Wikipedia wins Princess of Asturias Prize; printing out Wikipedia; HTTPS switch
Wikipedia wins prestigious Princess of Asturias Prize
The Princess of Asturias Foundation announced that Wikipedia would be the recipient of the 2015 Princess of Asturias award in the category of International Cooperation. The International Cooperation award is presented annually "on the individual, institution, group of individuals or institutions whose work with another or others in areas such as public health, universal education, environmental protection and social and economic development, among others, constitutes an outstanding contribution at the international level." Wikipedia was one of 24 nominees in the category, a group that also included UNESCO, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, and the European Space Agency. Previous winners include the Fulbright Program, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, and the World Health Organization. In a statement responding to the news, Wikimedia Foundation executive director Lila Tretikov said "Wikipedia is an incredible project that has been created by millions of people from around the world. We are honored to be recognized in the category of international cooperation, which is at the heart of our mission. This award honors those volunteers - the editors, photographers, writers, and developers - who make Wikipedia possible”. The awards will be presented in a ceremony this fall in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain.
The title of Prince or Princess of Asturias is held by the heir to the Spanish throne. The awards were first presented in 1981 as the Prince of Asturias Awards. Last year, upon on the elevation of the prince, now King Felipe VI of Spain, the awards were renamed for his daughter, Princess Leonor. The awards are currently presented in seven other categories: Arts, Communications and Humanities, Concord, Literature, Social Sciences, Sports, Technical and Scientific Research. Winners are presented with a sculpture designed by renowned Spanish artist Joan Miró.
Printing out Wikipedia
New York City's Denny Gallery will feature an unusual exhibition by Michael Mandiberg (Theredproject), Wikipedia editor and Professor at the College of Staten Island, from June 18 to July 20. The exhibition, From Aaaaa! to ZZZap!, is part of Mandiberg's larger project, Print Wikipedia. As the gallery describes it:
| “ | Print Wikipedia is a both a utilitarian visualization of the largest accumulation of human knowledge and a poetic gesture towards the futility of the scale of big data. Mandiberg has written software that parses the entirety of the English-language Wikipedia database and programmatically lays out thousands of volumes, complete with covers, and then uploads them for print-on-demand. Built on what is likely the largest appropriation ever made, it is also a work of found poetry that draws attention to the sheer size of the encyclopedia’s content and the impossibility of rendering Wikipedia as a material object in fixed form: Once a volume is printed it is already out of date. The work is also a reflection on the actual transparency or completeness of knowledge containers and history. | ” |
Mandiberg is using the print-on-demand company Lulu.com. During the exhibition, his Mac Mini will upload 11 gigabytes of compressed data from Wikipedia to Lulu.com, whose upload page will be projected onto the gallery wall. The upload process is expected to take two weeks. While the entirety of Wikipedia would fill some 7600 volumes, only 106 will be printed and available for sale. Spines for all the volumes will appear on the walls of the gallery, as if it were lined with bookshelves filled with volumes of Wikipedia. Mandiberg told the New York Times “We don’t need to see the whole thing in order to understand how big it is. Even if we just have one bookshelf, our human brains can finish the rest." He said to the Washington Post "They’re really great as a kind of marker of volume. Like...you understand what a novel is or, 'There’s this many volumes of books;' you understand what that is."
He explained to the Post, "One of threads in my work has been appropriation and authorship and exploring what kind of meanings change as things are copied and transformed. One of the things I’m interested in, in this appropriation process, is trying to find the move, the smallest move that I can make that transforms work into something different and adds new meaning."
Wikimedia's HTTPS switch
Tech media was abuzz after the Wikimedia Foundation's June 12 announcement that HTTPS will be used to encrypt traffic on all Wikimedia projects (see Signpost coverage). Forbes wrote "Wikipedia’s half billion users can now browse the online crowd-sourced encyclopedia with fewer concerns about government censorship and surveillance." TechCrunch wrote: "The decision, [the Foundation] says, will make it harder for governments and other third parties to monitor users' traffic, and will make it more difficult for [ISPs] to censor access to specific Wikipedia articles or other information hosted on its network of sites." The Electronic Frontier Foundation congratulated Wikipedia and noted it was joining others, including Bing, Reddit, and the FBI, with similar policies. The headline in The Verge joked that "Soon, your embarrassing Wikipedia searches will be encrypted".
In brief
- Taiwan election battle: The Want China Times reports on the "online battle" on the Chinese Wikipedia between supporters of Tsai Ing-wen and Hung Hsiu-chu, presidential candidates in the Taiwanese general election, 2016. (June 18)
- China censorship: On the Huffington Post, Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire, an organization which monitors Internet censorship in China, writes about the blocking of Wikipedia in that country. (June 18)
- "A very small instance" of Wikipedia plagiarism: Metro Canada reports that the Calgary Board of Education has apologized for plagiarizing the Wikipedia article on Nelson Mandela in a press release announcing the naming of a new Nelson Mandela High School. Metro quoted a former English teacher as dismissing the plagiarism because it was not for monetary or personal gain: "If this would constitute plagiarism, it would be a very small instance of it." One wonders if he'd have the same opinion if he heard it from students turning in assignments to him. (June 17)
- Wales on the tech scene: Jimmy Wales was on hand for the launch of Tech.London, a new website to promote technology entrepreneurship. In an interview with CNBC, Wales lamented the lack of women working in technology. He said "For me it's such an important thing we all encourage [more women] in an industry that frankly is disastrous in its proportion." The Evening Standard reported Wales' praise of London's technology scene over that of other locales. "No one wants to live in Silicon Valley, it’s dreadful out there. I’m very happy not to have to live there," he said. (June 16-17)
- Disclosure: The blog Wiki Strategies uncovered undisclosed conflict of interest editing by an employee of the prominent public relations firm Sunshine Sachs. The editor has since posted a prominent disclosure on his user page. (June 16)
- Down the memory hole?: In the Kyiv Post, Halya Coynash of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group reports that the Russian Wikipedia has deleted the article on Alexander Byvshev, the poet added to the Russian government’s list of terrorists and extremists for penning verse opposed to the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. (June 15)
- Wikipedia hoax: In The Kernel, Kevin Morris writes about the Yuri Gadyukin hoax, which he hyperbolically calls "the greatest Wikipedia hoax ever pulled". Articles about and related to a fictional Soviet filmmaker were created to support a still-unreleased independent film, Nitrate. Morris previously wrote about the hoax for The Daily Dot when it was uncovered in 2013 (see previous Signpost coverage). (June 14)
- Teaching Wikipedia: The Daily Mail reports on a row about a plan by the Leicester City Council to pay an "IT expert" £30,000 to teach secondary school students how to "critically engage" with Wikipedia. A council spokesman said "Wikipedia is a really important and useful source of information for everyone, especially pupils." The Mail cited two conservative pressure groups, TaxPayers’ Alliance and Campaign for Real Education, complaining about the plan, with a representative of the latter saying "This is a complete waste of money. Wikipedia is an intellectual crutch, often full of mistakes, and encouraging pupils to rely on it does not help them." (June 13)
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An election has consequences
On Tuesday, 9 June 2015, the Arbitration Committee delivered its final decision in a case that reached the attention of the UK national press. (See last week's Signpost coverage.) The "Sockpuppet investigation block" case concerns the conduct of one of Wikipedia's most trusted volunteers during his investigation of a suspected case of sockpuppetry during the recent UK general election.
