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Volume 5, Issue 50 14 December 2009 About the Signpost
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Features and admins
Approved this week
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SPV

Voting closes in the Arbitration Committee Elections

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By Tony1 and Skomorokh

The annual two-week voting period for the Arbitration Committee closed at 23:59 UTC on Monday 14 December. This year, 994 Wikipedians voted, slightly more than last year's total of 984. An alphabetically sorted list of editors who have voted is maintained at the voter log. Twenty-two candidates stood in the election, and nine new arbitrators are expected to begin their terms on 1 January 2010, returning the Committee's numbers to 18.

The 2009 election has been a major departure from its predecessors in the use of the SecurePoll automated, private voting system; this has meant that for the first time the community has not been aware of the running tally. Since the close of voting, the election scrutineers have been checking and certifying the tally. The community has been encouraged to actively identify suspicious voting patterns in the now-concluded ACE2009 voting logs, in the same manner as former ArbCom elections. Election administrator Happy-melon has stated that the scrutineers' task is "to check each vote for validity – principally, that it was not cast by a sockpuppet in a manner so as to be invalid.... Once this stage is concluded, the scrutineers will quickly verify that there are no obvious flaws in the resulting tally which would indicate a problem in the software; obviously none are expected, but is it reassuring to have [six] pairs of eyes double-check. The results will then be published. The exact wording of the two relevant emails that were sent to the scrutineers is here."

To ensure neutrality, the six scrutineers have been drawn from the ranks of stewards not active on the English Wikipedia: Mardetanha, Effeietsanders, Laaknor, Thogo, Millosh and Erwin. On the publication of this Signpost edition, we keenly await the scrutineers' release of the tally on the election talk page. The tally will be presented in sortable tabular form, with numerical scores for each candidate's "Net" vote, i.e, Support − Oppose, and "Percentage" vote, i.e., Support / (Support + Oppose). The appointments will be formally announced by Jimbo Wales by 21 December (expected date), after community consultation if necessary.

Breaking news: The scrutineers have certified and announced the results of the vote. The nine candidates with the highest percentage vote were:

The Signpost congratulates these candidates and offers its thanks to the other 13 candidates for participating in the election. Jimbo Wales is expected to make a formal announcement of the appointments before the next edition of The Signpost. A fuller summary of the election results will be provided in the next edition.

Feedback page

A page for users to provide feedback on the election has been launched, inviting comment and discussion of ways to improve the 2010 ArbCom election. The topics thus far include "election personnel", "the SecurePoll system", "improving instructions to voters", "voting rules", "supplementary voting", and "questions to candidates".

Timeline

Here are the important dates for the 2009 ArbCom elections:

  • 10 November – Candidate nominations opened and the question period commenced
  • 17 November – Call for general questions closed
  • 24 November – Nominations closed
  • 1 December – Voting began
  • 14 December – Voting ends; scrutineers soon after certify and announce the results on the ACE talk page, and formally communicate them to Jimbo Wales
  • By 21 December – results announced by Jimbo Wales (expected date), after community consultation if necessary

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SPV

Mapping geotagged articles language, import sources enabled, and more

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By Phoebe, Sage Ross and Graham87

Geographical distribution of articles by language

Even many of the larger Wikipedias are very parochial, according to a new analysis of geographical density of Wikipedia articles by language, by Mark Graham. Graham wrote a column on "Wikipedia's known unknowns" in The Guardian last week that included maps of different regions of the world shaded according to the density of corresponding geocoded Wikipedia articles — that is, articles with geographic coordinates included; he found that the Global North is much better represented on Wikipedia in this regard than the Global South.

In the new follow-up up on his blog Zero Geography, Graham compares the density of geotagged articles in different language editions. The result is that each language's geotagged articles are largely concentrated in the areas where the respective languages are spoken, and only English and German Wikipedias have significant coverage outside the geographic areas where those languages predominate.

