This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.

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Archive 10

Almost million page views for Barack Obama on the 20th

Y covered briefly in 1/24 news & notes -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

On a related topic, the Grok stats say Barack received 913.2k views on 20 Jan (UTC). Stats for other related articles, in thousands:

9.3 Presidential transition of Barack Obama

166.6 Michelle Obama

10.5 Political positions of Barack Obama

68.7 Family of Barack Obama

19.9 Presidency of Barack Obama

157.2 Barack Obama 2009 presidential inauguration

7.1 Early life and career of Barack Obama

7.5 Dreams from My Father

4.1 The Audacity of Hope

(Incidentally, only 559 people cared about Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama.) -- Zanimum (talk) 02:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

There's also a spate of featured content nominations related to Obama right now: four pictures (one, at most, likely to pass) and two sounds (both likely to pass). And we had Obama content in multiple sections of the Main Page, and I'm sure some of the second tier Obama-related articles got significant hit counts as well. This one tells the story of the lead-up pretty well.--ragesoss (talk) 00:47, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

One in Four Wikipedia articles is an orphan

Y story for 1/31 -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Based on the criteria from WikiProject Orphanage, 29.7% of qualifying articles (mainspace articles minus redirects minus disambigs) are orphans - that is, we have 756,557 articles with less than three incoming article links. Of these, only 5.1% currently bear the {{orphan}} template. I've created some scripts on the toolserver that analyze the database and produce a list of all orphans on a daily basis. In the course of my development I came across these staggering numbers. If there's any interest in making a story about this, I can provide lots of facts and figures - and of course the list. I'll be handing the data over to the Orphanage in a few days; I was hoping an article about the multitude of orphans would drum up interest. --JaGa^talk 23:36, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Encouraging links to articles is good as a general proposition. I'd think the true orphans, with zero article links, would merit a higher level of concern, though, enough to classify them separately. --Michael Snow (talk) 00:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I like the shock value of the 1 in 4 number, and they are all orphans (and could all get tagged as such), but for the record, there are 225,657 articles with zero links per the criteria. --JaGa^talk 00:15, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Right, I understood that it was an attention-getting strategy, but the true orphans are a particular concern in the other direction as well, possibly being trash that should be deleted rather than linked to. That being said, Raul654 also has a good point below about creating links where articles are needed. --Michael Snow (talk) 00:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

And for the love of god, can the signpost please please please help debunk this myth that people have gotten in their heads that red links should be avoided. It makes it *extremely* difficult to find articles to write if nobody is linking to ones we should have. Raul654 (talk) 00:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Raul, We tried but it didn't take. Maybe I buried the lede with that one. But yeah, JaGa, it sounds like an interesting basis for a story. Per Michael Snow, I think the key number is the true orphans with zero incoming links. If you have the numbers broken down by number of links (including for articles well beyond orphan range, so we could plot the distribution of incoming links to articles) that would be ideal.--ragesoss (talk) 00:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't have the beyond-orphan numbers right now, but I can compile them within a day. I'll drop a line here when I get a list together. --JaGa^talk 00:40, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Including WP:REDLINK, i missed that in the story, good story btwMion (talk)

It's worth trying again, and being a bit more up-front about it this time. Raul654 (talk) 00:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I emailed Diomidis Spinellis to ask if he could do an update on the average number of redlinks per article. If so, that would be a great opportunity to revisit the redlinks issue.--ragesoss (talk) 01:07, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Alas, there aren't any dumps newer than March 31, 2008, less than three months after the last one Spinellis analyzed, and even that one apparently has issues.--ragesoss (talk) 07:22, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I recently created List of authors from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Personally I think it offers many good ideas for new article on scientists (and I've already made a couple), but it took less than a day for someone to suggest that all of the redlinks be removed. Dragons flight (talk) 01:16, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, so few people are creating red links today that people have had to resort to importing large dumps of red links, IE Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. I'll note that my experience with Wikipedia:Stanford Archive answers has been somewhat disheartening - basically nobody works on these things. Raul654 (talk) 07:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I've compiled the data, but I'm not sure how to present it, so here it is raw:

Link count distribution (typical definition)
Link count distribution (orphan criteria)
And I also made this page, not because it's pertinent or of any real value but because I could and it was fun to look at :) You know there wasn't a single actor in the top 5000? (except for Arnold Schwarzenegger, but that doesn't count)

Stepping back and looking at all this, I see what I'm driving at is pretty complicated, and would be tough to present properly. I was going to not bother posting the links here, but I said I would, so here they are. As far as I'm concerned, if this isn't really what Signpost is looking for, that's OK with me. --JaGa^talk 07:19, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

That's really cool. Thanks! I think this will be a good basis for a story for next week.--ragesoss (talk) 17:06, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Britannica 2.0, with contributions from the masses

Y in 1/24 in the news -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:32, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

might deserve a longer story

Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0.--ragesoss (talk) 17:56, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Ahem.[1][2] Durova^Charge! 00:41, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

"Selected readers will also be invited to contribute" from Britannica reaches out to the web --Mion (talk) 20:56, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Britannica "A “Suggest Edit” button allows a user to edit any section of an article and submit the changes to Britannica’s editors. Edits submitted by readers are suggestions to our editors that must be reviewed and approved by them before they’re posted. We’re eager for editorial suggestions from our readers, and we’ll review and act on them as quickly as we can, but no one can actually change a Britannica article except our editors".[3]

Wikipedia "A “Edit” button allows a user to edit any section of an article and submit the changes to Wikipedia’s editors. Edits submitted by readers are suggestions to our editors that must be reviewed and approved by them before they’re posted. We’re eager for editorial suggestions from our readers, and we’ll review and act on them as quickly as we can, but no one can actually change a Wikipedia article except our editors". Wikipedia:Flagged_revisions/Trial/Proposed_trials#Trial_3:_Subsection_of_Biographies_of_Living_Persons .Mion (talk) 12:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Citizendium "marred by infighting"

Y In the news, 1-24-2009.--ragesoss (talk) 21:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

John Gill, Wikipedia founder's scholarly web venture plays host to a war of words, Times Higher Education. According to a former head of the philosophy content at Citizendium, "the experts it used were even less likely to reach consensus than the amateurs who contribute articles to Wikipedia." But according to Larry Sanger, "our disputes tend to be far more tractable, far less acrimonious and not at all Kafka-esque in the way one so often finds in such disputes in Wikipedia."--ragesoss (talk) 19:01, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Licensing Update discussions advancing

For people not following Foundation-l, the Wikimedia-wide vote regarding the adopting of GFDL / CC-BY-SA dual licensing has been tentatively scheduled for ~~February 9th to March 9th~~.