Chase me
An administrator and former arbitrator, Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (referred to as Chase me in this report) is also an employee of Wikimedia UK. It's a recognised UK charity and a chapter organisation approved by, but not part of, the Wikimedia Foundation, the body which actually owns and operates Wikipedia and other projects. As a functionary, Chase me has held checkuser and oversight rights on the English Wikipedia.
Investigating suspicions of sock puppetry
On 21 April, Chase me renewed a long-dormant sockpuppet investigation into Hackneymarsh (who also edited as Historyset), which according to a 2012 report in the Guardian had used IP numbers traceable to a senior Conservative Member of Parliament to perform edits showing the politician in an unjustifiably good light. A Guardian journalist had contacted Wikimedia UK voicing suspicions that Hackneymarsh was back as Contribsx. Chase me replied to the Guardian journalist that the matter would be dealt with by a trusted administrator. Chase me's sockpuppet report alleged a direct association with the MP and Contribsx was blocked shortly afterwards. It was noted that a Guardian article appeared before the filing of the new sockpuppet investigation, linking Contribsx to the MP. This occurred during the hustings of a general election in which the national news focus was on Parliament.
Arbitration Committee intervenes
Suspecting a misuse of the checkuser tool and apparent misapplication of checkuser information in an email to the Guardian, Risker, also a former arbitrator, filed an arbitration request. This was accepted, and ArbCom's Audit Subcommittee (AUSC) was asked to investigate whether the checkuser policy had been breached. The investigations were held off-wiki because of the sensitivity of the information.
Committee conclusions
The Arbitration Committee acknowledged a statement by AUSC that although there had been no major breach, Chase me's actions could give the appearance of impropriety, that he acted with a conflict of interest (disclosed privately during the investigation), and that he inappropriately disclosed checkuser information before publicly reporting it. The Committee only endorsed parts of that statement.
The Committee found that no evidence had been presented to definitively connect the Contribsx account to a specific individual.
On Wikipedia policy, ArbCom found that during the investigation Chase me had: failed to disclose his checkuser checks as far back as 2012; not been able to provide a proper account of the timeline of his actions; breached the biographies of living persons policy by making an association between an identifiable individual and a Wikipedia account; and not taken appropriate steps to ensure that his actions were seen as neutral and unbiased before emailing the Guardian and publishing the checkuser information. ArbCom noted that Chase me had been reprimanded by AUSC in 2011 in a separate case.
As a result, ArbCom removed Chase me's checkuser, oversight and admin status.
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Three weeks to save freedom of panorama in Europe
Amended report due for final vote on 9 July
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On 16 June, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament adopted an amendment to a report on copyright reform prepared by Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda (addition in italics). Under the committee's text, the parliament
16. Considers that the commercial use of photographs, video footage or other images of works which are permanently located in physical public places should always be subject to prior authorisation from the authors or any proxy acting for them;
This amended text is now due to be voted on by the full European Parliament when it considers the full text of the Reda report in its plenary session on 9 July.
The report had originally suggested that the current disparity in laws on freedom of panorama across Europe (see map) be harmonised by proposing a unified standard allowing images of works that are permanently located in public places.
However by a roughly three-to-one margin, the committee instead adopted the text above by French MEP Jean-Marie Cavada that commercial use of such images should universally not be permitted, except by express permission of the copyright holder.
Authorisation required
Rather than allowing people to take and publish their own photographs of buildings and monuments in public places—as celebrated in the annual Wiki Loves Monuments campaign, as well as many many books with author-supplied photographs—full permissions, clearances, royalties, and/or use of authorised images would be required for videos, photographs, paintings or drawings with any potential commercial use. (Wikipedia does not accept images unless they can be re-used for any purpose.)
This would end a long-standing tradition in many countries that the skyline and the public scene should belong to everybody; in the UK and Ireland, for example, this goes all the way back to the Copyright Act 1911,[1] which first set down copyright exceptions in statute law, and is currently reflected in section 62 of the UK Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988,[2] and section 93 of the Irish Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000.[3] (See c:Commons:Freedom of panorama for other countries).
The status of existing books published without such clearances would become unclear; most Wikipedia images depicting public art would be lost; and it would become very much more difficult and more expensive to publish future books comprehensively illustrating architecture and public art (or even artists' sketchbooks depicting them).
What can be done
Although freedom of panorama was heavily voted down in the Legal Affairs Committee, the majority of EU countries do permit full use of photography taken in public places; furthermore, the MEPs on the Internal Market Committee, which had an advisory role to the Legal Affairs Committee in the matter, had earlier recommended that such photography should be allowed across the EU.
There is therefore every possibility that the clause adopted on Tuesday may be overturned in the full vote of the Parliament on 9 July—if enough individual MEPs can be persuaded to go against the Legal Affairs Committee's current text; so in the next three weeks, every letter or communication from concerned people received by an MEP will count.
If you're an EU citizen, for maximum impact please contact each of your local MEPs and ask them to communicate your concern to the MEP responsible for co-ordinating their group position on the matter—in the UK, for example, this would be Sajjad Karim (on-side?) for the Conservatives, or Mary Honeyball (wobbly?) for Labour—and ask them to ask the coordinating MEP to confirm that the group will be seeking to remove this clause as it currently stands from the report, and defend the full right to make use of photographs taken in public places, in this case the existing UK law. In this way you'll get the chance to learn what the group's detailed current position is (which you may then find you need to work to persuade your own MEP away from). The coordinating MEP will also thus be made aware of the full range of concerns being expressed to the group, and may be more likely to answer a request forwarded by a fellow MEP than a direct approach.
As with any communication of this kind, it makes all the difference if you can make your letter personal. Why does it mean something personally to you to be able to take a photograph of a public place, and do with it as you wish? For example, is there such a photograph you have taken that has a particular significance to you? Has it been reused in a commercial context? Or have you done research for which it has made all the difference to find comprehensively illustrated material in a library, a bookshop, or on the internet? The more you can talk about your personal experience and why this matters to you, to make your letter different from anybody else's, the more impact you will have. It is particularly important to communicate to MEPs why non-commercial use only is not enough.
How to be heard
MEPs receive a lot of email—in particular, they have recently been getting very heavy email about the current EU–US trade negotiations (TTIP). Unfortunately, not all MEPS answer all of the emails they receive. You can improve the chances of getting an answer by also sending a hard copy of your letter to Brussels by post—these are harder to ignore.
It's usually most effective and simplest to make a phone call to your MEP's office (free of charge) as a first thing, or when you wrote them and you've not received at least a holding response within a week.
Whatever final answer you do receive, please respond and follow up to the MEP—either to thank the MEP if you like what you have heard back, or to politely make very clear to the MEP why you are unhappy with the response.
Helping build a wider campaign
The campaign to defend photography of public places will not be won if it is seen as just Wikipedia campaigning for something that will benefit Wikipedia. The public space is something that everybody should be able to share and to enjoy and to celebrate (or castigate). The broader we can make this campaign, the more different voices we can bring to the table, the more likely it is to succeed.
So, as well as writing yourself, please think of others who might have an interest, and let them know and encourage them to declare a position—professional bodies, trade unions, local history groups, civic groups, artists, architects, writers, publishers, journalists, academics, celebrities—anyone who cares about the environment around them and being able to read or talk about it. Anyone you can think of who has a voice, please encourage them to speak out, before July 9. Wikimedia affiliates will be trying to reach out to other organisations; but it may be that much can be done more effectively by motivated individuals at a grass-roots level. Central resources may be very limited.
