Commercial clauses will be decided by each government agency, and the share-alike license will not be changeable, nor will derivative works be permitted. The Israeli press and Wikimedia Israel, reporting about the reform reacted positively to the move (English wrap up), which was facilitated by Meir Sheetrit, a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
- Annual fundraiser on track: The WMF said in an informal update that it is on track to reach its goal in the first phase of the annual fundraiser. While in-depth key numbers will be published in due course, preliminary statistics to date can be found on the WMF wiki. A second phase of the campaign will be held in other geographic areas later in 2013.
- Wikisym 2013 CfP: Wikisym, the annual research conference on wiki-related topics, has published a call for papers for its upcoming conference in early August 2013.
- Affiliations Committee call for participation: The WMF's Affiliations Committee, tasked with implementing new participation models like user groups and thematic entities alongside chapters, has published a call for participation. The application deadline for interested volunteers is January 12, 2013.
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WikiProjekt Computerspiel: Covering Computer Games in Germany
- A new issue of the Metropolitan has been released
- Get involved in the December Wikification Drive and earn a barnstar for your efforts
- Voting has begun for the next tranche of coordinators at the Guild of Copy Editors
- WikiProject Articles for Creation needs help keeping its backlog in check
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In the past year, we've tried to expand our horizons by looking at how WikiProjects work in other languages of Wikipedia. Following in the footsteps of our previously interviewed Czech and French projects, we visited the German Wikipedia to explore WikiProjekt Computerspiel (WikiProject Computer Games). The project dates back to November 2004 and has become the back-end of the Computer Games Portal, which covers all video games regardless of platform. Editors writing about computer games at the German Wikipedia deal with unique cultural and legal challenges, ranging from a lack of fair use precedents to the limited availability of games deemed harmful for youths to strong standards for the inclusion of material on the German Wikipedia. In a break from our usual modus operandi, we interviewed an IP editor who was given the blessing of the project's coordinator, Kungfuman.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Computer Games?
- If you want to change more than just text passages and influence the structure of articles, rules, or criteria for gaming articles and Wikipedia itself, you have to go through the WikiProjects and find allies. Projects definitely help to get things clarified. Also, group decisions and consensus are more powerful and convincing than single user decisions. And sometimes you get a helpful hint or other information.
How does WikiProject Computer Games keep track of its articles? Does the project tag or assess articles as part of its quality assurance process?
- We have some bot support and use catscan for manual checks. We have a project Quality Assurance department, but we do not have a elaborated QA strategy. All entries are either handled by German Wikipedia's general QA process or are improved if someone finds an article that he thinks needs some urgent overhaul, normally if the article is so messed up that it becomes a candidate for deletion. But normally responsiveness to our QA process is low as well.
WikiProject Computer Games is part of the Computer Games Portal. How do the German Wikipedia's projects and portals differ from those on the English Wikipedia? Have you collaborated or shared any material with the English WikiProject Video Games or with similar projects for any other languages? How can communication between the different languages of Wikipedia be improved?
- It's said portals are for the readers and projects for the editors, but IMHO there is no obvious difference. Many projects without portals tend to design their project pages close to portals and vice versa. For collaborations, I can't remember any.
- I think the first problem for collaboration is language skill. Reading a foreign language is one thing, corresponding is a different beast. The second problem from my perspective are the strict criteria of the German Wikipedia regarding relevance, references, and proofs that do not translate to any other project. For example, for us it's nearly impossible to save an article from being deleted if the game hasn't already been released. The majority simply does not accept products that do not already exist and the argument for games is "they often get cancelled." Stubs are not accepted easily as well. Also, if we can not give proof from neutral sources for innovation, wide reception (critics, awards) or significant sales, the article often gets a deletion request. For games, the criteria seem even harder than for the rest. My personal opinion: Sometimes you get the impression German Wikipedians are representative for the more conservative part of the German population that still thinks games are childish and pulp fiction (compared to Goethe and Schiller). These problems are difficult to explain and I think it results from our cultural background and different understanding of an encyclopedia. We have a very strong exclusionist faction.
Do Germany's censorship laws regarding violence and the depiction of banned symbols impact the German Wikipedia's coverage of computer games? How does the project handle computer games that have been banned or significantly altered before release in German markets?