Dragons flight (talk) 21:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Those tenative dates aren't really going to happen. Dragons flight (talk) 05:03, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Columbia Journalism Review article about Wikinews and David Shankbone

Y In the news, 1-31-2009.--ragesoss (talk) 21:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't normally push something that was focused on myself, but the Columbia Journalism Review is the most prestigious journal of American journalism, and that they wrote a two page article about Wikinews material, much of which is used on Wikipedia articles, I think bears a Signpost mention. It is some of the highest acknowledgment of a sister project's attempts, and for those who thinks "News belongs on Wikinews, not on Wikipedia" this is a good way to trumpet that work over there gets recognition. They also mention the Wikipedia photography. --David Shankbone 18:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

"Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" now on Wikipedia

Y in 1/31 news & notes -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:31, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

See Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. Also see [4]. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Yay

–Juliancolton ^Tropical ^Cyclone 20:55, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

It would be interesting to monitor how the book is being improved by wiki-editing. :-) --seav (talk) 01:36, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Mozilla gives WMF $100,000 for audio and video support

Y in 1/31 news & notes -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:31, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Mozilla and the Wikimedia Foundation are working together to improve support for Ogg Theora and Vorbis media formats. This will hopefully lead to better support of these formats, so that proprietary technologies like Adobe Flash are not necessary for streaming media. (They aren't strictly necessary now, but tend to be the default for web developers and content providers outside the free culture movement.) According to Erik Moeller, "The $100,000 grant will be used to support the work of long-time contributors to the Ogg Theora/Vorbis codebase and related tools, such as libraries for network seeking. The improvements will be made over a 6 month period." Built-in support for Ogg media will be in Firefox beginning with version 3.1.

--ragesoss (talk) 23:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Loves Art photo scavenger hunt at 15 museums and institutions

Y in 1/31 news & notes -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

It would be great to give Signpost readers a preview of this global event (so they can get ready to participate), which will run throughout February 2009. BTW, the first public event day is February 1 at London's V&A Museum.--Pharos (talk) 04:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I was going to suggest exactly that :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 05:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Celebrity references Wikipedia

Y In the news, 1-31-2009.--ragesoss (talk) 21:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Jessica Alba recently used Wikipedia as her source for a statement about the neutrality of Sweden [5]. Cla68 (talk) 06:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales is "character approved"

Y -- in 1/31 news & notes phoebe / (talk to me) 22:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The USA Network honored Jimmy Wales as "Character Approved", which is a new program to recognize those who have "positively influencing American culture". Others honored include Charles Best, David Chang, Jennifer Siegal, Lupe Fiasco, Patrick Robinson, and Shepard Fairey. Along with the award, the USA Network is donating $10,000 to the recipient's charity of choice (The Wikimedia Foundation).

Jimmy Wales is Character Approved - Wikimedia blog
USA Network Announces the 'Character Approved' Awards to Honor Leading Innovators Shaping American Culture
Character Approved Awards - USA Network

--Aude (talk) 16:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Wounded Knee

Y 2009-02-16

Durova found that a picture taken at the time of the massacre of Wounded Knee was more relevant then would be appreciated from the meta data of the Library of Congress. After restoring the image, the picture showed corpses hidden under a blanket. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 09:26, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

To follow up on Gerard's comment, here's the original, the restored featured picture, and an excerpt from the library staff's reply. They're updating their records to reflect the discovery.

Restoration on the Wounded Knee Massacre yields a discovery
Unrestored version: mislabeled scattered debris of camp in Library of Congress bibliograhic notes.
Restored version: four human remains in foreground partially wrapped in blankets.
Detail from restored version: a face in profile, hand at right.

From the Library of Congress staff:

Upon viewing the high-res TIFF file we made of the file, the human remains are quite visible, indeed. Thank you very much for contacting us regarding this image, and for your interest in our collections. You can imagine that among a collection of 14 million items here, there are a lot of secrets waiting to be uncovered!

This doesn't happen every day. Durova^Charge! 20:45, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Damn, that's pretty awesome. bibliomaniac 1 5 22:51, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

January 1-15 2009

Admin posts deleted 'answer key' to personality test

A story in the Wall Street Journal, "Test for Dwindling Retail Jobs Spawns a Culture of Cheating" by Vanessa O'Connell, describes the use of standard personality tests in the hiring process of many retailers. One part of the story is about an administrator who used his access to deleted revisions to obtain a key of suggested answers for a Unicru test after being turned down for jobs that used the test; he then posted that key on Facebook.--ragesoss (talk) 00:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

VisualWikipedia

VisualWikipedia.com is a new Wikipedia value-added site, which presents articles along with a visual representation of what links to and from a given article and YouTube videos related to the article. Seems like it violates the WMF "Wikipedia" trademark, though.--ragesoss (talk) 18:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Register reports on wiki conflict, retirement of long-time editor

Lord of the universe quits wikipedia - from The Register. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:01, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Commons?

Could the post do a segment on the Wikimedia Commons? I think that greater knowledge of Commons - what it's for and what goes on there - would help Wikipedians and enhance the overall goals of the WMF. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:01, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a fine idea. Are you volunteering to write it?--ragesoss (talk) 00:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Could do I guess. I do have journalistic ambitions. Is there any particular type of story the post needs, or do I get free reign? -mattbuck (Talk) 00:58, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

More or less free reign. The Signpost runs a series of Dispatches, some of which are basically explanations of what goes on in one particular area of Wikipedia; something like that could be one way to go. Another option could be to summarize recent developments and ongoing news on Commons (which could, for example, incorporate Raul's suggestion below). If you have an idea for something else entirely, it might be a good idea to pitch it here before putting in too much work; we try to maintain a neutral journalistic tone, and have had to decline some proposed stories in the past that deviated too much from that.--ragesoss (talk) 01:13, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Has there been anything on the bundesarchiv (I think that's how you spell it) donation yet? I'm sure i could press-gang someone into writing a paragraph on that (seeing as how that's one thing I know nothing about). -mattbuck (Talk) 02:11, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

We covered the basics in News and notes, but if there are significant developments in how those images are being handled on-wiki, it might be worth return to in more detail.--ragesoss (talk) 02:14, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

If someone's interested in a small, easy story, I have one for you. Jim Summaria, a professional photographer, recently donated (via the OTRS photo submissions system) a whole bunch of high quality 1970s-era pictures of A-list celebs (mostly musicians). Here they are:

I think that would make a good story. Raul654 (talk) 00:11, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

That is really good news. We need more success stories like that. Carcharoth (talk) 15:54, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, Voting for commons:Commons:Picture of the Year/2008 will begin shortly. (But I think you already saw it). --Elitre (talk) 13:54, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Random articles

http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/2009/01/wikipedia-editors-threatened-over-muhammad-article.html

Rather out of no where, but just in case its of minimal interest. -- Zanimum (talk) 18:33, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The Ontarioan: "Wikipedia: friend or foe", a University of Guelph school newspaper article. -- Zanimum (talk) 17:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
"Seeking to solve Chatham's busing enigma", The Chatham Daily News: A guest columnist uses Wikipedia for his town's population. Yikes. -- Zanimum (talk) 17:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Edits from Dutch bureaucrats at the Justice department

Dutch bureaucrats working at the Justice department have made controversial changes to the Dutch article on Mohammed. Edits include "In werkelijkheid was Mohammed een oorlogshitser die er niet voor terugdeinsde onschuldige mensen te (laten) doden om zo hun bezit in te kunnen pikken". (In reality, Mohammed was a warmonger who didn't object to kill innocent people, or have them killed, to steal their possessions) and "Islam is de meest moorddadige ideologie aller tijden" (Islam is the most murderous ideology of all times).