A central space for campaign ideas, resources and discussion is under construction at c:Commons:Freedom of Panorama 2015. Please sign up if you have ideas or can help in any way, and help to gather together a library of contacts made, letters sent and responses received.
Background
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The new European Commission, appointed in 2014, has announced that one of its priorities will be to improve the "digital single market", including an update to Europe's copyright laws, and in particular the 2001 Copyright Directive (also sometimes called the "InfoSoc directive"), which includes a menu of allowed copyright exceptions that member states have adopted in a pick-and-choose way, leaving European copyright law as an inconsistent patchwork.
The European Parliament announced it would produce its own report on the current legislation, with recommendations. This is the report for which the committee draft was finalised in the vote on Tuesday. The chance to be responsible for writing the report was grabbed with both hands by Julia Reda, the only MEP for the Pirate Party. Reda essentially proposed that anything that is even remotely possible to liberalise should be liberalised, including a reduction of the copyright term from life + 70 years to life + 50 years. Reda has proved a formidable communicator, as demonstrated by her website on the report; but the news of her appointment and her initial proposals triggered a mighty backlash, led in particular by French MEPs and the French government, which seemed to take it almost as a personal assault.
Reda was able to achieve negotiated compromises with the rest of the committee on most of the clauses of her report; this has led to a result that she hailed as a turning point in the copyright debate, but which has been criticised by some as watered-down, equivocal, and no longer ambitious.[4]
Lobbying against a fully commercial exception for freedom of panorama has been pushed for by publishers' lobbyists, who have been promoting greater use of licensing across the board rather than copyright exceptions; and by collecting societies, promoting the view that there should be no reuse of copyright works without remuneration, and apparently seeing the right of public photography as the thin end of the wedge despite the interests of publishers and authors who currently rely on it. Representatives of some photographic libraries in countries without freedom of panorama have also weighed in, fearing the erosion of exclusive deals some of their members may have. In addition, there has been a general antipathy among many MEPs directed against internet services such as Google (but also companies such as Amazon and Apple and various streaming services), perceived as making huge profits as intermediaries at the expense of European creators on the breadline.
On the basis of these arguments, a number of Legal Affairs Committee MEPs (including from countries such as the UK that currently have full freedom of panorama) initially submitted amendments calling for public-space photography to be permitted but limited to non-commercial use only.
In subsequent discussions, it was believed that progress was afoot towards a compromise amendment that would have dropped the non-commercial condition. But these hopes were dashed following fiery speeches from French MEP Cavada and a Greek socialist MEP —both from countries without a tradition of freedom of panorama—in which they denounced the iniquity of others making money out of artists' works without compensation (even if, in reality, the image rights from public art really are the "gleanings from the field"—utterly marginal to the creators of new buildings and new art, but of immense value to the ability to publicly depict and discuss the work).
In the face of these objections, the group coordinators for both the centre-right EPP group and the centre-left S&D group dropped out of the compromise negotiations with Reda, in the interests of holding consistent internal group lines together across the committee. "The differences between the parties were too great". In the event, the committee adopted an even stronger amendment against freedom of panorama than some had originally pushed for, not just prohibiting unauthorised commercial use, but no longer even expressly permitting any non-commercial use. Indeed, the view of many MEPs towards unconditional reuse may be reflected in the wording of one amendment, which only narrowly failed, that called on the Commission "to prevent the parasitic development of new commercial interests at the expense of authors and their rights".[5]
The Reda report now goes on to a vote by the full parliament on Thursday 9 July. While formally an "own initiative" (INI) report by the parliament, and not directly legislative, it is expected to be influential in shaping the European Commission's actual legislative proposal on copyright reform, expected in September, by indicating what the Parliament is or is not expected to find acceptable. As Reda herself puts it: "It's not legally binding, so it's only as important as people think it is. And people think this report is extremely important, everybody is completely agitated about this. ... They [the rightsholders and publishers] have given this report the weight in the public eye by going completely crazy about it."[6]
References
- ^ Section 2(1)(iii) of the UK Copyright Act 1911
- ^ Section 62 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended
- ^ Chapter 6, §93 of the Irish Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000.
- ^ Julia Reda, Reda Report adopted: A turning point in the copyright debate, 16 June 2015
Glyn Moody, European Parliament committee adopts controversial pro-user copyright reform report, Ars Technica, 16 June 2015
Michael Masnick, EU Parliament Takes A Small Step Towards Improving Copyright, Techdirt, 17 June 2015
Jennifer Baker, EU MEPs accept lonely Pirate's copyright report – and water it down, The Register, 16 June 2015 - ^ Ivan Jakovčić, Amendment 414
- ^ Peter Teffer, Copyright: Anatomy of a controversial report, EU Observer, 17 June 2015.
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Making a difference in Wikipedia, one GA at a time
Here's a bit of Wikipedia trivia for you: the first articles to be nominated for a good article (GA) review almost ten years ago, way back in December 2005, were Martin Guerre, about a French peasant of the 16th century at the center of a famous case of imposture, and Lusty Lady, a peep-show establishment in Seattle and San Francisco. Neither article was promoted to GA status at the time, and both remain non-GAs to this day. The third GA nomination was Mosque, in the same month; this article was promoted and went onto FA status, but was demoted after a review in 2013.
I believe that these facts demonstrate an important truth in Wikipedia: as editors, we need to be ever-diligent in ensuring that articles remain of high quality. With almost 5 million articles in the English Wikipedia, and not even one-hundredth assessed as either GAs, FAs, or FLs, that's a daunting task; some editors would say that it's an impossible one. However, those of us interested in the quality of Wikipedia understand its importance and have dedicated ourselves to making a difference. One way to accomplish this is to use the existing structure of reviewing articles: the FAC and GAN processes; although by no means perfect, these are tried and true ways of eliciting feedback for the articles we create and edit.
We at WikiProject Good articles have been leaders in this endeavor for almost 10 years. One of our challenges is that since most articles should be GAs before they're FAs, the huge queue at GAN prevents articles from becoming the best examples of the best writing, research, and information on Wikipedia. To be honest, we haven't always been successful. Most of our attempts, like the now-defunct GA Recruitment Centre, which tried not only to train new GA reviewers but to retain editors (another chronic issue for Wikipedia), didn't succeed. Even our periodic backlog drives have been only moderately successful. Our most recent attempt to encourage article improvement is the GA Cup. At first, we didn't really know what to expect: for all we knew, yet another failure was in the works; but in the end it was a resounding success.
The inaugural GA Cup was held between October 2014 and April 2015. Its purpose was to encourage high-quality reviews and promotions of GAs, and to help reduce the long queue of good article nominations. We believe these goals were fulfilled. The event made a big difference: overall, 578 nominations were reviewed throughout the competition. Currently, there's a backlog of 580 articles waiting to be reviewed, so we're conducting another GA Cup, which will begin July 1 and run to the end of November.
As judges, we learned a great deal during the first GA Cup, so some substantial changes are in store for our second competition. The competitors were enthusiastic and patient with us, and gave us a lot of feedback about how we can improve the event. The points system has been changed to better reflect reality; for example, we're making it easier to earn points for reviewing larger articles and for more comprehensive reviews. We're including GA Reassessments, new to this year's competition. We have increased the number of judges to six. These changes, we anticipate, will make the competition run more smoothly so it's be more fun for all.
