Candidates nominating for Foundation elections; Looking ahead to Wikimania 2014
Although not yet in great numbers, candidates are coming forward for Wikimedia Foundation elections, which will be held from 1 to 15 June. The elections will fill vacancies in three categories, the most prominent of which will be the three community-elected seats on the ten-member Board of Trustees. The current two-year terms for these trustee positions end on 1 September (or the first Board meeting after the election results are announced, if sooner). The two incumbents are Kat Walsh (chair) and Samuel Klein; the other seat was recently vacated by Ting Chen, a former chair of the Board.
Candidate submissions opened 24 April and will close at 23:59 UTC on 17 May. At the time of publication, three members of the community have nominated as candidates: Leigh Ann Thelmadatter, a US citizen who currently resides in Mexico City and mainly works on Mexico-related articles; Milos Rancic, a Wikimedia steward from Europe; and Phoebe Ayers from California, who served as a chapter-selected trustee on the Board from July 2010 until the middle of last year.
The Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation. The trustees' roles and responsibilities are of profound significance in the movement. The Board determines the mission, goals, long-term plans and high-level policies of the Foundation and its projects, and it will select the new Executive Director of the WMF to replace Sue Gardner, who announced on 27 March that she would be leaving the job when a successor is recruited. The trustees also define a number of independent revenue sources, oversight staff on accounting, budgeting, and programs, maintain legal and ethical integrity, and articulate the WMF's mission to the outside world.
- FDC and FDC ombudsperson
The second category of positions is two community-elected seats on the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC). The successful candidates will be the first elected members on this central part of the Foundation's financial restructuring last year, which has thus far comprised seven volunteers appointed by the Board, plus two non-voting Board members. The FDC assesses funding proposals by eligible Wikimedia entities, mostly nation-based chapters, and was allocated a maximum budget of more than US$11M in its first year of operation.
The two new members will serve for two-year terms. FDC members have many responsibilities, including reading and evaluating proposals during the two rounds each year, and in-person attendance at two to three meetings a year (the Signpost reported on the FDC's most recent recommendations last week).
A third category will be the FDC ombudsperson, who has a separate set of responsibilities: receiving and publicly documenting complaints about the FDC process; supporting complaints investigations when formally requested to do so by the Board representatives on the FDC; and publishing an annual report to the Board that summarizes the feedback received and makes recommendations about how the FDC process could be improved. At the time of publication, there was only one candidate for FDC membership—Smallbones, who has served on the advisory committee that ushered in the establishment of the FDC. As yet, no one has nominated for the position of ombudsperson.
- Organisation of the elections
The SecurePoll interface will be used for all three categories in the election; SecurePoll is a MediaWiki extension that will be familiar to voters in the English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee elections. Unlike the 2011 election for community-elected trustees, which used the preferential Schultze method, the upcoming election will use the support–neutral–oppose system used in ArbCom elections. This decision prompted a degree of animated discussion, and in response to complaints of possible distortions, on 5 May minimal support levels were announced: support votes of 10% of eligible votes are now required for trustee candidates, and a raw number of 30 support votes for FDC and FDC ombudsperson candidates.
Relatively active community members, developers, staff, contractors, and board members will be eligible to vote, with minor exceptions; the lack of voting rights for chapter staff and chapter board members has been challenged on the Wikimedia-l mailing list.
The Board set up a volunteer Election Committee to plan and maintain virtually every aspect of the Board election, including the type of voting, the eligibility criteria for candidates and voters, and the drafting and organisation of all official election pages on Meta. The Committee will verify that candidates and voters meet the criteria, and will audit votes to ensure that any duplicate votes are not counted. The WMF's director of community advocacy, Philippe Beaudette, serves as staff support and liaison, with general counsel Geoff Brigham providing support on legal issues.
Although translations into some 80 languages are linked from the main page, at the time of publication the election information was still mostly in English alone. Despite valiant and much appreciated efforts by volunteer translators—and given that the deadline for translations is still a week away—where there had been progress, voters from major Wikimedia communities still faced pages such as this one, marked "2/3 complete", an apparent overestimate. Some translators are understandably having trouble with terms such as "a Support/Neutral/Oppose system". Instructions on how to ask questions of candidates were available in languages other than English only through Google translate.
The Election Committee will announce the results of all six vacancies on Meta, on or before 22 June.