I should be able to fish out the diffs where it happened from nl.wiki if people are interested. It has been featured on most major Dutch national newspapers and other news outlets. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 20:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Sounds interesting to me. By "bureaucrat" I presume you mean a government worker rather than the WP meaning, right? Can you also find a link to some online newspaper coverage of this? (preferably in English, but Dutch will also do). This could make an item for Wikipedia in the News, I think. --Zvika (talk) 19:41, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

the facts are not intresting, just a POV edit. What is sort of interesting is that is about an edit that has taken place on 18 janurary 2008! diff and for some reason this non-news is reported as news one year later in several newspapers. But one newspaper, the "Volkskrant" has done some real journalitic work and the has the discoverd that the "bureaucrats" were blocked from wikipedia at their work for 2 months for punishment. A block that was lifted soon because they needed wikipedia to do their work. Found this info in the Dutch Village pump w:nl:Wikipedia:De_kroeg#De_Pers_en_De_Telegraaf_komen_met_oud_nieuws --Walter (talk) 23:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

PediaPress

PediaPress actually went live on Wikipedia before this edition went out, the script has been fully functional since October 27, 2008, it was deleted on December 28 and restored by Jimbo on January 10. On January 9 User:Pediapress "was indef blocked, and userpage deleted, on an accusation of "spamming"." That followed with a discussion at AN. The account is operated by User:He!ko and the extension is usable through a JS detailed at the User: page. §hep • ^Talk 22:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Here's the press release from the Foundation: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikis_Go_Printable Kaldari (talk) 19:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yahoo! search adds section links for Wikipedia hits

Yahoo! has started linking directly to sections within Wikipedia articles from search results. See coverage at TechCrunch or see for yourself.--ragesoss (talk) 18:53, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

January 16-31 2009

CBC: Errors are human, says Wikipedia founder

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/01/15/jimmy-wales.html http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2009/01/wikipedia_replacement_for_the_1.html http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20090115_10927.mp3

Based off a radio interview Jimmy Wales did with CBC Radio One's Q. -- Zanimum (talk) 17:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

User:Masalbugduv

There's a story in the Guardian about a conquential minor hoax the person behind User:Masalbugduv was probably responsible for.[6] Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 00:21, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ref in Frontline

The latest issue (Jan 31 2009) of Frontline magazine (www.frontline.in) on page 34, uses wikipedias definition of Enemy alien, as "A citizen of a country which is in a state of conflict with the country in which he or she is located." The article, titled Due Process is about the right of due legal process that Ajmal Amir Kasab, the Mumbai terror accused in entitled to. Sniperz 11_@^CS 06:36, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Googlepedia

Google now has an add-on called Googlepedia, available through download.com. Whenever you do a Google searh, on the right hand side it shows you the best matching Wikipedia article to your search terms. It's not perfect, but it is rather nifty.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 04:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement RfC

The Arbitration Committee has opened a Request for Comment regarding arbitration enforcement, including a review of general and discretionary sanctions. This is a fulfillment of the Committee's statement that such a request for comment would be opened, issed in the Eastern European disputes case. Vassyana (talk) 00:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Other Obama/WP news

The Wikipedia War Over Obama's Inauguration--ragesoss (talk) 18:54, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews:Picture of the Year 2008

I don't know if this is in the scope of the signpost, but for sister project news. Round 1 of the second annual Wikinews:Picture of the Year 2008 has started. There are 60 images, you can vote for as many images as you want. This round is used to narrow down the selection to about 10-15 finalists. The goal is to select a news worthy picture that is also of good quality (we use anything thats appeared in the news in pictures section of wikinews, so some images are of poorer quality than others.) All of wikimedia is invited to vote (assuming you have greater then 50 edits, aren't blocked and have had an account for at least two weeks. If you aren't a wikinews you are asked to merge your accounts before voting). See Wikinews:Picture of the Year 2008 Bawolff (talk) 00:33, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Is there a plan to cover this after the voting is complete, once round two starts, or not at all? §hep ^Talk 12:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll make sure it gets in News and notes for the next issue.--ragesoss (talk) 17:02, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Flagged Revisions covered in New York Times blog

Wikipedia May Restrict Public’s Ability to Change Entries, Noam Cohen, Bits Blog, New York Times, January 23, 2009, 5:46 pm.--ragesoss (talk) 03:07, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

BBC article regarding Flagged Revisions controversy

Editorial row engulfs Wikipedia Willking1979 (talk) 15:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Beat me to it :P. Bsimmons666 (talk) 20:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

There's also a Have Your Say on it. --Ouro (blah blah) 08:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Times of London on Flagged Revisions

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls for pre-approval of changes Willking1979 (talk) 20:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

WP admin quoted in Australian press

Orderinchaos was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding flagged revisions. It's one of the country's leading newspapers.[7] Durova^Charge! 06:42, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Vital Articles

Could something about WikiProject Vital Articles be mentioned, or does that not really fit the Signpost? I just recently started it, and was wondering how if/how it should be announced. Thanks! -Drilnoth (talk) 18:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

We don't normally announce new WikiProjects in the Signpost; instead we cover well-developed ones in the WikiProject Report. Similar and related WikiProjects are probably the best places to canvass for recruits, and of course the Community Portal where I see it's already listed. Good luck!--ragesoss (talk) 21:05, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, thanks! -Drilnoth (talk) 21:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

February 1-15 2009

ITN

Did some quick searches and found these. The bottom two are about flagged revisions, so if there's any additional information that could be incorporated from them, that might be good. I don't know if the other two merit mention, but here they are anyway.

—Hermione1980 20:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Nice. The Wikianswers didn't get covered this week, so it can go In the news next time. The editorial about Flagged Revs might be worth mentioning next time as well.--ragesoss (talk) 21:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Good, accurate, insightful article in The Independent about Wikipedia's current situation [8]. Cla68 (talk) 06:17, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

More stuff:

One Man's Experiment With Wikipedia, about someone who has been watching their own Wikipedia entry change over the years
Who's Messing With Wikipedia?, about something called WikiDashboard that tracks who the most active contributors to particular pages are
Wikipedia's Cultural Weight Beats Big Bucks, Founder Wales Says, about Wikipedia's place on the Internet, competition, and Jimbo's favorite German word
Wikipedia offers print-on-demand, about PediaPress

—Hermione1980 22:23, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Erroneous reporting on David Ignatius in Turkish newspapers

On 30 January 2009, the day after Erdoğan's outburst at the World Economic Forum in Davos where David Ignatius was moderator (see Recep Tayyip Erdoğan#Israel and the Palestinians), several Turkish newspapers, including the major newspapers Radikal and Hürriyet, reported that Ignatius is a "Jewish-American" journalist. This (almost certainly incorrect) information was apparently based on unsourced information at the time in the Wikipedia article. Source: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/10911933.asp?scr=1. Hevesli (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

See also this blog for more information. Hevesli (talk) 19:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