Whether you've been editing on Wikipedia for ten years or ten days, the GA Cup is for everyone. Last year several participating editors had had no experience reviewing nominations before the competition, but by the end had each reviewed more 50 nominations (and yes, all reviews are looked over by a judge).
If the GA Cup sounds like something you'd be interested in following, please put your username on the recipients' list. If you want to participate, make sure you add your name to the Sign-ups page. As mentioned above, the competition starts on July 1; sign-ups will end on July 15.
We look forward to another rousing competition, and invite all to join us. If you want to make a real difference in helping articles reach their full potential, please consider participating.
- Figureskatingfan (Christine) is a long-time WP editor, since early 2007. She is one of the founders of the GA Cup, and is also a judge in the WikiCup competition.
- The views expressed in this op-ed are those of the author alone; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments. Editors wishing to submit their own op-ed should use our opinion desk.
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HTTPS-only rollout completed, proposal to enable VisualEditor for new accounts
The rollout of HTTPS only (see previous Signpost coverage, blog post) has now been completed across all Wikimedia wikis. The HTTPS link is now marked as the canonical version through a <link rel="canonical" ..> tag on each page. For example, the Main Page has a <link rel="canonical" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" /> tag. This instructs search engines to use the HTTPS version of the page. In addition, the servers are sending a HSTS header which tells the browser to only visit the website over HTTPS. Currently the expiry for the header is set to 3 days, and it is planned to increase it over time. More details are available on Meta-Wiki.
Labs outage
At around 1:00 UTC on June 18th, the Labs NFS server went into read-only mode, causing an outage of Tool Labs and some other Wikimedia Labs projects. The failure was noticed rather quickly, and further investigation showed that there was significant file system corruption. A recovery was started from a backup taken on June 9th; however it took a large amount of time due to the amount of data. As of 6:00 UTC on June 19th, Tool Labs was recovering and web tools were back up. It is expected that more information about what caused the outage and future improvements to prevent it from happening again will be published in the incident report.
Proposal to enable VisualEditor for new accounts
A research study about VisualEditor's impact on new accounts was recently completed, leading to a proposal by VisualEditor project manager, James F., to gradually enable VisualEditor for new accounts. The survey's results are summarized as:
- no difference in newcomer productivity or short-term survival
- small reductions in burden on current Wikipedians
- newcomers will be less likely to save edits they start and they'll spend ~18 seconds longer editing before hitting save when they do
Discussion is currently ongoing at the Village pump.
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A veteran’s Wikipedia edits help him understand the brutality behind Yugoslavia’s wars
People above the age of 30 in the United States and Europe will likely remember the extended NATO military campaign in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. For several years, NATO forces were deployed to and bombed the Balkans in efforts to halt the widespread fighting there, which started in 1991 and continued in some areas until 2001.
The various wars are notable for their widespread war crimes and massacres, some of which only now—two decades after the fact—are being prosecuted.
As you might imagine, the topic of Yugoslav history on Wikipedia is contentious. We talked about it with an Australian veteran, Wikipedia editor, and author of three featured and several good articles on aspects of Yugoslavian military history who goes by the pseudonym Peacemaker67.
Peacemaker's interest in the region stems from his service in Bosnia as a peacekeeper in 1995 and 1996, several months of which intersected with the Bosnian War. He told us that he saw "plenty of destroyed villages, refugees, and war detritus, as you would expect ... frankly it was pretty shocking to see deliberately destroyed churches, mosques and villages."
His most potent memory comes from one of his first patrols. The platoon was speaking with suspected looters when they came across a farmer shot dead, his hayfork still alongside. "We just came across him ... so we were unprepared. I still remember it clearly, but because I photographed it in black and white, I remember it in black and white." They quickly came across more destruction:
| “ | [I saw] carcasses of slaughtered pigs in the kitchens of Muslim houses, mines in the driveways of Croat houses, [and] booby-trapped Serb houses. But what really affected me was the random corpses (mainly of civilians) strewn about the place in various states of decay ... disabled people hung from the upstairs banister of their home, plus partly dismembered combatants, sometimes lying where they fell, sometimes stuck in trees after floating downstream after the spring thaw. Then there were some old people, women and children hastily buried in groups, which were the hardest to deal with. It wasn't pretty.
What I took away from that is that there are a lot of victims in wars, particularly in civil wars, and most of them have done nothing more than been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Much of that is a general observation, but it applies specifically to the former Yugoslavia in World War II as well as the 90s. The visceral ethnic hostility was something I have never seen in Australia. It is deep-seated and frankly, generational. Trying to understand the basis for it has been part of the Wikipedia journey for me. |
” |
These experiences have shaped Peacemaker's interests on Wikipedia. He had a childhood fascination with the military's idea of camaraderie and adventure, fostered in part through the Biggles book series, and his family had an extensive history of service in Australia's armed forces (his grandfather was wounded during World War I), but his service in Bosnia "narrowed" his military history interests: "It started with the pre-deployment familiarisation training—and study I did to make sure my unit was properly trained and briefed—and when I got there, I wanted to know why certain areas of the region were more problematic than others in an intercommunal conflict sense."
Much of this research involved the invasion of Yugoslavia during World War II, a little-known (in the English-speaking world) invasion that nonetheless had devastating and lasting effects on the country and region. Caught between overwhelming German forces, Hungarians on their northeast flank, and Italians in the south, the initial attack was incredibly successful. The Yugoslavian forces made small gains against the Italians, but their collapse in the north led to the war's conclusion within eleven days, which overstates the situation—the Yugoslav government had decided to ask for an armistice three days earlier. The Germans suffered under 600 casualties, both wounded and dead.
In an attempt to govern its newly conquered territory, the Germans divided Yugoslavia between itself, its allies, and an independent puppet state of Croatia. Over the next several years, a strong resistance movement developed in Yugoslavia that was able to retake the country. The fighting between occupiers and occupied peoples led to many deaths; historians estimate that at least one million people died during the Axis occupation of the country, principally due to seven reasons. Notably, the Croatian state attempted to exterminate the Serbian population; the Chetniks, one of the resistance movements, staged attacks against Croats and Muslims; and resistance operations were often met with reprisal attacks, where civilians were killed in retaliation for the actions of rebels.
While Peacemaker says that he never had enough time to study this Yugoslav history while he was in the country, "I visited many of the cities, towns and villages across the country where these events happened, and I saw strong parallels between what was happening then and what had happened in many of the same places between 1941 and 1945. In many cases, the perpetrators in the 90s were at least partly motivated by events (and propaganda) that happened during World War II, and used them as justification when they themselves committed atrocities. I wanted to understand what really happened during the world war to better understand the war happening around me." This interest took root and blossomed when he returned to Australia, and he started writing Wikipedia articles in the topic area beginning in 2008.
We asked Peacemaker which of the many articles he's written is his favorite, and he chose Pavle Đurišić, a controversial Chetnik commander who was renowned for his fighting skills but committed various atrocities against Muslims and, to a lesser extent, Albanians. After the Italians surrendered to the Allies in 1943, Đurišić fought for the Germans and was eventually killed at the age of 35. Most of his troops were killed in battle or massacred after the war.
