Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/Traffic report
Former WMF board member creates "Wikipedia Corporate Index" for Fleishman-Hillard PR agency
On 13 February 2013, PR Report, the German sister publication of PR Week, published an article announcing that PR agency Fleishman-Hillard was offering a new analysis tool enabling companies to assess their articles in the German-language Wikipedia: the Wikipedia Corporate Index (WCI).
The free analysis tool was developed by a team led by Arne Klempert, Director Digital at Fleishman-Hillard Germany, who also served as a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board from May 2009 to July 2012. According to PR Report, the tool is designed to help PR professionals improve the way their company is described in Wikipedia—as well as to make transparent how well competitors are presented. Klempert said he wants to give PR professionals "a deeper understanding of how Wikipedia works, and the quality indicators for company articles in Wikipedia". An English-language article on Fleishman-Hillard's German website explains—
| “ | Despite the significance of Wikipedia corporate entries, no suitable analytical tool has been developed to date that evaluates the presence of one's own company or that of competitors. Yet, the quality of such entries is of major importance. Corporate Wikipedia entries are also always included among the top hits in Google. Articles on prominent companies can easily have more than 100,000 hits per month.
Arne Klempert, Director Digital at Fleishman-Hillard Germany: "With the Wikipedia Corporate Index there is now finally a standard for evaluating company articles on Wikipedia. At the same time, we want to use this kind of analysis to create a deeper awareness among communications officers of how Wikipedia works." |
” |
The WCI covers approximately 15,000 company entries in the German-language Wikipedia, evaluating about 40 article characteristics categorised in four areas: authors and edits, content and structure, links, and page views.
Klempert also wrote an article published by German PC Magazin last year, now reproduced in slightly altered form on the WCI website, advising companies on how best to edit Wikipedia. He noted that some Wikipedians categorically reject the involvement of company representatives, and said that this attitude is particularly marked in the English-language Wikipedia, while the German-language Wikipedia is more open to paid editors.
Klempert said company representatives could always use the discussion page and above all should edit transparently, identifying themselves, and should not try to change an article in one fell swoop—such changes would usually be reverted. Instead, they should start with small, non-critical changes to their article, demonstrating to editors that they understand the principles of Wikipedia collaboration. This included such things as updating company data, or providing images to be used as illustrations. Klempert also advised companies to monitor their own articles, to anticipate communication crises and be able to prepare for press enquiries.
According to the Kurier, a German-language Wikimedia news outlet that is somewhat analogous to the Signpost, a Wikipedia Corporate Index for the English-language Wikipedia is in the planning stages at Fleishman-Hillard. The version for the German-language Wikipedia has been nominated for a special PR Report award in the category "research, analysis and evaluation".
In brief
- Austrian economics edit war: News website Salon reported on 19 February 2013 that arguments on whether to include a critique of Austrian economics by Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman in the Wikipedia article on the topic had led to the page being locked down. Salon stated that arguments centred on whether Krugman's description of Austrian economics was correct. Asked to comment, Krugman said, "That is my experience with the Austrians: whenever you try to pin them down, they insist that you fail to understand their profound ideas. And they have indeed been predicting runaway inflation for years now; it's interesting that they can neither explain why they were wrong nor admit that this poses a problem."
- "Warning! Wikipedia will make your financial IQ drop": Author and finance expert Janet Tavakoli published an article in the Huffington Post on 20 February 2013, stating that Wikipedia's articles on finance did a good job of explaining "why relying on information supplied on the internet by anonymous strangers is a bad idea". She said that Wikipedia's coverage of credit derivatives ignored peer-reviewed information (including articles she had authored), and that her own additions to Wikipedia were reverted.
- Upper Crust whitewash: Boston website Bostinno.com reported on 20 February 2013 that the Wikipedia article on Upper Crust Pizzeria had seen all mention of a U.S. Department of Labor investigation into the company's pay practices and resulting lawsuits removed.
- GEO Group facelift: The Huffington Post ran an article on 20 February 2013 reporting that the GEO Group "may have decided to give its Wikipedia page a facelift", noting that Abraham Cohen (talk · contribs) shared his name with GEO Group spokesman Abraham Cohen. The story was picked up by the Sun Sentinel and a number of other sites.
- Occupy Melbourne: The Bendigo Advertiser reported on 20 February 2013 that edits to the article on Occupy Melbourne had been made from a computer belonging to the Melbourne city council.
- Visualisation of edit wars: The Daily Dot ran an article on 21 February 2013 on a "wonderfully nerdy" visualisation of Wikipedia edit wars.