Looking ahead to Wikimania 2014
This August, editors will be flooding into Hong Kong for the annual wiki conference, Wikimania. Planning for the 2014 event is already starting, however, because next year's event venue has already been selected. As the Signpost reported briefly in last week's News and notes, it has been confirmed that the winner of the bids to hold Wikimania 2014 is London. The other candidate city, Arusha, Tanzania, were congratulated for putting in "a solid effort" by James F. as he announced the winner on behalf of the selection jury on May 1 (last Wednesday). This will be the tenth year of Wikimania and the third to be held in Europe since Frankfurt 2005 and Gdańsk 2010.
Cape Town, South Africa and Bukittinggi, Indonesia both withdrew their bids, leaving the jury to decide between London and Arusha. The London bid team included Jimbo Wales and other Wikimedians from the UK; conference speakers have a line-up including Stephen Fry, Eben Upton and representatives from many projects across Wikimedia sites. The Barbican Center in the City of London—the largest performing arts center in Europe—has been selected as the main venue for events. As in previous years, scholarships will be available to fund those unable to attend without assistance; the Signpost will announce when these are open to applicants later in 2013.
This major wiki event follows GLAM-WIKI 2010, EduWiki Conference 2012 and GLAM-WIKI 2013 that were held in the UK. Around 50,000 Wikipedians are estimated to live in the United Kingdom; combining some of them, the expected influx from overseas, and interested non-Wikimedians, quite a few people are projected to attend. The organizers will be renting two auditoriums with a capacity of over a thousand and just shy of two thousand; the latter is expected to hold the traditional plenary sessions.
In brief
- Russian blacklist and Wikipedia, redux: Fifteen more articles, thirteen from the Russian Wikipedia and two from the English, have been placed on Russia's state-sponsored blacklist. The law that created the blacklist sparked a major protest in July of last year, and the articles in question are listed on the Russian Wikipedia. In the related mailing list discussion, opinions ranged from outrage to pragmatism:
| “ | If you insist on leaving a paragraph on "how to make a bong" in the Russian-language "Marijuana smoking" article, then the article won't be accessible to 140,000,000 people; if you remove that paragraph (and any others that are censored), the article, and its information about psychosis, respiratory effects, geographic distribution, history, correlation with tobacco smoking, gateway to harder drugs hypothesis, etc. will be available to 140,000,000 people.
We would be failing in our mission to disseminate educational information effectively and globally if, due to an ideological attachment to NOTCENSORED, we took the former option. ... my attachment to NOTCENSORED doesn't trump my attachment to our mission. |
” |
- Ombudsman Commission: A request for comment (RfC) on the scope of the movement-wide Ombudsman Commission (unrelated to the FDC ombudsperson) has been opened on Meta, the coordinating website for the Wikimedia Foundation, movement, and its component community members. The RfC aims to tackle the disconnect between its originally defined scope, where it was supposed to "[investigate] cases of privacy policy breach[es] or checkuser abuse", and its current scope, which allows it to only accept cases in the former instance. While this would not greatly affect the larger Wikipedias that have committees dedicated to investigating claims of checkuser abuse, such as the English Wikipedia's Audit Subcommittee, the RfC notes that "On smaller wikis with no such procedures in place, and on the German Wikipedia where the Arbitration Committee does not hear complaints about checkuser misuse, no specific procedure exists to hear complaints about checkusers and oversighters who may have misused the tool."
- SUL will be universal: The Foundation's developer team has announced that every account will be required to have the same name across all Wikimedia projects starting on 27 May. Users who have single accounts with the same name as someone with a "single user login" (SUL) will be renamed to <username>~<project>, e.g. User:Example~zhwikipedia. According to the developers, they will be contacting affected users individually. This will lead to the end of local username changes, as all renames will have to be done by stewards on a global basis.
- New GLAM project: Freopedia, an initiative aiming to put QR codes at various places around Fremantle, Western Australia, has been launched. It follows in the footsteps of the highly successful Monmouthpedia and controversial Gibraltarpedia (the latter ran into several problems unrelated to QR-code-placing).
- Main page RfC: The design and appearance of the English Wikipedia's main page, which has not been significantly altered since 2006, is the subject of a new request for comment. Previous assessments have been unkind, calling it ugly and "remarkably unattractive", and that a "superficial makeover" may be "just the thing Wikipedia needs to begin growing in a more meaningful way."