Peacemaker spent ten months working on this article and shepherding it through Wikipedia's assessment levels, eventually reaching featured status. He told us that it was a journey of discovery; as he "isn't tech-savvy," Peacemaker had to negotiate a "steep learning curve" with "technical aspects" like formatting references—a problem known to many students around the world—and the tools available to Wikipedia editors that ostensibly ease editing.
A saving grace for Peacemaker was Wikipedia's Military history project, a large gathering of editors who were willing to help out a new editor like himself. Because these people were so "welcoming and generous with their time," Peacemaker was able to draw on the knowledge of editors that had almost a decade of experience.
This would be important as he wound his way through Wikipedia's article assessment levels: "Each level of assessment requires an incremental improvement, and the featured article assessment is pretty rigorous. But it should be. That is the highest level of assessment, and reflects the very best of Wikipedia. So all editors are keen to make we stretch ourselves."
Given the article subject, he had to learn about collaborative editing in the midst of a highly charged topic area—it is subject to people intent on enforcing nationalist viewpoints, so much so that the Arbitration Committee has kept restrictions on the articles for eight years—when he did not have a full understanding of the languages involved. Peacemaker was assisted here by working with "an editor fluent in Yugoslav languages who could help with interpreting Google Translate results."
We asked Peacemaker about what more the Wikimedia Foundation—the organization that funds Wikipedia—could do to help article writers on this site. He believes that they should invest in Wikipedian-in-Residence-like positions, using their unique position to "help marry article writers and institutions." If tasked with writing articles, Peacemakers says he would "gladly dedicate a year" to writing full time, "as long as I could pay my bills while doing so."
He continued: "I live in the state of South Australia, and institutions such as the State Library, Museum, Art Gallery, Parliament, Electoral Commission, and three principal universities would benefit greatly from having a Wikipedian-in-Residence for part of the year, working up articles on topics that relate to them, teaching them about how to interface with Wikipedia, engaging volunteers to use those institutions, and—importantly—recruiting and mentoring new editors from those that frequent them and institutional volunteers. I would like to see more direct involvement by the WMF in developing opportunities for such residencies in Australia through national peak bodies like Museums Australia, the Group of Eight universities, and the Australian Public Library Alliance. I've only seen two residencies listed in Australia: one in Canberra, and one in Sydney. It seems to me like an untapped area."
What makes this era of Yugoslav history—and by extension, the articles Peacemaker works on—important in the context of world history? Peacemaker told us:
| “ | With some limited assistance from the Western Allies and Soviet Union, the Partisans were able to expel significant Axis and collaborationist forces from their country. For what was essentially a guerrilla army until early 1945, that was a pretty impressive effort, and the Yugoslav people as a whole had good reason to feel proud of that achievement. It was a popular movement, although clearly led and controlled by the Communist Party, and surprisingly to some, included people from all the ethnic groups of Yugoslavia.
"While the resistance was entirely legitimate and unifying to a considerable extent. the communist government that grew out of it was no more pluralist, functional or accepting of the rule of law than the inter-war Serbian hegemony over the country. The lack of a legitimate, functional system of government, which allowed each national group to participate in their own sphere as equals, was the problem for Yugoslavia from its inception after WWI until it broke up in the 90s. Despite my initial thoughts when I was there, I have realised that the root cause of Yugoslavia's demise wasn't centuries-old ethnic hatreds, but the fact that no Yugoslav government ever achieved legitimacy, because they all served one group and were intolerant of others, and as result, created serious sectarian grievances. When the opportunity arose and power shifted, at the local or national level, there were always those that were willing to exploit it for their own profit, to take revenge or eliminate the potential opposition—usually on the powerless and defenceless. |
” |
- Editor's note: this post originally appeared on the Wikimedia blog, written by Ed Erhart in his WMF capacity. He modified it in his volunteer role (The ed17) for publication in the Signpost.
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Labs outage kills tools, self; news in brief
- Labs outage kills tools, self: A more than usually severe outage of Wikimedia Labs occurred after a massive database corruption implosion on June 17. The WMF's operations team restored it to working order with a backup made on June 9. The outage delayed the Signpost's publication, among other functions. For more details see this week's technology report.
- Content translation: The Foundation's language engineering team published a blog post with an update on the sizable progress that has been made with the recently published content translation extension: though still in beta for the foreseeable future the tool has made good progress so far, with over 5,000 translations completed to date.
- Wiki Ed quarterly reports: Wiki Edu have published a batch of three quarterly reviews meant to "reflect on the work they’ve done ... [and] to share these accomplishments and goals with our stakeholders."
- Wikimedia Conference 2015 outcomes: María Cruz of the WMF's "Learning and Evaluation" team (part of the Community Engagement department) and Christof Pins of Wikimedia Germany co-published a blog post reflecting on the Wikimedia Conference 2015, the annual chapters' meeting that took place May 15–17 in Berlin. Many of the photos from the event have been uploaded onto Commons.
- Milestones: The Bulgarian and Danish Wikipedias both touched 200,000 articles this week. In the spirit of things, both have temporarily uploaded their own variants of the Wikipedia globe logo to celebrate the fact.
- Discussions of interest: A discussion of interest occurred on the foundation-l mailing list this week regarding whether or not Wikipedia's use of CAPTCHA discouraged contributions from new editors. Another discussion occurred regarding the unusual nature of the office locks placed on the account of Damon Sicore, the WMF's vice president of engineering, who we are told is on two weeks' leave.
- Fabrice Florin to leave Foundation: Communications manager Fabrice Florin announced this week that he is soon to leave the Foundation "to spend more time with my family, focus on personal art projects and consult part-time on worthy causes". As the manager of the Wikimedia blog, Fabrice has served as an important community contact person at large at the Foundation.
- New databases: The Wikipedia Library has new database accounts available, donated by database companies for use by Wikipedia editors. The new English-language databases include the American Association for the Advancement of Science, including the prestigious journal Science, Taylor & Francis, which includes the subject collections Arts & Humanities and Biological, Environment & Earth Sciences, and the World Bank eLibrary, which includes publications from the World Bank. There are also French-language databases: Érudit, Cairn.info, and L'Harmattan.
Reader comments
Great Dane hits 150
Featured articles
Six Featured articles were promoted this week.
- Battle of San Patricio (nominated by Karanacs) The Battle of San Patricio was a 15-minute-long battle between Mexican forces under General José de Urrea and about forty Texians who were members of a volunteer army fighting for the independence of Texas. The forty were leading a troop of horses that had been gathered for a planned attack on the Mexican port of Matamaros. The Mexicans tracked the Texians to the town of San Patricio, and were able to kill or capture all except six. As the Mexican government had decreed that the Texian rebels were "pirates" the captives were dispatched after questioning.
- Carl Nielsen (nominated by Ipigott, Smerus, Mirokado, and Dr. Blofeld) Carl Nielsen was a Danish composer who wrote six symphonies, a wind quintet and three concertos. This year marks his 150th birthday, and the airwaves hum with performances of his works. His symphonies last for about half an hour, and are noted for their unusual tonality. The success of his first symphony at a performance in Berlin in 1896 was the catalyst to Nielsen's increasing reputation, and he received commissions for theatre music and celebratory cantatas. Some of Nielsen's symphonies appear to have a psychological programme; his second symphony (1901–02) was inspired by a painting of Four Humours (angry, depressed, apathetic and in the mood for bacon). The third, the Sinfonia Espansiva is reckoned to be about the "outward growth of the mind's scope", although Nielsen never defined "espansiva". It uses Nielsen's technique of writing in two keys at the same time, despite which it was the first of his works to be commercially recorded. He married the sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen – she was strong-willed and determined to continue her own career, often spending long periods away from Nielsen and leaving him with their three children and other women.