- Wikipedia via SMS: Tech site The Verge and many others reported from 22 February onward that Wikipedia will soon be available via SMS: "The latest plan is [to] let users request specific articles from Wikipedia by having them send text messages to the website through SMS or another standard called USSD. Wikipedia via text is due out in the next few months and is being funded by a $600,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, the nonprofit media and journalism support organization." The Verge article referenced a blog post by Kul Takanao Wadhwa, the head of mobile for the Wikimedia Foundation, on the Knight Foundation website.
- Wikipedia, the ultimate web marketing tool: An article on investment website AdvisorOne.com on 22 February 2013 drew attention to Wikipedia's value as a web marketing tool: "A Wikipedia page can bring an advisor credibility and discoverability—for those with a supportable claim to notability." The piece featured an interview with paid Wikipedia editor Mike Wood from Legalmorning.com.
- Wikipedia's gender gap: On 24 February 2013, an article in the Huffington Post quoted former Wikimedia fellow Sarah Stierch on the reasons for Wikipedia's gender gap, which, according to the article, causes systemic bias in Wikipedia's coverage, with articles on such topics as abortion, pregnancy, feminism and motherhood being mainly written by male editors: "After talking to women, surveying women, they said, one, it's an attitude problem. It's the Internet, people are jerks. We have a motto at Wikipedia, 'Don't be a dick.' There's a lot of dick, pun intended, on the Internet. It's a culture problem, so that's one thing, and people need a lesson in manners. Two, the help system on how to edit Wikipedia is really complex. When you have a bunch of guys, computer guys who created Wikipedia, writing the rules on Wikipedia, it tends to get a little wordy and expansive and anal-retentive. And it gets a little overwhelming." The story was picked up by Australian news website news.com.au.
Wikidata development to be continued indefinitely
German chapter commits to further Wikidata development
German chapter Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) committed itself this week to funding the Wikidata development team past the original 31 March deadline, ending fears that the delays the project suffered during its first phase would translate into phase three being abandoned.
By the time of the switchover, phase one will be all but complete and a framework phase two is likely to be in place on some if not all wikis. Nevertheless, it has become increasingly clear that its third phase (dynamic lists) will still be in the design phase on that date. According to the blog post accompanying WMDE's decision, one of the goals of the new development phase will be to rectify that and to 'flesh out' the phase 2 implementation to support other data types, most notably co-ordinates. A further goal sees Wikidata deployed on projects other than Wikipedias. Throughout, commentators will be watching to see if the self-described "biggest technical project that a chapter of the Wikimedia movement has ever undertaken" can be brought to proper fruition in a reasonable timespan.
The big question that remains is financial. The first year of Wikidata's development was funded by grants from donors interested in its potential role as a general data repository, including the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (approximately €600,000), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (~€300,000) and Google (~€300,000). That €1.3 million (equivalent to US$1.6 million) supported eight full-time developers and four support staff for a year; the plan now is for "a team of eight", implying a cost of around €850,000 euros per annum. The chapter say they will raise that "by means of donations", from "additional partners" if necessary. If the number of Wikidata enthusiasts is anything to go by, it'll be money well spent.
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.
- Onboarding profiled: The Wikimedia Foundation's "Onboarding" project, which aims to get more registered users editing, was profiled in a post on the Wikimedia blog. The scheme initially focusses on welcoming users and providing them with ideas on how and where to contribute. The results were modest but positive, the post recalls: "users given the new interface were significantly more likely to try to edit (+4.3%), and more of them also completed their first edit to content (+1.8%) within a day of registration". In related news, Wikimedia Commons is to become one of the first wikis outside the English Wikipedia to install code generated by the WMF's E3 team. Following a user request, it will gain post-edit feedback ("Your edit was saved.") and the newer Guided Tours facility.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/Opinion
"Very lucky" Picture of the Year
The Wikimedia Commons 2012 Picture of the Year contest (POTY) has ended, with the winner being Pair of Merops apiaster feeding, taken by Pierre Dalous. Second place went to NASA's Magnificent CME Erupts on the Sun - August 31, and third place to Stefan Krause's Glühlampe explodiert.
- The contest
The competition was organized into two rounds, and users who had at least 75 edits on any Wikimedia project before 1 January 2013 were eligible to vote.
The first round consisted of all of the images that ran on the Commons' main page in 2012. Users were allowed to vote for as many pictures as they wanted. With 631 votes, Ponte Vasco da Gama 25 received the most; Darvasa gas crater panorama crop ran a close second with 626.