Reader comments
Foundation successful in bid for larger Google subsidy
WMF to get up to 21 students under Summer of Code scheme
Nevertheless, if all the WMF achieves is that it retains half of the 21 students as volunteer developers, few will be disappointed with the final outcome. The Foundation, and the community at large, has very little to lose in that regard."
The Wikimedia Foundation will be receiving more than $100,000 worth of free developer time courtesy of internet giant Google, it was announced this week. The funds, allocated as part of Google's Summer of Code programme, will support up to 21 student developers through three months of coding time.
As long-time readers of the Signpost will recognise, the figure of 21 is considerably greater than the number of placements Google has offered to fund in previous years (one to eight seats in each of the seven past years participating) and it is not entirely clear why it has now decided to allocate the Wikimedia Foundation the full number of slots it requested. Students are being paired up with (normally but not exclusively staff) "mentors" to guide them through a development project related to MediaWiki and their proposals are being rated by those mentors. WMF will turn in the final selection to Google on May 24, and Google will announce student acceptances on May 27. At time of writing, 47 applications from a total of 69 originally received from students are thought to still be in the running for the 21 places available, although MediaWiki may choose to accept fewer than 21 students depending on the strength of their applications.
"And now, if you don't mind, I'll go get some sophisticated alcohol-free drink to celebrate", wrote Quim Gil, the Foundation's Technical Contributor Coordinator and primary liaison for the programme, thanking everyone involved for their efforts so far.
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.
- Fallout continues following Echo deployment: The fallout from last week's deployment of the Echo notifications system to the English Wikipedia continued this week as a Request for Comment (RFC) asking for the orange "You have new messages" bar to be restored at least temporarily hit 125 supports. Despite only 29 opposes, the RFC has not received an official response, with the perceived inflexibility of the WMF management on the issue drawing angry responses from some commentators. At the end of the day, however, most editors who voiced an opinion suggested that the extension represented a "net positive" for WMF wikis despite its baptism of fire. Last week's change to the placement of the section [edit] links has also proved controversial, albeit to a lesser extent.
- Foundation gains UX chief: The Wikimedia Foundation has hired a Director of User Experience ("UX"), it was announced this week. Following a five month search, it settled on Jared Zimmerman, formerly Autodesk's Principal Interaction Designer, to lead one of the Foundation's most rapidly expanding teams (wikitech-l mailing list).
Reader comments
WikiCup update: full speed ahead!
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted between April 28 and May 4, 2013.
WikiCup update
May sees the beginning of Round 3 of the 2013 WikiCup, with 33 of the original 127 competitors remaining. The WikiCup is an annual competition on Wikipedia in which competitors are awarded points based on the number of pieces of audited content they can produce during the year; "audited content" here meaning individual featured articles, featured portals, featured lists, featured pictures, featured topics, good articles, good topics, did you knows and in the news items. A small number of points are also awarded for good article reviews. This is the fifth WikiCup held in roughly the current format, which is based on a lower-key competition which had been held for two years before that. Though the rules are set before the beginning of the competition, "judges", currently J Milburn and The ed17, coordinate the competition; others, like bot-writer Jarry1250, help behind the scenes.
This year's competition sees another step towards a focus on importance. Highly important articles, lists and portals are awarded more points, and importance is judged based primarily on the number of Wikipedias on which the article, list or portal features. For instance, from just the last few days, 
Sven Manguard was awarded three times the usual points for the featured portal Portal:Sports, while 
Cwmhiraeth was awarded 7.2 times as many points for her impressive expansion leading to a did you know from sea. Extra points are also awarded for longer did you knows to discourage the mass-production of very short articles and for did you knows of very old articles to encourage expansion of forgotten articles. Despite these changes, the WikiCup is still very different from The Core Contest, which is much shorter, focuses on improvement to core articles exclusively and is judged by a panel, rather than being about the accumulation of points. This year has also seen the WikiCup used as a locus for collaboration, with competitors finding others eager to help write on certain topics.
Big scorers so far this year include 
Sturmvogel_66 (2010's winner), 
Miyagawa (a finalist in 2011 and 2012), 
Casliber (a finalist in 2010, 2011 and 2012) and 
Hawkeye7 (a newcomer to the WikiCup). Very high scores in Round 2 suggest that this year's competition may prove one of the most competitive yet. 16 will progress to Round 4 at the start of July, while 8 will enter the final in September; this year's winner will be declared at the end of October. Those interested in following the WikiCup's progress can sign up to receive the monthly newsletter.