- Earth-grazing meteoroid of 13 October 1990 (nominated by Jan.Kamenicek) Weighing 44 kilos and travelling at a speed of about 42 kilometres a second (it's all metric in space) this ordinary chondrite grazed Earth's atmosphere at a height of 98.67 kilometres on 13 October 1990. Although flights of meteroids through the atmosphere are relatively common, observations of such events by scientific astronomical instruments are rare- this was the second (the first being in 1972), and was the first to be observed by cameras of the European Fireball Network from two locations far enough apart to enable its trajectory to be calculated.
- Irataba (nominated by Rationalobserver, Maunus, and Dr. Blofeld) Irataba, leader of the Mohave American Indian people, was an important mediator between his people and the United States during the second half of the 19th century. He first met European Americans in 1851, when the Sitgreaves Expedition entered Mohave territory. As an English speaker and a gifted orator Irataba used his skills to protect his people by negotiating with the US government; he met President Lincoln and members of the government in Washington in 1864. As elected leader of the band of Colorado Mohave, Irataba was also a warrior, leading his band against other American Indian tribes that posed a threat to the Mohave.
- Microscopium (nominated by Casliber) Microscopium is a small constellation of stars. If you can see it, you're south of latitude 45°N and in an area with clean, clear night skies. It was named by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille after a common optical instrument used by scientists. The brightest star in it is Gamma Microscopii, which is a yellow giant 381 light-years distant from our Sun. Another notable member is BO Microscopii, known as "Speedy Mic" for its fast rotational period of 9 hours 7 minutes. Just think, in the time it takes you to read this page "Speedy Mic" has rotated twice. We know, you keep on falling asleep in the middle of
- Panama–Pacific commemorative coins (nominated by Wehwalt) The Panama–Pacific International Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915, had a booth run by numismatist and entrepreneur Farran Zerbe. He sold five different commemorative coins, a silver half-dollar and (in gold) a dollar, a quarter-eagle and two $50 dollar pieces. They were struck by the San Francisco Mint.
Featured lists
Seven Featured lists were promoted this week.
- Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (nominated by Birdienest81 and Cowlibob) The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor has been awarded since 1936 to honor "an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance in a supporting role while working within the film industry." Originally awarded in the form of a plaque, since 1944 the typical Oscar statuette has been given. The latest winner is J. K. Simmons for his rôle as a music teacher in the drum-banging bro-rom Whiplash.
- Cricket Writers' Club Young Cricketer of the Year (nominated by Harrias) This has been awarded since 1950 to the best cricketer aged under 23, playing for a county and eligible to play for England.
- List of United States ODI cricketers (nominated by Blackhole78) The US cricket team has played two one-day international matches, in 2004 against New Zealand. They lost both, and unfortunately lost their ODI status. This is a list of the thirteen players in the team at that time.
- List of accolades received by Kaminey (nominated by SchroCat ) A day in the life of the underworld of the major Indian city of Mumbai; identical twins Charlie and Guddu and a guitar case full of cocaine, corrupt policemen, double-dealing jockeys, and a psychopathic politician's sister called Sweety. Charlie lisps and Guddu stutters—it's a good job Guddu is the lover of Sweety and not Charlie. Kaminey "is a 2009 Indian caper thriller" which has achieved cult status, and has won awards for its music and soundtrack.
- List of accolades received by The Last of Us (nominated by Rhain1999) The Last of Us is a video game developed by Naughty Dog for the Sony PlayStation 3. It has won umpteen awards, including "Most Memorable Moment" for the "Giraffes Scene", and the "Matthew Crump Cultural Innovation Award".
- List of scheduled monuments in Mendip (nominated by Rodw) Mendip is a local government district in the county of Somerset, England. It has a broad range of scheduled monuments within its 285 square miles, most of which, according to the List of scheduled monuments in Mendip|list, are bowl barrows. And then there's Glastonbury Abbey and Nunney Castle, and some duck decoys. This featured list completes the set of seven lists, covering the more than 670 scheduled monuments in the county of Zummerzet, and the whole is being put forward for promotion as a featured topic. Bist we be surprized? No-oh.
- Meryl Streep on screen and stage (nominated by Krimuk90 and Dr. Blofeld) Meryl Streep began her acting career on stage in 1975, playing the part of an actress with a talent for melodrama. Probably her best-known roles are as Linda in The Deer Hunter and Donna in Mamma Mia. She has recently played a witch in the musical fantasy Into The Woods, taking the risk of being typecast following her Oscar-winning performance as Baroness Milksnatcher.
Featured pictures
Seven Featured pictures were promoted this week.
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- Nina Sublatti (created by Ailura; nominated by Brandmeister) Georgian singer Nina Sublatti cites as her influences Janis Joplin, Brian Molko, Florence Foster Jenkins and Björk. She sang Georgia's entry for the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest, "Warriors". Nina is also a noted calligrapher – it takes a long time to get her autograph, but the result is beautiful. And indelible. And on your forehead.
- La Sila Observatory (created by F. Kamphues for ESO; nominated by The Herald) At a site on the edge of the Atacama Desert in Chile, chosen for its dry climate and dark night sky, a number of telescopes have been erected. Astronomers working at the site have discovered a record number of extra-solar planets, including several digable ones. In response to reader's queries regarding previous issues, this is a joke. "Digable Planets" is a group of musicians who play that hip-hopping style of music popular among middle-aged people.
- The Three Musicians (created by Diego Velázquez; nominated by Crisco 1492) The Three Musicians is a painting by the 17th century Spanish master, Diego Velázquez. It is not known whether this is a genre painting of an everyday scene, or an allegory, or a scene from some tourist hell, where your peaceful enjoyment of a pint glass of xérès Viejo Calcetín and a bocadillo de queso con Branston is interrupted by three aficionados of the atonal.
- Jane Addams (created by Bain News Service, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden) Suffragette, founder of the social work profession in the United States, philosopher, advocate of the settlement movement, reformer, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and Hull House, chair of the 1915 International Congress of Women, first president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Jane Addams was an absolute dynamo, who spent her life trying to improve the world – and succeeding.
- Mansu Hill Grand Monument (created by Uspn; nominated by Blorgy555) Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il at the Mansu Hill Grand Monument.
- Baden-Powell authorized Siege of Mafeking 10 Shilling note (1900) (created by Mahikeng; nominated by Godot13) Issued during the siege of Mafeking this ten-bob note was designed by Baden Powell and drawn on the flat surface of a boxwood croquet mallet sawn in half. The design was then made into a woodcut and printed on lined writing paper. The design was intended for the £1 note, but was felt to be artistically unsatisfactory, so it was demoted to a 10-shilling note. A few of the notes have the spelling mistake "Commaning", which was soon corrected. A total of £5,228 of all denominations was issued, of which only about £638 was redeemed for real money after the siege. The rest were kept as souvenirs or sold to collectors.
- Seth Rollins (created by Anton; edited and nominated by Crisco 1492) Seth Rollins is an American wrestler, depicted here holding the winning prize for the Money in the Bank ladder match.