In the second round, users were only allowed to vote for one picture. The second round's candidates were selected by votes: the top 36 pictures from the first round, along with eight additional images that were in categories not represented by the top 36. With 347 votes, Pair of Merops apiaster feeding not only beat the next-closest competitor by 43 votes, it managed to overcome a 254-vote difference from the first round, where it came in a stunning 24th. The first round winners (Ponte Vasco da Gama 25 and Darvasa gas crater panorama crop) finished in ninth and eighth place, respectively.
- The images
Pair of Merops apiaster feeding was taken by Pierre Dalous. Dalous started contributing images to the Commons only last year, and even before this, he had never participated in a photo contest. While he has only 113 edits and uploaded 24 images, 11 are now featured thanks to User:Lemon.
Taking the picture required finding a perch frequented by the European bee-eater, but the location and time windows were limited: the bird will normally frequent rivers so that it has a steady source of food (e.g. dragonflies) and a place to construct a nest, which it likes to do in eroded banks and slopes near rivers. In addition, the birds are migratory and only present in France from roughly April to September; this time was further limited by the 22 hours a day with inadequate light, leaving only two where Dalous could take the shot.
Dalous captured the birds with a tripod-mounted Canon EOS 7D camera with an f/4 Canon EF 300mm lens. He told us that the birds do not take long to enjoy their prey, so his major challenge was to catch both birds in the act while keeping them in focus. Dalous called the eventual result, which won him the POTY, "very lucky".
A senior Commons editor told the Signpost:
| “ | In my view some of the technical aspects of the image were achieved with great skill. While the right side of the branch is a bit out of focus and the under chin of left bird is shadowed, the action frame and the composition of the birds are excellent. I particularly like the forked shape on the branch that mirrors the beak. And there's inadvertently an almost human look in the bird about to catch the insect: look at its eye. | ” |
The second place image, Magnificent CME Erupts on the Sun - August 31, was published by the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It shows a coronal mass ejection leaving the Sun at over 900 miles per hour (1,400 km/h). Capturing this image required NASA to record it in the 304 and 171 angstrom wavelengths. One Commons reviewer commented that "the wow factor is great here! ... I thought this was an artist's impression."
Third place went to Stefan Krause's Glühlampe explodiert. Krause, a German Wikipedian, told the Signpost that he has uploaded many images in the past—roughly 120 this year alone—and has 17 featured pictures to his name. In addition, he had two finalists in the 2010 POTY contest alone (Schwappender Wein, in eighth place; Eilean Donan Castle Panorama, in fifteenth). He also participates in German Wikipedia photo-related WikiProjects, like Projekt Fotoflüge.
Krause's third place picture was inspired by one of his earlier images, Glühwedel brennt durch. This image highlights the gas coming out of a cracked light bulb. From this grew the idea of making a light bulb 'explode' with the help of an airsoft gun.
Capturing this image was no small feat, though. Krause remarked that getting the photo right required fine-tuning his flashes to 1/4000 seconds to "freeze" the scene. In addition, a trigger was required, so that when the gun was fired, the camera would capture the moment soon after impact. Krause constructed a full photo set in about an hour, taking care to account for flying glass fragments from the exploding bulbs. Finding the perfect combination then took nine lightbulbs, frequent corrections to the gun and trigger, and experimenting with the voltage supplied to the bulbs. In all, Krause said that it took him about three hours to take the photo.
The camera used was a Nikon D700 with a Nikkor 70mm-200 2.8 VR1 set at a 160mm focal length. The bulb was 1.8 metres (5.9 ft) away.
- Aftermath
The POTY contest organizers were very proud of this year's competition. The Signpost emailed User:Mono, User:Miya, and User:Beria, all members of the POTY organizing committee, for their opinions on the competition. Mono and Beria told us that the participation in the contest was far higher than previous years: this year, roughly 3200 and 4000 people voted in rounds one and two (respectively), as opposed to 2011's 1393 and 1178, and 2010's 1722 and 2400. The members also highlighted the growing difficulty of winning the contest. Miya pointed to this post, while Mono said that "It's always been a dilemma when some people are disappointed that certain unique and valuable images were left out. It's a delicate balance between preserving the popular vote and ensuring that everything gets a fair shake in the competition."