Featured articles
Six articles were promoted this week.
- Michigan State Trunkline Highway System (nom) by Imzadi1979. The State Trunkline Highway System is composed of all the state highways in Michigan, including interstate roads. The Michigan Department of Transportation is tasked with the maintenance of the 9,716-mile-long system that spans across all of the 83 counties included in the state.
- Ezra Meeker (nom) by Wehwalt. Meeker (1830–1928) was an American pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by wagon as a young man. After his family relocated to Indiana when he was a boy, Meeker married Eliza Jane Sumner in 1851, moving to Oregon the following year. In his old age, he worked to memorialize the Trail, writing several books, and continuing to promote the Trail until his death at age 97.
- Nauru Reed Warbler (nom) by J Milburn and [[User:Jimfbleak|Jimfbleak]]. The Nauru Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus rehsei) is a passerine bird endemic to the island of Nauru in the Pacific Ocean. The species is the only passerine, and one of only two breeding land birds, found on the island.
- SMS Prinzregent Luitpold (nom) by Parsecboy. The Prinzregent was the fifth and final vessel of the Kaiser class of battleships of the German Imperial Navy. Laid in October 1910, the ship was commissioned into the navy on August 1913. Along with her sisters, the Prinzregent Luitpold participated in all of the major fleet operations of World War I. She was scuttled along with her fleet in June 1919.
- Ancient Egyptian deities (nom) by A. Parrot. In ancient Egypt, several gods and goddesses formed the core of prehistoric Egyptian religion. They represented natural forces and phenomena, and the Egyptians appeased them through rituals according to their divine order.
- Fort Yellowstone (nom) by MONGO and [[User:Mike Cline (talk · contribs)|Mike Cline (talk · contribs)]]. Fort Yellowstone was a U.S. Army fort established in 1891 inside the national park of the same name. A total of 60 structures were built inside the fort since its establishment, and those facilities now hold the headquarters of the Yellowstone National Park administration, the Horace Albright Visitor Center and staff accommodations.
Featured pictures
Ten featured pictures were promoted this week.
- Solar flare (nom) created by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and nominated by Mrandrewnohome. On August 31, 2012, this coronal mass ejection traveled into space at over 900 miles (1,400 km) per second. This photo was awarded second place in the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest for 2012.
- Zygoballus rufipes (nom) created by Kaldari and nominated by Tomer T. Zygoballus rufipes is a jumping spider found in the Americas. George and Elizabeth Peckham first described the species in 1885 from a specimen found in Guatemala.
- High-density polyethylene pipe (nom) created by Tomascastelazo and nominated by Tomer T. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is commonly found in plastic bottles, pipes, and lumber.
- Great Cormorant (nom) created by JJ Harrison and nominated by Samaksasanian. The Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) is a common seabird. Its size and weight vary widely.
- F-16 Fighting Falcon (nom) created by United States Air Force Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway and nominated by Pine. The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is sometimes nicknamed "Viper" due to its resemblance to the Colonial Viper starfighter from the science fiction series Battlestar Galactica. It is a multirole fighter and still in production, though it is now produced by Lockheed Martin.
- U.S. Banknotes (North Africa series) (nom) created by Godot13 and the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution and nominated by Godot13. Similar to the Hawaii overprint series, the North Africa series was produced during World War II for circulation in Europe and Northern Africa.
- Dick Lugar (nom) created by Office of Senator Richard Lugar and nominated by Bonkers The Clown. Richard Lugar (born 1932) was a United States Senator from Indiana who served from January 1977 to January 2013. A member of the Republican party, he chaired the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from January 2003 to January 2007.
- Point Pinos Lighthouse (nom) created by Frank Schulenburg and nominated by Tomer T. Point Pinos Lighthouse was first lit in 1855, and is still in active service with the United States Coast Guard. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
- United States Notes, Series 1928 (Serial #1 Set) (nom) created by Godot13 and the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution and nominated by Godot13. The Series 1928 United States Notes were the first modern-era U.S. notes to be printed only in $1, $2, and $5 denominations.
- Fantine (painting) (nom) created by Margaret Bernadine Hall and nominated by Crisco 1492. Fantine is an oil on canvas painting by Margaret Bernadine Hall (1863–1910) that hangs in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, England. The subject is the character Fantine from Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables.