- It's not as harsh as one may think. Our laws only prohibit the advertisement of banned games, but we are still allowed to write about it in an educational context. Nonetheless, screenshots of the original version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein with Swastikas on it or depictions of brutal kills and dismemberments might be a problem. But normally we do not come to this point (see next question). If the game gets cut or banned, it is normally mentioned in the article. We also have a category for banned games. Apart from that, there is no real difference.
How do the German Wikipedia's rules regarding screenshots and covers differ from the English Wikipedia? How difficult has it been to acquire images for articles about computer games?
- We have no fair use law in Germany, so normally it's quite difficult to get screenshots and covers because of the copyright and threshold of originality. We would need an approval from the copyright holder to release the pictures under Creative Commons. In most cases that's an impossible task for us. So normally we have to stick to simple logos.
Video game articles on the English Wikipedia have occasionally been criticized for focusing too much on plot details and trivia. Has the German WikiProject Computer Games also dealt with these issues? What can be done to prevent the accumulation of fancruft?
- To some extent we have the same problem for older articles. We do not have the man power or organisational structure to provide quality assurance. Most project visitors are lone wolfs and for most of the time they are bound by control tasks. For new articles and articles that have a wide audience it's better in that aspect. Our strict quality rules and the obligation to give proof for everything prevent articles from being overburden with fancruft. Most authors simply oppose fancruft and therefore without neutral reception we simply delete it. Anonymous edits have to be sighted for all articles, new articles that do not meet the quality or relevance criteria in most cases get deleted pretty quickly. Because of the strict criteria, unregistered and new users may think articles have to be close to perfect. For them it's discouraging, for us it means if we really want to keep an article we have to do a lot of extra work to bring it up to the criteria. At some point editors stop fighting against the exclusionists and resign.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can contributors from the English Wikipedia help the German WikiProject Computer Games?
- Most urgent needs? Contributors. We need authors that are willing to contribute new articles that meet our quality rules and improve existing articles. But at the same time, I worry that's too utopian. Direct help from the English Wikipedia is a difficult thing, because of the small numbers of project members on the German side and the "cultural difference." I think it would be hard to organize a constant dialog, something I think is essential. A good way to support us is producing free-to-use content (e.g. screenshots and logos on Commons) and high quality articles in English. For Germany and German universities, game studies is somewhat like a new frontier. That means we often do not have access to literature or simply do not know where to look for it. Give us the references, so we can use or copy them. Personally, I take a look at the English Wikipedia's references quite often, do some proof-reading and quality checks. Not having to do all "cite web" quotations manually for every single reference helps a lot and saves time.
Next week, we'll sing a song of high fantasy. Until then, dance with dragons in the archive.
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Concise Wikipedia; section headings for navboxes
Current discussions on the English Wikipedia include:
Proposals
- Concise Wikipedia
- A concise version of Wikipedia has been proposed, where articles would be up to 500 words in length and contain only the important facts. This was suggested to help the readability of Wikipedia.
- Contributions to Edits
- A change of wording from "contributions" to "edits" has been suggested, on the basis that this would better reflect what is listed at the Special:Contributions page.
- Today's article for improvement to the main page
- It has been proposed that a new section be added to the main page to promote editor recruitment.
Requests for comment
- Fringe theories
- The content guideline of fringe theories is under discussion in regards to how broadly or narrowly it should be applied. Fringe theory is described as an idea that is different from the mainstream view.
- Adopting the feedback response guideline
- A draft guideline for responding to submissions made with the Article Feedback Tool is currently under discussion to be formally adopted.
- Section headings for navboxes
- The sentence, "Navigation templates located at the bottom of articles may be given a section heading such as "Related information", although the use of such headings has not yet been widely adopted," is under review. Should navboxes in articles have their own section headings?
- Actual article count
- Concerns regarding the actual article count displayed on the main page were brought up. Should the number include disambiguation pages?
- Image policy and guidelines
- An update to the image guidelines is under review. The image upload policy and image use guideline would be updated to reflect changes.
- Hyphens and en dashes
- A discussion has been opened regarding the stoppage of debates regarding en dashes, hyphens, and any other small horizontal lines for one year.