According to Beria, the competition was also much easier to run this year, as much of the coding was done last year, and the contest was translated into 29 languages. Mono emphasized the early timing of this year's contest when compared to previous years. Last year's competition (see Signpost coverage) ended in June; this year's ended in February. The difference was in when the preparations for holding the contest began. For this, Mono told us that the organizing team started in November 2012, whereas in past years they have started in March or April of the following year.
In addition, a 2014 calendar comprised of the top 12 images from this year's POTY will be published by the Wikimedia Store. Those interested in being notified when it comes out may sign up here.
Overall, the organizers believed that this was at the least a highly successful contest. Mono said "we're very pleased with this year's contest. ... I'm proud to say that this was the most successful contest we've ever had", while Miya thanked the users who either contributed or voted in the competition.
Arbcom good governance and WMF ties
User:Coren, an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, has disclosed that he has accepted a position with the Wikimedia Foundation as a Tools Lab Operations Engineer beginning 25 February 2013. His duties will revolve around the upcoming widely debated transition of the traditional Toolserver to the new Wikimedia Labs. Coren acknowledged the potential conflict-of-interest between arbitrating and his new job, but he "anticipate[d] no interaction between that position and my responsibilities to the Arbitration Committee, and [could] think of no plausible scenario where [his] work with the Foundation would ever constitute a conflict of interest."
Reaction to the news was initially tentatively positive, with some opposition developing later. Overall, supporters saw no problem with Coren's dual roles, so long as he took care to recuse himself in any possible conflict of interest. Snowolf recalled past WMF employees who "have served in highly sensitive volunteer positions in the past without major problems that I'm aware of (Bastique and Guillom as Stewards, I believe)". The most prominent dissent came from fellow arbitrator User:Risker, who stated:
| “ | There is an ongoing perception that the Committee is heavily influenced by the WMF, and that the WMF and its Board are in turn significantly influenced by the Arbitration Committee. Sometimes, there is at least some truth to that perception. We had one case in the past year where interactions between the Committee and WMF staff played a key role; this came to light only in the voting phase, where it would have been too late for Coren to recuse had he been an arbitrator at the time, and would have adversely affected the outcome of the case no matter what it turned out to be. Just within the past week, the Board of Trustees has cited an Arbcom decision to explain in part their reason for withholding support of a fairly significant movement organization, and there was discussion and concern about that possibility even at the time of the decision. ... Do I think Coren has a genuine conflict of interest on a daily basis? Not at all. Do I think that his concurrent employment with the WMF and membership on the Arbitration Committee will be distracting and drama-inducing, laced with periodic conflicts of interest? That's extremely likely. The work of the Arbitration Committee is challenging enough without getting sidetracked by a constant need to address perceived conflicts of interest. I don't see WMF employment and Arbitration Committee membership as a good match. |
” |
Comments are still being made on Coren's disclosure page, though it was nominally closed on 18 February
In brief
- Chapters Association: Nominations for the new chair of the proposed chapters association are open. The election will begin on 6 March. Ashley Van Haeften, the outgoing chair, stated that the election was being held early due to pressure from the Wikimedia Foundation trustees regarding his ban from the English Wikipedia, something which caused much controversy in the wake of his election last July. He hopes that this election will be different than his, which was unopposed: "I strongly recommend that this is a contested election ... I was uncomfortable that my appointment [was] without contest. In my view, this was a weak demonstration of our democratic process."
- Quarterly review: Notes from the second quarterly review, focusing on the Wikipedia Zero team, have been published.
- Term limits for trustees?: The Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has decided to not enact term limits for trustees, but reiterated a commitment to "implement better and more transparent processes to assess appointed Board members (without compromising the privacy of those board members)."
- Wikizine revival: Wikizine, a newsletter formerly published by User:Walter, has been revived by User:Mono. Its first edition is available at wikizine.org.
- New English Wikipedia administrators: User:Secret passed RfA with 109 in support to 35 against, and User:West.andrew.g passed with 106 in support to 10 against. The four successful RfAs in January, combined with the three in February, make seven administrators promoted so far in 2013. This figure is 25% of the administrators promoted last year (28), and if the trend continues, would make a 50% increase in administrators over the full year of 2013.
- US government moves on open access: The Access2Research movement appears to have produced tangible results (see Signpost background), with the US government's new directive "Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research" (PDF). This states, in part, that "The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) hereby directs each Federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government."
- Ombudsman commission: The Ombudsman commission, which investigates complaints about violations of the privacy policy, is being flown to San Francisco to discuss the role the commission will play in project processes, among other topics. There is also a call for opinions on the remit of the commission on the English Wikipedia.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/In focus Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/Arbitration report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-02-25/Humour