1.0 assessment team rfc

A new RFC opened this week on the talk page at the 1.0 Assessment team concerning A-class and its implementation across Wikipedia. At the moment, the discussion is in its preliminary phase, but whats been typed and saved so far has been both animated and interesting. Full details at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

we broke Amarok (software)

Missed it at the time but aprently we managed to break Amarok.Geni 14:58, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Study measures the significance of recentism and user biases on topic coverage

A newly published study, performed on Wikipedia circa November 2006, correlates the word count of Wikipedia coverage in several areas with factors such as recentness (for our year articles, Academy-Award winning films, Time people of the year, Artists with #1 songs), population (for country articles, revenue (for companies), and coverage in Britannica (for selected random entries found there). See Royal and Kapila, "What's on Wikipedia, and What's Not?", Social Science Computer Review, February 2009. Positive correlations were found for everything but Time people of the year, which seemed to follow a pretty random distribution in terms of coverage vs. year. The conclusion drawn by the authors is that "Wikipedia is more a socially produced document than a value-free information source", and demonstrates bias towards more coverage of recent events, big countries, big companies, and the coverage agenda of Britannica. Supposedly "this study uncovered important biases in information being presented on Wikipedia", although I'm not sure we would want an "unbiased" Wikipedia in this sense where every topic had the same level of coverage independent of the significance or relevance of the topic.--ragesoss (talk) 04:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

That link doesn't work for me. Kaldari (talk) 04:30, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Use this link. Raul654 (talk) 04:41, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Any reporters in here?

Okay, I know there are. I am preparing a major new analysis related to Wikipedia. The last time I did something like this it got covered not only on Wikipedia but also in several actual newspapers (go figure). I'd like to consider giving the Signpost a head start if there is someone here interested in working on the story quietly while I finish writing up the project. My target date is the end of February. Dragons flight (talk) 05:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

That would be wonderful. I always like covering your work, since it usually offers plenty of interesting new data on how the project and the community are evolving.--ragesoss (talk) 17:58, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

GAN backlog elimination drive

Could something be briefly mentioned about the new drive? Maybe it could drum up some more interest than there was in the last one. -Drilnoth (talk) 15:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Flagged Revisions on German Wikipedia: update

German Wikipedia has essentially completed its first pass on flagging every article (99.98%, with just about 150 unreviewed articles, presumably very new ones). Since reaching completion of flagging (nearly) all existing articles, the backlog of out-of-date reviews has shrunk considerably, from about 14,000 last week to about 8,000 now. The oldest out-of-date revision is now only about 14 days old (down from 17-21 days), and may be decreasing further. Keep an eye on de-wiki's progress here.--ragesoss (talk) 18:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Now there are only 6 unreviewed articles, and the backlog of out-of-date reviews is down to 5800 and 10.4 days.--ragesoss (talk) 22:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

ABC News

ABC News's Michael S. Malone has written an opinion column about the evolution and accuracy of his article. §hep • ^Talk 22:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Already mentioned above under "ITN" --seav (talk) 04:32, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Inauguration day hit count

Barack Obama had over 900,000 hits on inauguration day. However, there are over 100 redirects whos hits are not counted. Would anyone be interested in helping me create an article on the number of hits page views that he actually had.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 00:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Who cares? I don't see any reason to write a blurb every time some article becomes popular. Also 900k isn't even all that much. Sarah Palin hit 2.4M the day she was picked for McCain's VP (including one hour where she had more traffic than the Main Page). Dragons flight (talk) 04:53, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I just find the topic of redirect hits interesting. Hillary Clinton often gets more page views than Hillary Rodham Clinton for days or even entire months, for example.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 20:12, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Do redirect hits not also count on the page they redirect to? I find that surprising and counterintuitive. the wub "?!" 17:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

The stats are based on capturing page requests like "http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Hillary_Clinton". It has no way of knowing that "http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton" gives the same content. Dragons flight (talk) 17:48, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

New news

Media storm-in-a-teacup of the week:
- Giles Hattersley's disappearing Wikipedia entry
- Giles Hattersley admits Wikipedia error
- But wait, there's more: Jimmy Wales in drive-by shooting of Wikipedia
Wikipedia is beautiful, but never perfect — includes speculation that "Wikipedia's golden age seems to be coming to an end"
Big (Ambani) brother is watching over Wikipedia — about an editor who claims to be based out of a firm's PR office and subsequently their edits should not be reverted

—Hermione1980 01:35, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

More news - Tories admit to Wiki-alteration (BBC) - UK Conservative Party staff changing Titian's Wikipedia article to appear as if they were right in a debate in the Commons. the wub "?!" 17:09, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Some other I found that others might be interested in: Opinion column, mentions Britannica, Persident Fernández comments on Wikipedia (Revolutionary) (Leonel Fernández) §hep • ^Talk 20:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
- Fernández has said this sort of thing about Wikipedia before. I must admit that I was amused to learn that Wikipedia "has a network of 25 collaborators." --Michael Snow (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
  - I was trying to figure out how 25 people could keep up 100 languages. §hep • ^Talk 21:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

zOMG politicians (goes with the wub's link):

:-) Hermione1980 00:37, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia made the front page of yesterday's Guardian: Titian, the Tory and Wikipedia: a modern morality tale. Seth Finkelstein has also written an interesting article about WikiAnswers and Wikia's use of the Wikipedia "halo effect". What's in a name? Everything, when you're talking wiki value. Rje (talk) 10:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Milestone announcements

Could do with some sitewide publicity:

All WikiProjects are invited to have their "milestone-reached" announcements automatically placed onto Wikipedia's announcements page.
Milestones could include the number of FAs, GAs or articles covered by the project.
No work need be done by the project themselves; they just need to provide some details when they sign up. A bot will do all of the hard work.

Click here for more information or to sign your project up.

- Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 13:31, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Meetups

A MediaWiki meetup is planned for April 3.-5. in Berlin. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Developer_meet-up_2009 phoebe / (talk to me) 04:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

BBC News story 2/11/09

Might be worthy of a mention: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7884121.stm – ukexpat (talk) 18:07, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

In the section above titled "New news" §hep • ^Talk 19:56, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Slashdot

Report here. Bladeofgrass (talk) 23:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

February 16-28 2009

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez issues turn into good press for Wikipedia

I recently blogged about the bizarre shenanigans going on with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez denying her history and making things up on her biography. The blog post has led to some very good press for us about our diligence, policies and guidelines. --David Shankbone 04:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

"The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia"

Y story in 2/23 issue -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Larry Sanger has a recently published article in the journal Episteme, "The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia". As Sanger reports on the Citizendium blog, it is a work of academic philosophy discussing the limits of article quality on Wikipedia, in terms of social epistemology. There is a vigorous discussion of the piece (or at least, the abstract) on Slashdot.--ragesoss (talk) 07:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the whole issue of Episteme is devoted to Wikipedia and related topics.--ragesoss (talk) 17:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Judd Bagley and Wikipedia