- Non-notable album mergings
- The policy that "Album articles with little more than a track listing may be more appropriately merged into the artist's main article or discography article, space permitting" is under review. Redirection is used more often than merging.
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Finding truth in Sandy Hook
- The views expressed in this op-ed are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds at our opinion desk.
This week's big story on the English Wikipedia is obviously the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (which, by the time you read this, may be renamed 2012 Connecticut school shooting). Quickly created and nominated for deletion not once but twice, and both times speedily kept, the article saw the expected flurry of edits (a look at the history suggests an average of at least one a minute over the first day and a half) and more than half a million page views on the first full day.
Controversy came quickly from a combination of two factors: the eagerness of editors—some new to Wikipedia—to report everything that was reported, and the eagerness of the media to report everything that was said or suggested. Errors resulted and so did edit-warring, but the decision to semi-protect the article was not made until two serious biographies of living person (BLP) violations. First, an IP editor placed a link in the article to the Facebook page of someone with the same name as the person erroneously identified by the media as the shooter, and soon afterward another IP editor placed links smack-dab in the article to photographs ripped from that Facebook page and posted on the internet. Those edits were subsequently rev-deleted.
The decision to semi-protect was immediately contested in the court of public opinion, in this case the article's talk page, since the administrators noticeboard (AN) was uncommonly quiet—perhaps involved editors were too busy dealing with edit conflicts on the article talk page to go there. A thread on AN indicated support for the decision, and semi-protection was later lengthened by Dennis Brown.
There was also discussion on AN and linked pages about semi-protecting the talk page: as of the time of writing this has not been done, but the possibility of BLP violations at the article is taken seriously by a number of the editors and admins who are monitoring the situation, guiding discussions, and answering edit requests—among others, Pol430, MrX, Ryan Vesey, Barek, Uncle G, Masem, and Dennis Brown. Relevant to the scenario is WP:BDP: posting information on recently deceased persons "has implications for their living relatives and friends", and the BLP policy still applies.
Further discussion on AN may lead to a more concentrated effort to handle the fallout from such dramatic events. Masem suggested a shortcut leading to a page with some behavioral guidelines: "a shortcut of accepted admin steps to take that have been accepted and need no discussion in the very short term after such events (eg, is semi-prot of the article appropriate, is creating and full prot of names associated with the event appropriate, etc.); these are decisions that after the initial flurry of edits can be come back to evaluate but in the short term to avoid disruption".
In the meantime, our coverage attracted the attention of the Nieman Journalism Lab, which ran an update with interesting stats on the development and growth of our Sandy Hook article. The Nieman article gave a shout-out to User:Wrong Way Go Back, and was quite positive about how collaborative the editing environment was after the initial few hours: "The ability for these collaborations to unfold as smoothly as they do appears to rest on the ability for Wikipedia editors with newswork experience to either supplant or compliment [sic] the work done by amateurs who first arrive on the page".[1]
School shootings and other high-profile events will continue to occur and to cause problems for Wikipedia editors. Considering that there is an unstoppable drive to write, expand, and update these articles, we are in the same boat as some of the other "new" media whose problems were highlighted in a recent story on American National Public Radio (NPR). According to that story, early coverage in the media is often wrong, and even the New York Times had a "staggering" number of errors. Why? According to a Times editor on the NPR report, "journalistic missteps were driven by the push to meet the speed of expected social media platforms".
As Wikipedia editors, we do not, I believe, have a responsibility to be the first to report anything; but it's a matter of fact that this is how articles are written, expanded, and updated. However, the NPR story cited Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, in which he debunks as myths all the truths we thought we knew about the "trench coat mafia" being bullied by the jocks. Wikipedia articles are more like Cullen's book than they are like blog updates, since they are durable if not always stable; we have, then, the responsibility as encyclopedists to get it right—to get it righter.
References
- ^ Keegan, Brian (18 December 2012). "How does Wikipedia deal with a mass shooting? A frenzied start gives way to a few core editors". Nieman Journalism Lab. Retrieved 19 December 2012.