Import sources enabled on the English Wikipedia

It is now possible to import pages with their full history from Meta, several language versions of Wikipedia, and the Nostalgia Wikipedia, a copy of the English Wikipedia database from 20 December 2001. This feature can be used for attribution of translated articles alongside {{Iw-ref}}, and very old edits can be imported from the Nostalgia Wikipedia that are not in the current Wikipedia database. See Wikipedia:Requests for page importation to make requests, and this week's technology report for more details.

Briefly

Wikipedia in the news

SPV

Discussion Report and Miscellaneous Articulations

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By Dank

Policy Report

Several contributors shared their thoughts with the Signpost about the evolution of our Username policy page over the past six months. Shereth describes username policy as "something of a specialized niche," generating frequent discussions on the talk page and at Usernames for administrator attention over interpretation and application of the policy. The discussion of the moment, which could conceivably lead to a shift in policy, relates to misleading usernames. For Phantomsteve, the policy page "fairly sums up the expectations for usernames", although he doesn't believe that hybrid names such as "User:Megawatt Inc., (John)" are appropriate, and prefers that blatant violations of the policy be handled before the account's first edit, when possible. Beeblebrox points out that it takes time to learn the many ethnic and racial slurs used around the world that people try to insert into usernames, and to learn how to handle borderline offensive names (a recent example: Nipple37). It also takes experience to spot search engine optimization techniques and other attempts to exploit Wikipedia's dominance on the web, and careful judgment not to step on the unintentionally self-promotional newcomers while blocking the hard-core spammers. Beeblebrox often uses the gentler {{uw-softerblock}} template, as well as the traditional {{uw-spamblock}} block notice. User:7 says that a warning such as {{uw-username}} is more appropriate for inadvertently improper usernames, while editors with promotional usernames who start out with promotional edits tend to be blocked "quickly but without prejudice" and encouraged to start over, following our policies.

7 adds that some discussions last for months or years before finally bearing fruit, such as this summer's Blatant Promotion RFC, which resulted in a prohibition on company, website, or product names as usernames. Gigs coordinated the RFC, and describes it as a "good example of how we can still come together as a community and resolve complex policy issues with consensus." Gigs, like most of the admins active at Usernames for administrator attention, believes that the WP:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard (WP:COIN) is a better venue for more complex problems with editors making edits that indicate a conflict of interest. Rspeer notes "constant discussion and compromise", year after year. In his view, new users are entitled to the same leeway and second chances for username problems that are afforded for violations of our other policies. The policy has improved over time: "When I started working with the policy, you could be blocked for all kinds of silly reasons, written or unwritten, such as: if you had seven of the same letter in a row in your username, if your username happened to be a domain name that a domain squatter had registered, if you had a Chinese character in your username, or if someone just thought you looked like you were going to vandalize in the future."

There's a lot more detail from all the respondents in the full survey. Next week's Policy Report will focus on Edit warring. Please join the discussion.

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SPV

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Three editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Killervogel5 (nom), MrKIA11 (nom) and SpacemanSpiff (nom).

Six articles were promoted to featured status this week: Rise of Neville Chamberlain (nom), 1930 FIFA World Cup (nom), Premiership of John Brownlee (nom), Edwin P. Morrow (nom), Battle of Morotai (nom) and Mellitus (nom).

Five lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of tallest buildings in Oakland, California (nom), 2007 Pan American Games medal table (nom), List of World War I aces credited with more than 20 victories (nom), List of unreleased Michael Jackson material (nom) and List of WCW World Television Champions (nom).

No topics were promoted to featured status this week.

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: The Lucy poems, Amagi class battlecruiser, Spyro: Year of the Dragon, Bramall Hall, Planescape: Torment, Michael Brown Okinawa assault incident and Eric Bana.

No articles were delisted this week.

One list was delisted this week: List of Victoria Cross recipients by nationality (nom).

No topics were delisted this week.

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Albino wallaby, Battle of Jerusalem, Zhong Kui, Red Delicious apples, S. bercaea, Red Wattlebird and Mount Redoubt.