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Featured portals
Two featured portals were promoted this week. Quotes are from the lead sections of the portals.
- Sports (nom) nominated by Sven Manguard. "Sport (or, in the United States and Canada, sports) is all forms of competitive physical activity which, through casual or organized participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical ability and provide entertainment to participants."
- Geography (nom) nominated by Cirt. "Geography is the science that studies the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of the Earth."
Reader comments
New Wikipedia for Schools edition; Anders Behring Breivik's Wikipedia contributions
Wikipedia for Schools 2013 nearly ready for release
The SOS Children's Villages news service advised on 3 May 2013 that Wikipedia for Schools 2013 is nearly ready for release.
The Wikipedia for Schools project owes its existence to patchy or non-existent Internet access in many schools in the developing world, as well as the desire to ensure that material given to children would be appropriate for use in schools:
| “ | The idea behind the Wikipedia for Schools project was to make this vital learning resource available to children who would really benefit from the broad spread of information Wikipedia had to offer.
At the same time, the selection taken would be checked to ensure all content was suitable for school-age children, and organised in line with the UK national curriculum to maximise usability and relevance in schools. |
” |
The schools' Wikipedia’s history goes back to 2005, when SOS Children began preparations for the first edition. This was released in April of the following year in CD format, under the title "A World of Learning". By 2007, SOS Children had secured permission from the Wikimedia Foundation to use the Wikipedia brand and logo, and the schools' encyclopedia was substantially expanded and relaunched as "Wikipedia for Schools" in 2007, this time in DVD format.
A much larger third edition appeared in 2008/2009; according to SOS Children, it has become the "definitive offline resource for schools in the developing world", while the online edition "continues to enjoy considerable success in the UK and beyond, with an estimated 5 million users worldwide".
The new version will again be much expanded and facelifted, and delivered on a USB stick rather than a DVD, allowing for both an increase in content and easier distribution. SOS Children advise that
| “ | A test version is online at http://schools-wikipedia-test.soschildren.org. And if anything strikes you as odd, we'd be really grateful if you could let us know by tweeting us @sos_children, visiting us on Facebook or Google+, or just by dropping us an email at wikipedia-cd@soschildren.org. | ” |
Anders Behring Breivik's English Wikipedia account revealed
On 26 April 2013, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) published an article (Google translation) reviewing Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's edits to the English Wikipedia. The article, citing an Oslo police source, for the first time revealed the name of Breivik's English Wikipedia account: Conservatism (talk · contribs).
The account's extant edit history shows just four edits. One was a long talk page post to Talk:Sigurd the Crusader. The posted text was an English translation (available online) of the Heimskringla, an Icelandic chronicle of the kings of Norway, but with various references to "Vikings" and "heathens" replaced by Breivik with references to "Muslims". The talk page post was deleted as a copyright violation 90 minutes later.
Two other edits the account made were to the article on the small Swedish town of Kungälv, and these edits still stand more or less unchanged today.
NRK quoted Kungälv's mayor, who said she felt slightly uneasy that her town's history is described in the English Wikipedia in the words of a mass murderer. The head of Wikimedia Norway, Jon Harald Søby, was quoted as saying that if there were any content written by Breivik in the Norwegian Wikipedia that was factually correct, then he thought it should remain.
At his trial last year, Breivik cited Wikipedia as a major influence on him and his philosophy. His 1,500-page manifesto included a section titled "Battlefield Wikipedia", in which he encouraged like-minded people to use Wikipedia as a vehicle for spreading their worldview.
In brief
- Categorygate news round-up: Reports on the "Categorygate" controversy (covered in detail in last week's Signpost) continued through the week, with stories appearing on media sites ranging from Cosmopolitan (30 April) to Highbrow Magazine (2 May) and web news sites such as Digital Trends (1 May), AlterNet (1 May) and Vice (3 May). Sue Gardner released a statement on the controversy, titled "What’s missing from the media discussions of Wikipedia categories and sexism", on the Wikimedia Foundation blog on 1 May. The Economist asked on 5 May, "Who really runs Wikipedia?", and the Toronto Star weighed in on 6 May, with an editorial titled "Wikipedia’s sexist streak is a cloud over Internet dream".
- What about the Gallic Kim Kardashian: The Telegraph commented in two articles published on 30 April and 1 May on the French Wikipedia's decision not to have an article on reality TV personality Nabilla Benattia, and notability requirements in general.