Reader comments
A quick way of becoming an admin
Impersonating an admin
- Author's note: This might be a violation of WP:BEANS; read at your own risk.
What would you do as a CEO, if a user contacted you claiming they could write an article for you? What would you do if the article was deleted and the user demanded payment for the article to be reinstated? This is what happened to New Net Technologies Ltd. However, that is not the worst about this report. The user claiming to be able to reinstate a deleted article was impersonating another user "with high privileges", in this case an administrator.
Sarahj2107 receives a message on her talk page from a user asking for further information about the user's article. Sarahj2107 has never edited this article, and asks how she can help out. This causes the user to explain that they has received emails from another user, claiming to be Sarah. This causes Sarahj2107 to report this to the Administrators' noticeboard.
On the noticeboard a discussion starts regarding how common something like this might be, where users impersonate other users in order to scam people for money. Multiple OTRS-tickets from past events are mentioned, showing a clear pattern demonstrating that this is a recurring phenomenon.
A Checkuser is conducted, resulting in multiple users being discovered, causing users to get even more concerned about this event.
My guess is this might be just the tip of a WikiPR-like iceberg, and I think there's more than one group of people or companies involved.
The user who alerted Sarahj2107 was blocked for not following Wikipedia's policies; however, this block was overturned after consensus on the noticeboard.
But he was approached by what he thought was an admin so he thought that he was complying with WP in his actions. [...] He brought it forward after smelling a rat and did the right thing. He has cooperated by sending information via email for the investigation.
Mailing list, a land without rules...
...as long as you are a moderator. In a recent pipermail to the mailing list Wikimedia-l, Odder writes that he has been on moderation on that list for over ten months, and that because there are no set rules for moderators, nor a way to appeal a moderation, it is failing one of our prime directives, transparency.
However, this being a mailing list, with the moderation team having no accountability to anyone, and abusing their status multiple times in the past year, such decisions come without any discussion -- mostly because they are made behind closed doors in the spirit of Wikimedia transparency.
— Odder
User Fæ, who has also been on moderation on different mailing lists, adds that he shares these views on moderation and the need for some guidelines to be created.
At the moment moderation can happen without warning, without a rationale being given when requested and with no possibility of appeal.
— Fæ
His claim, however, of having been moderated "without a clear explanation or evidence" leads a moderator to admonish this user, stating, "You're off mod now, but please don't start up again."
A message to you
If you find a discussion which you believe could be interesting for others to read or be aware of, please send a message to the discussion report's editor Josve05a, or ping his, immediately.
Reader comments
We are back - Western Australia speaks
- A new project has been formed – WikiProject Romance – to help organize and bring articles in its scope up to standard. Seeking interested editors!
- WP:WikiProject Business has cleared its unassessed article backlog. See here for details.
- If you would like your WikiProject featured in the report, please submit a request at the WikiProject Desk
You can learn a lot when you play in a little town in Holland or Western Australia; you learn different things than you would learn playing a big city.
It wouldn't be the WikiProject report if we didn't feature an Australian topic once in a while, so this week we're looking at the left side, with WikiProject Western Australia. Western Australia is a huge state in the west of the country containing a large amount of desert, with the city of Perth tucked away in its southwestern corner, which holds nearly 80% of the state's population, and a number of other towns mainly along its coast, including Geraldton, Albany and Broome. Its associated WikiProject isn't that large in terms of membership, with around 40 active members. They are keen though, (they have real-life meetups, as you'll read) and were recommended by the larger-reaching WikiProject Australia for interview after I initially intended to look at Sydney.
They've definitely not been short of success either – 37 GAs, 29 featured pieces and 99.9% of its articles assessed for quality and importance at present – a long-term dream for many projects. So, once we were looking for some interviewees they jumped at the chance, so here are Gnangarra, JarrahTree, Casliber, Sam Wilson, Dan arndt, Bahnfrend, Hughesdarren, Evad37 and Graham87 to tell us more.
What was your motivation for joining WikiProject Western Australia? Do you, or have you ever lived in Western Australia?
- Gnangarra: Have been an active participant in the project since day one, currently reside in Perth, Western Australia.
- JarrahTree: Resident of Perth, Western Australia, formerly resident in Indonesia, Sydney (sic), and Tasmania. The motivation for the very first meetup was to make head or tail of who the people with the funny wikipedia user names were in real life. Some have remained good friends ever since.
- Dan arndt: I was asked by one of those people with funny wikipedia user names after they'd helped me out on a Western Australian related article. After that it seemed a logical progression to attending a meetup so I could put faces to the various funny names. I currently live in Western Australia but have lived overseas.
- Bahnfrend: I have lived most of my life in WA, am a member of the Perth meetup group, and contribute to articles about WA-related topics.
- Evad37: I have lived in Perth, Western Australia all my life. I think it is easier to edit articles where you have some local knowledge (or maybe just more interesting, or relevent), so that's how I came to be first reading, and later editing, articles related to Perth and Western Australia. I was first pointed to the WikiProject as a place to discuss the formatting of a set of articles. I guess I linked the place, and the people were friendly, so I stuck around – it was fun having other editors to collaborate with. Having the nerve to go to a real-life meetup (which I'd never done for an internet-based group before) really sealed the deal.
- Hughesdarren: When I started it was mostly just starting articles on things in regional WA that were worthy of mention. I lived in Perth for the first half of my life with the next half spent mostly in regional areas of WA with short stints interstate and overseas. Currently residing in Albany, Western Australia.
- Samwilson: An interest in WA history, primarily, and a wish to learn more. Yes, I grew up here and am now living in Fremantle.
- Casliber: Umm, I edit some WA stuff and have been to a meetup. I don't live in WA but my wife has family there and I know some wildflower folks.
- Graham87: I've lived in Perth all my life and am interested in Western Australia's history and geography. I mostly do maintenance work for the project, especially related to the state's weird and wonderful weather.
Which aspects of Western Australia exactly are covered by the project's scope? Do you have specific notability guidelines for Western Australia-related articles?
- Gnangarra: All aspects from the people that made it what it is to it unique places to flora to fauna to oceans around it the depth and breath of subject are endless. There arent any notability guidelines beyond those of Wikipedia as a whole.
- JarrahTree: Western Australia is the largest in area state of Australia, and has distances and areas that are far in excess of what the average reader might appreciate – some of the distances in the state are like crossing the whole of europe, or as significant as distances in other large land masses. As a result of the size and the distances the status of the WA project, and its potential range of locations, and subjects, add something to the project, a certain big job feeling to simply covering the places and things in the state. Perth as the capital city is considered the most isolated city of its type in the world, and it has an equally displaced feeling in comparison to the rest of Australia, in various ways, similar to how Tasmania, the island state of the south east of Australia is often left off maps and representations of the country. The political reality of this difference was felt in the 1930s – Secessionism in Western Australia. So the scope is not just of a state, but one with specific historic and geographic realities.
- Dan arndt: There are no limits to what a Western Australian-related article might cover, whether it be architecture, history, sportspeople, places, events, music, flora, shipwrecks, politicians, roads, artists, animals... Its actually fairly amazing the breadth of different topics and the various interests of that the users within the project have. Having regular meetups gives you a better understanding of what motivates different people.
- Evad37: All aspects, really – although topics relevant to the whole of Australia are typically only tagged with the national project and not all the individual states. There is substantial overlap in scope with other projects or task forces, such as WikiProject Australian Roads or WikiProject Military history/Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific military history task force.