One featured sound was promoted this week:

United States Army Band Reveille(nom)

Four featured pictures were demoted this week: Palace of Westminster at night (nom), Large bonfire (nom), Oceans diagram (nom) and Map of Han Dynasty (nom).

Fifteen pictures were promoted to featured status this week.



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SPV

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By Warofdreams

The Arbitration Committee closed two cases this week, leaving three open. No cases were opened.

Open cases

Tothwolf

The Tothwolf case has entered its fifth week of deliberations. The case, which concerns a long-standing dispute between Tothwolf and several other editors, was filed by third party Jehochman. Some preliminary workshop drafting has taken place, though no arbitrators have yet responded to any of the proposals; the drafting of a decision has been reassigned to arbitrator Stephen Bain and is expected by 20 December.

Ottava Rima restrictions

The Ottava Rima restrictions case has entered its fifth week of deliberations and its first week of voting. The case was filed by Ottava Rima to appeal an editing restriction imposed following a community discussion on the administrators' noticeboard.

The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Wizardman, would ban Ottava Rima for a period of between three months and one year and place him on probation on his return, while admonishing Moreschi. All of the remedies currently have the majority support of arbitrators, with greater support for a longer ban.

Eastern European mailing list

The Eastern European mailing list case has entered its 13th week of deliberations and its ninth week of voting. The case concerns a set of leaked mailing-list archives, which are alleged to show an extensive history of collusion among numerous editors of Eastern European topics. Standard workshop procedures have been suspended for the case, so the normal drafting of proposals by the parties and other editors has not taken place.

The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Coren, would strip Piotrus of his administrator status, ban him for three months, and place him under a topic ban for one year; ban Digwuren and Martintg for three months, and place them under year-long topic bans; and issue a number of admonishments and reminders, as well as an amnesty for all participants of the mailing list not otherwise sanctioned. Additional proposals made by other arbitrators include bans for Tymek, Jacurek, and Radeksz, as well as more nuanced topic bans for Piotrus and Digwuren. Voting on the proposals remains divided, but a motion to close has two net support votes, with four needed to close the case.

Closed cases

Asmahan

The Asmahan case was closed this week. The decision imposes topic bans and editing restrictions on Supreme Deliciousness and Arab Cowboy, as well as placing the "Asmahan" article on probation.

Socionics

The Socionics case was also closed. The decision bans rmcnew for six months and Tcaudilllg for one year, as well as indefinitely banning them from all Socionics-related topics, pages, and discussions.

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SPV

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Aude

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.1 (fbc8c4f), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Bots approved

Six new bot tasks were approved this past week:

Bug fixes

  • When querying list=usercontribs with the API and no user specified, the API will now return an error rather than hanging the server trying to scan the entire revisions table. (r59953, bug 21817)
  • When requesting (with query parameters) a special page that redirects, the query parameters will now be carried over to the redirect page. (r59906, bug 21803)

Site configuration and database changes

  • It is now possible to import pages with their full histories to the English Wikipedia from Meta and the German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish and Nostalgia Wikipedias. To request an import, see Wikipedia:Requests for page importation. (bug 20280)
  • Revisions that show a 2004 page move from Wikipedia:Main Page to Wikipedia:Community Portal are now accessible. They were previously listed under an invalid title due to page move vandalism. Although they could be found through deleted contributions, they could not be undeleted or moved without the help of a system administrator. (bug 13729)

Other news

  • On December 10, Wikipedia database servers were upgraded to run MySQL version 5.1 from version 4.0. [1]
  • The master database server for English Wikipedia went down on Saturday, December 12 around 21:30 UTC, causing an outage that lasted for approximately 15 minutes before server admins resolved the problem.
  • There is a bug in php 5.3.1 with the __call() function, which causes a breakage in MediaWiki. This means that MediaWiki does not support php 5.3.1 at this time. [2] [3]

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