Judd Bagley, a banned editor, has put together a compelling presentation detailing his experience combatting efforts by others to use the Internet to manipulate opinions about Naked short selling. A significant portion of the presentation describes his experiences with Wikipedia's administration. The presentation is here and the Wikipedia portion begins at slide 52, which can be accessed easily using the sliding toolbar on the left. Cla68 (talk) 03:27, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

usability.wikimedia.org

Y in 2/23 N&N -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC) Created earlier this month, usability.wikimedia.org. Maybe a quick section in News and Notes, has a prototype area that I haven't checked out yet, but sounds interesting. §hep ^Talk 06:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Future Tense (Public radio) segment about the doom of Wikipedia (Eric Goldman again)

I found this sensationalist and highly problematic, but thousands (if not millions) heard this one-sided discussion by Eric Goldman on their commute this morning. Law professor argues Wikipedia is bound to fail, February 17, 2009. I wrote back a pretty strong comment in disagreement. --Bobak (talk) 15:56, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Edited headline to correct inaccuracy. :-) Mike R (talk) 18:11, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

IWF letter from government

A few months ago during the Internet Watch Foundation fuss, I wrote to my MP], Dr Liam Fox. I got a reply from Alan Campbell, the minister in charge of something, and thought you might like to see it. It's posted on my blog. The actual letter sent back is: page 1 page 2. Thought it might interest you guys. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:59, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Key phrase: "The Home Office cannot comment on specific cases and does not perform a governance or regulatory role relating to the IWF." That is, the letter said at length what can be summarised as "no comment". Campbell incorrectly states that "the content blocked by the IWF is illegal in traditional offline retailers", given that the album and cover art are readily available at music retailers. Moreover, he doesn't discuss the subjective interpretations applied by those who categorise images for the IWF with respect to the pertinent legislation, such as Protection of Children Act 1978 or the Sexual Offences Act 2003 that he cited. The criteria used may appear on the IWF website, but it's application to specific images was the source of the original controversy. It's nonetheless interesting that you received a response. Mind matrix 18:41, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

It looks like (and probably is) a form reply. Raul654 (talk) 01:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Barack Obama problems

Barack Obama issues (Also on Jimbo's talk here) §hep ^Talk 01:29, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

A request: could someone familiar with the flagged revisions discussions and Wikipedia policies in general pop over here and explain how we deal with vandalism and BLPs? Thanks, Hermione1980 04:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Jimmy Wales talks to BBC Radio

Audio available here:[9]. – ukexpat (talk) 14:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Upgrade breaks Twinkle and Friendly

The latest Wikipedia software upgrade has rendered popular javascript tools Twinkle and Friendly temporarily useless, as well as temporarily breaking a number of templates - resulting in ages displaying with several decimal points in infoboxes etc. The age template issue is now resolved, but at present there's no fix for Twinkle and Friendly. More details here. waggers (talk) 15:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Might be good to include this link which covers all the changes that were rolled out by the devs. §hep ^Talk 22:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

BLP=Good press?

Archived memo here. §hep ^Talk 23:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Seems to be mentioned above already under the section "Alisa..." --seav (talk) 04:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow. I must have great eyesight. Sorry, §hep ^Talk 05:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews picture of the year

Y in 2/23 N&N -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I do not know if this is within your scope or not, but if it is - Wikinews is holding its second (and probably final) round of voting for the wikinews picture of the year. Round 2 has 11 images, and any Wikimedian from any project (including wikipedia) with over 50 edits is invited to vote. See n:wikinews:Picture of the Year 2008 for more information. Thanks, Bawolff (talk) 00:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

We'll mention this in News and notes, at the least; I meant to note the first round, but it slipped by.--ragesoss (talk) 01:53, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Mobile browsing

Y in 2/23 BRION -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

[10] §hep ^Talk 04:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Here's the diff that causes the banner to appear. §hep ^Talk 06:33, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, redirect categories now work! §hep ^Talk 04:25, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I guess the above is for the Technology report... take this downtime too if you want it. Also in the Server admin log. Pretzels^Talk! 02:23, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia citations in patents on the rise

Y in 2/23 ITN -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

According to The Patent Librarian's Notebook, a blog by librarian Michael White, citations to Wikipedia have been on the rise in U.S. patents. Wikipedia citations by patent examiners were banned in 2006, but references to Wikipedia by both applicants and examiners have nevertheless been on the rise. 477 patents issued in 2008 mentioned Wikipedia, compared to less than 300 in 2007 and just over 100 in 2006.--ragesoss (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

The numbers he used can be found here. §hep ^Talk 21:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

First Ship exclusive FT clears nom this week

With the passing of FT nom the Iowa-class battleships become the first ships exclusive FT on Wikipedia. This is also the first Featured Topic for the SHIPS project. Although the first Featured topic this is not the first topic nom, a handful of ships specific GTs exist. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:01, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Link to the topic for convenience: Wikipedia:Featured topics/Iowa class battleships -MBK₀₀₄ 05:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps one of you can write a Dispatch (please weign in at WT:FCDW if you're interested. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikimania 2009: Call for Participation

Y in 2/23 N&N --phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The Call for Participation for Wikimania 2009 has been released. Cbrown1023 talk 15:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

PDF generation enabled for testing

Y story in 3/2 issue -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Brion reports that PDF files of articles can now be generated for English Wikipedia articles (in addition to the smaller wikis that were enabled last week). On article pages, there is a "PDF version" link in the toolbox. Problems should be reported to the PediaPress bug tracker.--ragesoss (talk) 06:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not showing up in classic skin, but it is showing up in monobook. Raul654 (talk) 06:51, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Tim Starling said it's a mediawiki issue, not an en configuration issue, and told me to file a bug report. I have done so. Raul654 (talk) 06:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

See also this story here on the Wikimedia blog. And the feedback for the tool is here. feydey (talk) 17:20, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

March 1-15

Skittles launches marketing campaign that includes its Wikipedia page

Y in 3/2 "in the news" -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC) See http://www.productplacement.biz/200902282995/News/Internet/skittles-product-placement-on-wikipedia.html and http://www.skittles.com. Quite interesting that they're relying on Wikipedia as the de-facto "official" source of info for its products; what happens if someone reorganizes the page? BuddingJournalist 22:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I saw that article earlier. It's totally wrong - the Skittles article is basically the same now as it was 6 weeks ago. Raul654 (talk) 23:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I was confused, too, when I found this story. But BuddingJournalist's pointer to the skittles website is I think what this is about. Although I can't see anything there now except Twitter, I think they've been incorporating the Wikipedia article into Skittles.com.--ragesoss (talk) 23:20, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Check the product pages on their site. They're using forwarded Wikipedia pages for description of their products. 189.105.41.65 (talk) 23:57, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Their site doesn't work right with Firefox, for me at least.--ragesoss (talk) 00:11, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I take you're not seeing the flash navigation box then? Try this direct link [11]. PS: I just noticed that they in fact only forward to different sections of the same page: Skittles (confectionery) which happens to include a list of all products. 189.105.41.65 (talk) 00:27, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Right. It works in Internet Explorer for me.--ragesoss (talk) 00:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