- Hughesdarren: The range of topics is almost limitless, notability is a constant topic of discussion for all articles on the project, the same guidelines apply for WA articles as for any other.
- Samwilson: WA has some of the highest biodiversity on the planet, and a great deal of that is not yet written up on Wikipedia — but is probably notable enough to be.
Have you contributed to any of the project's 29 Featured or 37 Good articles?
- Gnangarra: Some directly in the text, others just supplying photographs as requested and other just through the fact I have contributed a lot of photos already. There is also a couple indirectly through various workshops and out reach projects I have run.
- Dan arndt: Looking back, whilst I have contributed to a number of GAs and FLs, I have only made really minor edits to the Western Australian ones.
- Bahnfrend: "No" and "I don't recall doing so", respectively. In my editing of Wikipedia, I tend to focus on breadth, not depth, by creating short articles or contributing to existing short articles.
- Evad37: Yes, in fact all of my featured and good articles (articles where I was a substantial contributor and nominator) are within the scope of this project – mostly on roads, but also a bridge, and Fremantle Prison (currently GA and a featured article candidate). In the course of expanding and improving Fremantle Prison, the article got so big that I had to split out several sub-articles – I hope to eventually improve them all to good or featured status and achieve a good or even featured topic.
- Hughesdarren: Same as Bahnfrend above.
- Casliber: I've reviewed alot of others' work plus written a lot of FAs on western Australian flora.
- Graham87: Not directly; I have copyedited some though.
Do you find that having a wikiproject for an individual state of Australia works effectively, as only local people contribute, or would you prefer the field to be narrower than the state?
- Gnangarra: It doesn't matter whether people are local or not everyone can contribute but being local helps to give a person some understanding of the context of topics, and the difficulties faced in collating information.
- Dan arndt: I agree with Gnangarra in that it doesn't matter whether you're a local or not. Sometimes not being a local means that you see something that should have an article because it interests you, whereas as a local you think that it is ordinary and wouldn't interest anyone.
- Bahnfrend: Having a separate WikiProject for each of the six individual states is consistent with the way Australians tend to view themselves. For the most part, Australians are very attached to what they call their "state of origin", particularly if that state is not New South Wales, the most populous state. As was once observed by a WA government committee chaired by the then-future Governor of Western Australia, Malcolm McCusker, Western Australians in particular tend to have a strong sense of dual identity, as both Australians and Western Australians. Organising WikiProjects on a state-by-state basis is also convenient. Australia is a very large country with only a handful of major population centres, and the focus of much of the nation's human activity is on the state capitals rather than on the national capital, or the nation as a whole.
- Evad37: What makes a project work effectively is people, rather than how broad or narrow the scope is – the other Australian state WikiProjects are much less active than WP:WA, yet there's nothing intrinsically different between them (except perhaps WA's secessionist tendencies
) - JarrahTree: In the Australian Project – all the city projects have been subsumed into their respective state projects. Narrower city or regional projects have not worked. It is very heartening that to think in the most isolated city and the largest state, enthusiasm and collaboration among editors is so evidently a strength for a project like this.
- Samwilson: Yes, I think the state-level is about right; certainly in terms of keeping us separate from those dastardly easteners. For other topics there are other Wikiprojects, which overlap with the scope of WPWA, so that's where I go for more fine-grained interest groups.
- Casliber: State level probably the most practical, unless you find a really active group of local people, which I haven't seen yet...
How can a new contributor help today?
- Gnangarra: WP:WA has always been an open welcoming group of editors regardless of who is active at the time, maybe its because we look at life differently due to our isolation. We meet regularly to enjoy a coffee and chat sometimes choosing venues related to a topic thats being focused on like an earlier meetup at Fremantle Prison now going through FAC. WA has two successful WikiTowns projects Freopedia and Toodyaypedia the community came together to ensure there was a broad range of articles, if you're looking for somewhere to help out these are always good topics to work on. Everyone is welcome to join us at our meetups just show we'll help you get settled.
- Dan arndt: The editors at WP:WA are supportive and genuinely try and help guide new editors into ensuring their contributions are relevant and withstand the rigours of time (and the efforts of some editors to delete everything they see). As indicated a good example is the Wikitown projects where new contributors were assisted/encouraged by established editors into making their new articles comply with the numerous guidelines and policies.
- Bahnfrend: I would strongly recommend that any editor interested in WA join the Perth meetup group, which is happy to welcome any editors, including those resident outside Perth, or even WA for that matter. Joining the meetup group is a good way to find out how other editors might be helped out. Also, the WikiProject page has a useful "to do" list for anyone who can't make it to the group meetings.
- Evad37: Have a look at the noticeboard on our talk page for new articles to check, expand, or collaborate on – and list any new WA-related article you create there so we can help you! Also listed on the noticeboard are links to relevant deletion, RfC, and other discussions to participate in.
- Hughesdarren: Working collaboratively with existing editors, expanding existing and creating new articles. Pretty much as for the rest of the project. For WA using the wikiproject page was a good start for me and a great way to meet with other more experienced editors for assistance.
- JarrahTree: The WP:WA project has had help and assistance from other Australian editors from other states, and every now and then editors from overseas have assisted in some areas, the best way for anyone with an interest in helping in the project is to go to the project talk page,it is the best central point to find out what is happening.
- Samwilson: Come to the meetups! It's great to meet people IRL; makes contributing so much easier. For low-hanging fruit (as far as article editing is concerned) I like to use the list of stubs to find something to edit.
Anything else you'd like to add to the interview?
- JarrahTree: WP:WA has many editors who have been and gone, for a variety of reasons – some short edit histories, other to other parts of the wikimedia projects – the project would never have got to where it has without their hard work, and their dedication, however short or long it might have been. There are some who have had to deal with real life, and we hope to see them back sometime. We owe a lot to them. In the early days User:Nachoman-au, User:Gobeirne and User:Orderinchaos were some of the users who were vitally important in the building blocks in creating content to the project, with the pair of User:Moondyne and User:Hesperian adding significant volume and high quality content that makes the project material what it is today. More recently the contributions of User:Mitch Ames, User:IgnorantArmies, User:The-Pope and User:The Drover's Wife and others continue to keep the standards high.
- Dan arndt: A WikiProject such as Western Australia is only as good as the editors who contribute, in that we all need to encourage and support each other.
- Bahnfrend: Although Wikipedia editors are sometimes portrayed in various negative ways, I have always enjoyed being an editor, and, in particular, have enjoyed interacting with other editors who work on WA-related topics. Also, as a resident of one of the world's most isolated large cities, I really appreciate the opportunity Wikipedia presents for me to participate significantly in a truly global charitable enterprise, without even needing to leave home.
- Evad37: The project supports and participates in various outreach activities, such as the WikiTowns mentioned above, which you can read about from the links at WP:WA#Outreach projects.
- Hughesdarren: Wikipedia is an excellent resource and a fantastic example of what a small group of committed people can achieve together. The range and commitment of current and previous editors never fails to impress me and I feel humbled to be a part of the project as a whole.
- Samwilson: It's not just Wikipedia! ;) There's lots of WA content on Wikisource, and a huge scope for adding more.
You did probably notice a bit of a gap between this and the previous WikiProject report, and that is because the regular writer has been busy. However, I am now back and the report will publish regularly. Next week, join us as we hope to speak to WikiProject Disability.
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