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Wikipedia's cute ass
Featured articles
Four featured articles were promoted this week:
- Pale Crag Martin (nom) by Jimfbleak. The Pale Crag Martin (Ptyonoprogne obsoleta) is a 12–13 cm (4.7–5.1 in) long bird in the swallow family that is resident to parts of Africa and Asia. It tends to breed in mountains, far from water, but is often seen near human settlements. It constructs its nest with mud pellets, forming a deep bowl on sheltered horizontal surfaces, or a neat quarter-sphere against a vertical faces. It is assessed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List owing to its large range and population.
- Banksia aquilonia (nom) by Casliber. B. aquilonia, known as the northern banksia, is a tree native to wet sclerophyll forest and rainforest margins on sandy soils in Queensland, Australia. It grows to an average height of 8 m (26 ft) and has narrow glossy green leaves, with high pale yellow flower spikes appearing in autumn. The plant was described in 1981 as a variety of B. integrifolia, but later reclassified. It is rarely cultivated.
- Joseph Grimaldi (nom) by Cassianto. Grimaldi (1778–1837) was the most popular English entertainer of the Regency era. An actor, comedian and dancer, he was best known as a Clown; the nickname "Joey", Grimaldi's whiteface make-up design, and his catchphrase "Here we are again!" remain in use. Grimaldi took his first major role at the age of three, becoming a star by the late 1790s. He took his most famous role, in Harlequin or Mother Goose, in 1806. He continued to act until his retirement in 1823.
- Strepsirrhini (nom) by Maky. Strepsirrhini is a suborder of primates which consist of the lemurs, galagos, pottos, and lorises; an extinct group has also been classified in Strepsirrhini. They are defined by their wet noses, but have traits such as producing their own vitamin C and a smaller brain than comparably sized simians. The suborder's taxonomy is controversial and has a complicated history. Many strepsirrhines are endangered because of human activities.
Featured lists
Three featured lists were promoted this week:
- Grade I listed churches in Lancashire (nom) by Peter I. Vardy. The English county of Lancashire is home to 25 churches which have been given a Grade I listing, designating them of "exceptional interest, sometimes considered to be internationally important".
- Latin Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video (nom) by Jaespinoza. The Latin Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video has been presented annually to directors and producers of a music video released in the the award eligibility year since 2000.
- List of The Office (UK TV series) episodes (nom) by User:Ajmint. The British sitcom The Office saw fourteen episodes during its 2001–2003 run, spanning two seasons and two Christmas specials.
Featured pictures
Five featured pictures were promoted this week:
- John Day Formation (nom; related article), created by Finetooth and nominated by Tomer T. The John Day Formation is a series of rock strata exposed in north-central Oregon, US. It was mainly formed from volcanic ashfalls.
- Gift for the Grangers (nom; related article), created by Strobridge & Co., restored by Trialsanderrors, and nominated by Tomer T. The Grange is an American fraternal organization and the oldest American agricultural advocacy group with a national scope. The featured image is an advertisement for the group.
- Ambleside (nom; related article), created by Diliff and nominated by Tomer T. Ambleside is a town in North West England. Situated near the country's largest lake and with a history dating back almost two millennia, it is home to 2,600 people.
- Loughrigg Tarn (nom; related article), created by Diliff and nominated by Tomer T. Loughrigg Tarn is a small, natural lake north of Windermere in England. It was a favoured place of William Wordsworth.
- Young Donkey (nom; related article), created by Lilly M and nominated by Tomer T. The donkey (Equus africanus asinus) is a domesticated member of the horse family. The subject of the new featured picture is three weeks old.
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MediaWiki groups and why you might want to start snuggling newbie editors
MediaWiki groups get underway
MediaWiki users (including Wikimedians) can now organise themselves into groups, receiving recognition and support-in-kind from the Wikimedia Foundation. The project, backed by new Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, has seen five proposals lodged in its first week of operation.
Of those five, one (a local group centring on the Indian city of Ahmedabad) was proposed by a non-staff member and has easily surpassed the three signatures that will bring it into being. Of the other four, a second local group—this one based in San Francisco—has also met the participation threshold. The three proposed "thematic" groups (features testing, browser testing and marketing), proposed by staff, are struggling a little more, though all three will probably surpass the three signature barrier.