PDF version of Signpost

I'm really big fan of this weekly baby. The volume of the news is getting grow, sometimes I feel to read a well-formated pdf version during my lunch. You wrote about the pdf book tool is enabled, why don't you write down the single page for pdf? I want to download the pdf version already converted. --Cheol (talk) 01:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Click this link to get a PDF of this week's signpost. Raul654 (talk) 02:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I really want to make a pdf book of all the signposts that have been published, now -- maybe I'll do that! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 03:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. But it's not so good. What's "__NOTOC____NOEDITSECTION__"?. We have them every section. --Cheol (talk) 01:13, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

they are codes to remove the table of contents and edit links, which makes the stories display in their templates properly. That might be a bug to fix in the pdf formatting... -- phoebe / (talk to me) 04:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Reported these issues. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

This issue should be solved the next time the software is updated. So starting next week or so, PDF versions will become much nicer. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I just tested this again, and the PDFs are looking significantly improved. With some /Print templates and some print specific formatting, I think we can create a pretty nice version of the the signpost in PDF. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:29, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

BBC World Service interviews Jimbo

A repeat of everything we know, but publicity is publicity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/2009/03/090304_wikipedia_funding.shtml --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons: Four million files and rising

Y in 3/9 N&N -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

*From Commons:Press releases/4M

Wikimedia Commons, the multilingual free-content media repository managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, reached the milestone of four million uploaded files on March 4, 2009, less than eight months after it reached three million. This makes Wikimedia Commons, which was launched in September 2004, the fastest growing Wikimedia project. Since March 2007, Wikimedia Commons has routinely had over 100,000 files uploaded every single month. It is now not uncommon for tens of thousands of files to be uploaded in a single day. Wikimedia Commons now has an incredible 573,042 registered users, who have helped reach the figure of four million files.

The four millionth file is a photograph of a cloudy mountain scene at sunset, near Masca in the Canary Islands. It was taken and uploaded by a Wikimedia Commons user Kallerna, who graciously released the work into the public domain.

§hep ^Talk 22:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Take a look inside Wikimedia

Y in 3/9 N&N -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Blog §hep ^Talk 22:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

_Guardian_ column on Inclusionism, Deletionism, Wikia COI

People might enjoy my recent Guardian column "Inclusion or deletion? In the end, it's actually about money". Please note that the "money" part is meant to be a multilayered observation, connecting the two concepts explored - an examination of the costs that every article creates, and then going from there to the pressures of commercialization. Not something silly, like a potential strawman of deletionism being a plot to enrich Wikia's digital-sharecropping gains. I'm very careful not to say the link is dispositive, but rather that there are significant tensions and incentives. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 15:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

BBC story about Wikipedia and UK politicians

Y ITN March 9 -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The BBC has a report on the interactions between UK politicians and their Wikipedia articles: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7921985.stm -- The Anome (talk) 11:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Update from Wikipedia Chemistry/Chemicals

Y N&N, March 9 -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The basic structure of Chemistry Manual of Style WP:CHEMMOS has been ratified. The Manual of Style gives the Wikiprojects a roadmap: What constitutes an article? What areas should be discussed? What areas should be omitted? etc. Having ratified the MOS, efforts will now be directed toward assessment and improvement of articles within the projects' scope. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals#Article_assessment. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 08:23, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Rf"D"

See Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Jasonr_(reconfirmation) and its talk page, RFA's talk page, and the crat noticeboard. KnightLago (talk) 14:58, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

More news

Y ITN, March 9.--ragesoss (talk) 03:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Battle for control of Santa Cruz councilman's Wikipedia page persists, Santa Cruz Sentinel, March 4, 2009
Why Wikipedia block went wrong, ZDNet UK, March 6, 2009
- This interview appeared in February on another ZDNet site, and was covered in "In the news" in the February 23 Signpost.--ragesoss (talk) 03:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Attribution survey results

The attribution survey, mentioned in March 2's Post, has its results available here with other notes. §hep ^Talk 04:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Media attention

Another good old accusation of bias: Obama's Wikipedia Page Distances President From Wright and Ayers from Fox News, which is definitely a major news outlet. Bsimmons666 (talk) 20:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC) Already in this weeks'. Bsimmons666 (talk) 21:19, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Ethnio recruit ad

I just figured out exactly what this was. Wikipedia has up an advertisement for Wikipedians near San Francisco (Screenshot). It works via this, there is extended information on a mailing list here. The notice is set to be disabled 12 March, so maybe this shouldn't be covered? Or be popped into this week's n&n before publication. Thoughts? §hep ^Talk 21:30, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It's in N&N already under the heading "usability testing", but without details as I hadn't seen it yet. Feel free to augment the coverage. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

AHA! That's what I get for skimming the usability section. I'll add a little bit. §hep ^Talk 22:22, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Link to previous issue

Hi guys, I would find a direct link to the previous issue terribly useful. --Elitre (talk) 21:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This isn't exactly what this page is for, but does this suffice? Else you can always use this oldid. §hep ^Talk 21:43, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, that was not very clear :) I just wanted to suggest that a link to the previous issue should be added to the heading or somewhere else in that page, or at least that I would find it useful. --Elitre (talk) 22:01, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, because the Signpost front page is generated dynamically, there no easy way to provide a simple link to the previous issue. But if someone more code-savvy than me can make it work, it can be added tot he front page.--ragesoss (talk) 22:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Paper

Summarization using Wikipedia. Uses a lucene database of all wikipedia articles to create a summary of a text. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:52, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

skittles learns social engineering isn't that easy

Y ITN 3/16 --TheDJ (talk • contribs)

Interesting piece on how skittles had to change their webpage after they implemented the new "social tools" overlay. Wikipedia is now their homepage for they overlay, and it makes you wonder what will happen when the article becomes unprotected again. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Students improve ecology related articles

Y ITN 3/16

http://journalwatch.conservationmagazine.org/2009/03/09/open-source-ecology/

WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein and Obama

Y ITN 3/16

Quite the controversy about [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91114 this article] by Aaron Klein. This story has made US headlines, and FoxNEWS is running around with it like a happy kitten that caught it's first mouse. But as first reported by ConWebWatch and later huffington post and wired, the story goes deeper with User:Jerusalem21. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

So apparently Aaron Klein tried to smear Obama in his Wikipedia article and then when his edits were reverted, he wrote an "exposé" about how biased Wikipedia is. Yawn! Then FoxNews picks up the story while everyone else wonders why anyone takes Aaron Klein seriously. Yawn! Kaldari (talk) 22:27, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikibooks Motivitation Survey

Y N&N 3/16

Wikibooks is publicly displaying a link to a Wikibooks Motivation Survey being done by the University of South Australia. It is advertised via their Sitenotice and reads:

You are invited to participate in a research study that aims to explore the shared motivations among Wikibookians to write to Wikibooks.

To take the survey, use motivations as your username and wikiproject as your password.