- Windows 8 article vandalised: Chris Matyszczyk reported in a CNET article published on 2 May 2013 that the Wikipedia page on Windows 8 had been locked down because of sustained vandalism.
- Sarah Stierch emerges as Wikipedia's "go-to woman": womensenews.org and the Thomson Reuters Foundation published a feature on Wikipedian and Wikimedia Foundation employee Sarah Stierch on 3 May.
Reader comments
Earn $100 in cash... and a button!
This week's project, WikiProject Biophysics, is home to several experts in their fields and a collaboration with the Biophysical Society. Started in February 2012, this relatively young project has accumulated 3 Featured Articles, 6 Good Articles, and a wealth of pictures and videos. The project is hosting a contest through July 15 with six contributors winning $100 in cash and given the opportunity to attend the 2014 meeting of the Biophysical Society in San Francisco. Other strong entries will be awarded barnstars online and everyone who contributes can receive a physical button mailed out to them. Four of the project's members shared their experiences with us. Dcrjsr is a biophysicist at Duke University who developed the ribbon diagram in 1980. RockMagnetist teaches geophysics and enjoys collaborating on related subjects like biomagnetism. Mark viking explores the interface of physics, biology, and computation for UCSF and Kaiser Permanente. Daniel Mietchen is a professional biophysicist in Germany who champions open science.
- What motivated you to join WikiProject Biophysics? Do you have an educational or professional background in biophysics? Do you participate in any other science-related WikiProjects?
- Dcrjsr: I was the one who pushed to start the project -- because I wanted biophysics articles to be as good as the ones I admire in statistics and math, and I clearly needed a lot of help with that! I'm a professor at Duke University and a structural biologist, studying 3D structure of proteins & RNA. I participate in WikiProject Women scientists; other than that, I just contribute a lot of images to Commons and edit articles as I happen on them; my best so far is Frederic M. Richards.
- RockMagnetist: I joined when Dcrjsr came to WikiProject Physics asking for help. She's a great catch for Wikipedia - notable enough for her own page, and as president of the Biophysical Society, in a perfect position to encourage biophysicists to contribute; yet humble and eager for feedback from others. At the time, I had recent experience building WikiProject Bibliographies and its Science task force. I also have been involved with a few other WikiProjects, particularly Geology and Women scientists (another I joined simply because it seemed like a great idea). My own expertise is in magnetism, and within biophysics I am mainly interested in articles on biomagnetism.
- Mark viking: I have worked professionally both in physics and biology, so biophysics is a natural interest of mine. I was recently motivated to join in order track the state of the biophysics articles in WP, to learn the cultural norms surrounding the editing of biophysics articles, and to hopefully contribute to the effort. My expertise is in theoretical physics, complex systems and statistical genetics.
- Daniel Mietchen: I joined for the same reasons that got me trained as a biophysicist: the joys of how physical perspectives change across biological systems, especially when moving along the biological levels of organization or the tree of life. However, WP:COI, WP:NN and related discussions keep me from starting or editing the articles in my areas of expertise, and since I do not like to write about stuff I don't know, I have ended up being more active on Commons and in WikiProjects on neighbouring subjects - e.g. WikiProject Open Access, WikiProject Computational Biology and WikiProject Tree of Life.
- WikiProject Biophysics was initially set up by members of the Biophysical Society. What were the society's goals in creating a WikiProject? How welcoming has Wikipedia been toward real-world organizations creating WikiProjects?
- Dcrjsr: The project, and the contest, are supported by the President and Council, and the Education, Early Careers, and Professional Opportunities for Women commmittees, valuing the learning experience for members and especially the outreach and service aspects. Wikipedians have been supportive and helpful, but it's a difficult push to get enough people excited and committed enough to establish a critical mass of contributors. We hope the contest will help.
- Daniel Mietchen: The hospitality shown towards real-world organizations certainly varies. WikiProject Computational Biology, for instance, has a history of fruitful interactions with the International Society for Computational Biology.
- Please describe the contest that the project is currently running. Who can participate? What are the prizes? Where can editors get ideas for their submissions?
- Dcrjsr: Anyone can enter the contest (this is wikipedia, after all!) Everyone who works on an entry gets a neat button, and can come to a project dinner if they're at a Biophysical Society meeting; good entries earn a barnstar on your talk page; 6 student or early-career winners get $100 and a free membership and registration for the 2014 Biophysical Society meeting in San Francisco. For contest ideas, look at "How to participate" at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biophysics/Biophysics wiki-edit contest.