The idea of MediaWiki groups mimics that of Wikimedia User Groups, of which there are six. Gil wrote: "This is not about devs alone, but about people interested in all MediaWiki aspects, like testing fresh software, translating strings, participating in the UX design of a feature, helping triaging forgotten bug reports or enhancement requests".
What is: Snuggle?
In the first of a series exploring some of the newer and less well-known tools (editing aids) available to Wikimedia, the Signpost this week caught up with Aaron Halfaker (User:EpochFail), research analyst at the Foundation, about the tool he's been working on in his spare time, Snuggle.
| “ |  I built Snuggle in response to recent research (some of which is my own) that shows a decline in newcomer retention in Wikipedia[1][2] is the result of an increasing negative environment for desirable newcomers[3][4] and that Wikipedia's current socialization systems don't work because mentors can't find newcomers when those newcomers most need help[5]. Snuggle is designed to help experienced Wikipedians quickly and efficiently identify desirable newcomers who are editing in good faith and help them dodge Wikipedia's sharper corners. Snuggle has two major components: a server-side component that uses Special:RecentChanges to build statistics of new editors' activities; and a browser-based web application that allows Wikipedians to filter, sort and visualize these newcomers' activities. Using recent change data, Snuggle maintains a list of ~6000 newly registered user accounts and a summary of their first 30 days of editing activity. Users can then browse this list of users and sort them into two categories:
Editors looking to operate in a mentorship role can use the good-faith list to find newcomers who are struggling and need help or to send out invitations to the Teahouse. If there's demand for it, I can also add functionality to report the bad-faith users to WP:AIV. |
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Aaron reports that the system is currently in its early development phase. "I need your help to prioritize new features and to make sure the system is actually usable." He points potential testers to the current version, an IRC demo and feedback session (#wikimedia-office, 4 January at 1700 UTC/11AM CST), his talk page, and a newsletter. Interested developers can also submit bugs, features and pull requests to the public repository.
References
- ^ Wikimedia Foundation, The Editor Trends Study. http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Editor_Trends_Study
- ^ Bongwon Suh, Gregorio Convertino, Ed H. Chi, and Peter Pirolli. 2009. [The singularity is not near: slowing growth of Wikipedia]. WikiSym '09. ACM, doi:10.1145/1641309.1641322
- ^ Halfaker, A., Geiger, R. S., Morgan, J., & Riedl, J. (in-press). The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia's reaction to sudden popularity is causing its decline. American Behavioral Scientist.
- ^ Halfaker, A., Kids these days: The quality of new Wikipedia editors over time, Wikimedia Blog. March 27, 2012.
- ^ David R. Musicant, Yuqing Ren, James A. Johnson, and John Riedl. 2011. Mentoring in Wikipedia: a clash of cultures. WikiSym '11 173-182. doi:10.1145/2038558.2038586. Note that Musicant et al., 2011 was written before Teahouse
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 several weeks.
- Deployment slows for Christmas break: The impending onset of Christmas and its associated public holidays in many of the countries where Wikimedia developers are based has begun to push schedules back as the Foundation tries to avoid breaking wikis without having the time to fix them (wikitech-l mailing list). The phenomenon, which has long been part of the software development orthodoxy, will see two weeks become three for two consecutive MediaWiki deployment cycles (wmf7 and wmf8) and will delay the deployment of Wikidata to the Hungarian Wikipedia until "mid-January".
- FLOSS Outreach Program for Women interns announced: Wikimedia's participation in the FLOSS Outreach Program for Women took a step forward this week with the names of the six interns selected to participate (Wikimedia blog). During a competitive process, 25 women who showed interest eventually became six; they will perform MediaWiki-related tasks full-time during January, February and March in return for a stipend similar to that offered by the Google Summer of Code programme. "We have no doubt they can all become top contributors and have future opportunities" wrote Wikimedia technical contributor coordinator Quim Gil, announcing the names.
- This page, served by MariaDB (possibly): One of the main database servers for the English Wikipedia is now running MariaDB as its database management system (wikitech-l thread). Although the practical implication of the switch from one branch of popular DMS MySQL (mysqlatfacebook) to another (MariaDB) should be minimal—initially at least—it is seen as an important endorsement for the open-source project, which seeks to protect the MySQL codebase from any potential restrictions that might be imposed by trademark owner Oracle.
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