Also, Test Wikipedia has some neat features on the Main Page and Sandbox, some sort of ratings system and review system (flagged revs I think), and they're asking for users to test their Aubuse Filter as well. They also have a CentralNotice running there about Wikimania presentation submissions, technical details here. §hep ^Talk 21:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Appears to be running here now. §hep ^Talk 03:28, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

WP copy & paste in UK government's anti-net neutrality amendment to EU telecom bill

Y ITN 3/16

News in the "copy & paste from WP in unexpected places" department:

Monica Horten: UK filters in the Wikpedia (sic) amendments Mar 09, 2009

In the ongoing political struggle over the European Union's Telecoms package (a planned regulatory framework for the telecommunications industry in the EU), an amendment proposed by the UK government which is heavily criticized by advocates of network neutrality copied almost verbatim from the article Bandwidth management.

If this amendment is successful, the definition of bandwidth management written by Cmw1 in April 2006 - which Horten, a communications and media research Ph.D. student and former journalist with a long history of covering these topics, says struck her by its "naive wording" - would form part of what she describes as "the most important piece of legislation concerning the Internet, currently going through the European legislature. It will determine, among other things, the way that the Internet will operate in the foreseable future".

Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia for writing assignments

Y ITN 3/16

Robert E. Cummings (March 12, 2009). "Are We Ready to Use Wikipedia to Teach Writing?". Inside Higher Education.

Book: Lazy Virtues: Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia (due out March 27, 2009, per Amazon.com), by the same author

I emailed Vanderbilt University Press to request a review copy, so that I or someone else can review it for the Signpost. If anyone is particularly eager to review this book, preferably someone with experience with using Wikipedia in educational settings, please let me know (although there's no guarantee that they will give us a copy).--ragesoss (talk) 22:20, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Vanderbilt University Press is going to send us a copy of the book. It will be sent out on Monday, so if someone is eager to review it for the Signpost, please contact me with your mailing address and qualifications ASAP. Otherwise, I will have it sent to myself and I will review it.--ragesoss (talk) 15:40, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I've emailed you. Awadewit (talk) 17:54, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Great!. There are three people, all well-qualified to review the book, who have expressed interest. If we're lucky, they may be willing to send out multiple copies so that we could have multiple perspectives on the book. I'll post updates here when I know more.--ragesoss (talk) 18:21, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello other people who use Wikipedia to teach writing! Can we all chat sometime? Awadewit (talk) 18:42, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Count me in, too. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 20:33, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to join the conversation, since the Wikimedia Foundation has asked me to write an Educator's Guide to Wikipedia. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 12:43, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, me too. How should we go about setting something up? Bondegezou (talk) 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

One possibility would be to arrange a time to record a podcast (or just have an unrecorded discussion) on Skype. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ragesoss (talk • contribs) 20:01, March 14, 2009

That might be interesting to listen to. §hep ^Talk 01:29, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm on spring break and "free" all next week. Awadewit (talk) 01:39, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Podcast

Those interested in being part of a podcast discussion should weigh in at Wikipedia:Wikivoices/Wikipedia assignments on the when and the what to talk about.--ragesoss (talk) 16:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

All notable films now have Wikipedia articles

Y N&N 3/16

On March 12, WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles completed the notable films list. This list, created by Reflex Reaction in 2005, originally included 1,914 movies compiled from various third-party lists which did not have articles on Wikipedia. The final movie removed from the list was Death of a Salesman (1951 film) which was created by Scapler. Kaldari (talk) 16:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Um, this is an exaggeration, surely. I guess the best we can say is that we've covered what other limited-length mainstream encyclopedias and reference works have covered in aggregate. But our ambitions are much broader :) For a small sample of what remains, look at the redlinks on List of film serials (and those are mostly English-language films).--Pharos (talk) 16:24, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

True. I imagine there are hundreds of films that we still lack depending on your definition of "notable" :) Kaldari (talk) 16:30, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps writing this article will spur some people to start a new list and organize more editors to help out with the project! Awadewit (talk) 15:46, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikitruth Through Wikiorder paper

Y ITN 3/16

(I have no connection to this, just thought it was interesting) Wikitruth Through Wikiorder - "Focusing on Wikipedia, we argue that the site's dispute resolution process is an important force in promoting the public good it produces, i.e., freely-accessible encyclopedia articles. We describe the development and shape of Wikipedia's existing dispute resolution system. Further, we present a statistical analysis based on coding of over 250 arbitration opinions from Wikipedia's arbitration system. The data shows that Wiki-dispute resolution ignores the content of user disputes, instead focusing on user conduct. Based on fairly formalized arbitration findings, we find a high correlation between the conduct found and the remedies ordered. In effect, the system functions not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting users, but to weed out problematic users while weeding potentially productive users back in to participate." - see also the blog post's hilarious flowchart -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 21:32, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons / Carlos Latuff furore

Y N&N 3/16 There has been a lot of fuss in the past month or two on Wikimedia Commons relating to images by Brazilian artist Carlos Latuff. Latuff has allowed his cartoons to be published free of copyright, and so they are eligible for inclusion on Commons. However, many of the cartoons are related to the Israeli / Palestinian conflict, generally taking the side of the Palestinians. These have triggered numerous deletion requests, on the grounds that the images promote hatred, violence and anti-semitic sentiment. This week, commons:File:Alan dershowitz by Latuff.jpg (see article) was deleted after a heated debate. It was subsequently undeleted, and promptly deleted again in a small wheel war, and there is an ongoing undeletion request.

As well as deletion requests, there has been edit warring over whether the images should be in categories about Middle East politics, and several users, including one who has contributed many featured pictures, have been blocked temporarily due to their behaviour. The cartoons have also prompted a rash of "If this is acceptable, then this should be too" user-created cartoons, which were deleted as being out of scope as user-created artwork with no educational value.

Relevant links:

-mattbuck (Talk) 22:28, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Licensing

Y N&N 3/16

The licensing update is starting to move. A committee is being formed (including myself) to help manage the process. The draft timeline has the vote starting at the beginning of April. Dragons flight (talk) 07:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Editnotices disabled

Might want to make a brief note of this (though I haven't finished reading everything yet, so it may be moot?). §hep ^Talk 19:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

They are only disabled in places where subpages are not enabled. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:18, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I understand. What is/was a per-article edit notice? How, and how widely, was this featured used?--ragesoss (talk) 23:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Editnotices (which is now out-of-date, and so partially wrong). In short an edit notice is a chunk of text that can be placed above the edit box. See [12] for an example. Last fall the devs created the feature to have page specific edit notices (as opposed to global or per-namespace edit notices). Wikipedia created ~130 such things. Last week Domas disabled some of them (including all the ones in article space) out of a general concern about clogging up the Mediawiki: message cache. We are in the process of providing an alternative implementation that avoids that problem. As of this moment the article space messages have been restored. Dragons flight (talk) 23:44, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Moar nooz pls

Y ITN, March 9 and March 16

Battle for control of Santa Cruz councilman's Wikipedia page persists
Writer vandalizes Obama's Wikipedia entry - yes, our friends at...what was it? World Not-News Daily?