- How complex do articles about biophysics get? What can be done to make information about biophysics accessible to the average reader? What can a layperson contribute to biophysics articles?
- Mark viking: My experience is that biophysics articles run the gamut, from articles that are simply written single paragraphs to dense articles full of the ill-explained jargon and sophisticated mathematics that one might find in a graduate-level math or physics article. For complex articles, I think one of the best things we can do for accessibility is to write article leads that explain in an intuitive and jargon-minimized way the topic of the article, or failing that, an introductory section at the start of the article. If the average reader can come away from a complex article having gained some conceptual understanding of the topic, that article has succeeded in being a useful part of the encyclopedia for layman and expert alike.
- RockMagnetist:
- WHAT PART OF
BIM-1, BIM-2, BIM-3, and BIM-8 are bisindolyl maleimide-based, nanomolar protein kinase C inhibitors
- DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?
- Sorry, couldn't resist - the quoted phrase is the first line of an article! Every editor of a technical article should be encouraged to read Make technical articles understandable.
- Daniel Mietchen: Yes, the complexity varies, and readers come from many different backgrounds, such that a paragraph that explains things clearly to some may mean nothing to others. One way to work on that is to break things down more simply (or in separate articles). Another is to encourage feedback, which lay people would be in a good position to provide. Illustrations can help a great deal too, and while creating them or tracking them down takes effort, it often pays off in terms of reader experience.
- Does WikiProject Biophysics collaborate with WikiProject Biology, WikiProject Physics, or any other projects? What can be done to increase collaboration between projects covering the various scientific fields?
- Dcrjsr: We don't have formal collaborations with them, but we got ideas from their sites and a lot of good advice from individual editors, both in those projects and elsewhere.
- RockMagnetist: Not really being a biophysicist myself, a lot of what I thought of as biophysics is biomechanics, and I was surprised to hear that people in the two communities don't interact much. I think more collaboration with WikiProject Organismal Biomechanics would benefit both projects.
- Mark viking: I haven't seem much evidence of collaboration between the physics and biophysics WikiProjects. I think such a collaboration could be useful to sort out which kinds of articles should be tracked by which project, to coordinate grading standards, etc. One challenge in biophysics is that biophysics means very different things to different people, so even establishing the scope of the wikiproject can be difficult. Physical aspects of structural molecular biology is important these days. But what about complex systems in biology, such as gene regulatory networks? What about the interface of statistical mechanics with evolution and population biology? What about biomechanics and bioenergetics? What about the physical dynamics of ecological systems, such as chaos in predator-prey systems and the dynamics of forest fire models? What about health and medical physics? I think collaboration of the biophysics WikiProject with other WikiProjects could help establish areas of common interest in this wide-ranging field.
- Daniel Mietchen: I would really welcome more coordination in covering a topic across Wikimedia projects - especially across languages, Wikidata and Commons. Perhaps the proposed thematic organizations are worth a try, and that's why I am also engaged with one of them, Wiki Project Med.
- What are WikiProject Biophysics's most pressing needs? How can a new member help today?
- RockMagnetist: We are a fairly young project, so there are a lot of basic things that need doing - half of our articles are still unassessed and they need lots of cleanup. The best place to look for ideas is our to do list.
- Daniel Mietchen: Another way to help is to check Commons for suitable illustrations, to upload or categorize files there, or to embed them in corresponding articles. I am also not aware of anyone checking biophysical topics on Wikidata systematically, so there are lots of opportunities to chime in.
- Anything else you'd like to add?
- RockMagnetist: Anyone interested in creating WikiProject Geophysics?
- Daniel Mietchen: I have had a lot of fun in poster sessions lately going to people whose posters had no visitors and asking them "what would be the three Wikipedia articles I would have to read in order to stand best chances to understand that poster?" This approach does not only get to the heart of the poster very quickly and interactively, but it provides a good opportunity to get feedback on the Wikipedia coverage of these topics in the languages the presenters speak, it makes people aware of the edit button and of the benefits of publishing their articles under reuse-friendly licenses. Bonus: it works fine beyond biophysics too.
Next week, we'll enter the ring for a prize-winning fight. Until then, read our other knock-out interviews in the archive.
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