— Hermione1980 22:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

March 16-29 2009

Call for reviewers: The Wikipedia Revolution, by Andrew Lih

I'm looking for three editors to review The Wikipedia Revolution, Andrew Lih's new book, for the Signpost. If you're interested, please contact me with your mailing address and a very brief explanation of the main things you do on Wikipedia. I expect a fair number of editors will want to do this, so I'd like to get some diversity in terms of Wikipedia perspectives (e.g., one reviewer with extensive article-writing experience, another heavily involved in the administrative or policy-making side, etc.). Prior contributions to the Signpost are also a plus.--ragesoss (talk) 16:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I've emailed you about this. My perspective would be as an article writer (more then 50% of my contribs are in mainspace), but I'm also an admin. For a complete list of my contributions and such, see my user page. Steven Walling (talk) 20:32, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd love to. :) Durova^Charge! 23:43, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

My copy shipped yesterday. I'll let you know when I'm finished it. Raul654 (talk) 01:23, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons accepts TIFF files

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-03-23/Technology report

Wikimedia Commons has begun accepting TIFF files. This makes Commons a much friendlier environment for image restoration. Until now, most restoration work needed to be uploaded in JPEG format, which degrades with attempts at additional editing. Now Commons is becoming more friendly to wiki-based editing by expanding the options to upload uncompressed files. The first TIFF file uploaded to Commons is the constellations Aries and Musca Borealis, restored from a hand tinted 1825 depiction. This is a major step forward for collaboration in restorations of historic images. More information is available at my blog.[13] Durova^Charge! 23:43, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I know it's probably the wrong place to ask, but how does this effect EN users? Do we have to convert them to some other format to use them locally? Skomorokh 23:48, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

For now the thumbnailing is limited; we're hoping to get better service there. This is going to have a big impact on English Wikipedia's featured pictures because now it becomes much more possible to collaborate on image editing within a wiki environment. In other words, our best illustrations are going to get better as TIFF format comes into use at Commons and people collaborate to improve uncompressed material. It will be some months before the impact makes itself felt. Durova^Charge! 01:07, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

IWF staff threatened after virgin killer debacle

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-03-23/In_the_news

http://www.computershopper.co.uk/news/249605/iwf-staff-threatened-after-wikipedia-debacle.html --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:40, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Poll in progress for "Flagged protection and patrolled revisions"

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-03-23/News and notes

After the inconclusive earlier poll for a trial of flagged revisions, a new poll has started for a refined trial proposal that attempts to address common concerns voiced by those who opposed the earlier proposal. See Wikipedia talk:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions/Poll.--ragesoss (talk) 00:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia drawn into Australian Internet blacklist debate

Brett Winterford : Activists use Wikipedia to bait blacklist regulator iTnews.com.au, 18 March 2009

In an attempt to check the authority's boundaries, activists are linking to these blacklisted sites from legitimate pages in Australia and overseas by big and reputable organisations.

They have linked directly to the anti-abortion page from ACMA's own Wikipedia entry under the "Internet Censorship and Criticism" section.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:05, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The list even includes three pages on Wikipedia itself. --- RockMFR 16:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews reports on Australian blocks of parts of Wikileaks and Wikipedia

Portions of Wikileaks, Wikipedia blocked in Australia, 20 March 2009 --ragesoss (talk) 00:15, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to introduce non-commercial licensed photos fails

Follow-up to Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-03-16/Discussion_report: The described Proposal to introduce non-commercial licensed photos on Wikipedia has since been declared closed by one of its initiators, citing comments by Mike Godwin to the effect that these licenses would not be legally compatible with the free licenses that Wikipedia is using presently. Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

AbuseFilter extension enabled

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-03-23/Abuse_Filter

User:Werdna has announced that he enabled the Extension:AbuseFilter on the English Wikipedia. This extension allows all edits to be tested against regular expressions. There's already a whole bunch of people working on creating new filters and monitoring the hits. (see Wikipedia:Abuse filter) - Mgm|^(talk) 19:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

...and now disabled because of server load. MBisanz ^talk 19:45, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Selectively re-enabled. §hep ^Talk 20:43, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Revolution Wall Street Journal review

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-03-23/In_the_news, review pending

Released in today's Wall Street Journal. It's more of a summary than a review, and it can be found here. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 20:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Widespread copyright problems

Hey all. Recently investigation has uncovered some users who contributed thousands of articles before it was uncovered that all or most of their contributions were copyright violations. The community and particularly User:Moonriddengirl have invested enormous effort in cleaning up these problematic contributions. Here are some sources:

As a consequence of this Moonriddengirl has been working on a new WikiProject called Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup. I think it would be great to get the word out about this kind of copyright violation disaster (many still don't know this kind of thing occurs) and the new project. Thanks for any help, and if you choose to interview anyone, make it Moonriddengirl as she's worked more on all this than everyone. :-) Dcoetzee 06:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

It would be useful if a Signpost article about this could elaborate a bit on how much of this was blatant (verbatim, unsourced) copying and how much was more a case of close paraphrasing.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 12:49, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Jbmurray and I are currently working on a Signpost dispatch about plagiarism. Perhaps these could be tied together somehow? Awadewit (talk) 21:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll add a short note in this week's N&N about this, and then if you want to flesh this out in your longer story, that would be super. Thanks! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 02:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Net Media: Beyond Wikipedia

The library ezine Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large has an article that critically explores the near-monopoly status of Wikipedia as a casual online general reference: Net Media: Beyond Wikipedia (beginning on page 23). Beginning from the question "Why do we love monopolies so?", Cites & Insights author Walt Crawford comments on Knol, Citizendium and Wikia as potential alternative models of online reference content creation.--ragesoss (talk) 22:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Other news

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-03-23/In the news

Rod Dreher, "Rod Dreher" and Wikipedia, beliefnet, 16 March 2009
Will Henley, Concern as English Heritage cites Wikipedia in listing submission, Building Design, 20 March 2009
Wikipedia Third Most Trusted Site in Japan, Sankaku Complex, 18 March 2009 (anyone know anything about this site, read Japanese so they can confirm this is accurate, or know of another source for this story?)

--ragesoss (talk) 23:04, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia in the library

for later issue: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_at_the_Library phoebe / (talk to me) 02:00, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history Coordinator Election

The results of this twice-annual election have previously had a mention in the Signpost. The current election ends at 23:59 UTC on 28 March. This can wait until the issue after the conclusion of the election.

Previous articles and mentions for comparison:
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-03/WikiProject elections
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-09-29/News and notes

Thanks -MBK₀₀₄ 06:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

In a unique moment, we also added one extra coordinator due to voting particulars. In addition, we had two referendum votes, one for cooption and the other for the introduction of C-class, which passed and failed, respectively. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:08, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

google summer of code

It might be nice to interview Brion or someone else involved with GSOC to find out what projects are in the works for this year, what's been accomplished in the past, what they hope to get out of it, etc. Might need to wait til the summer when the students actually show up. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 15:12, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Possible "Religion project" interviews

I note that you said you'd interviewed all the Abrahamic Religion projects. Unfortunately, I think you missed one, Wikipedia:WikiProject Bahá'í Faith. Granted, it's a small group, but it's had a solid portal for longer than a lot of others.

Also, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the ArbCom is currently reviewing, again, the content and conduct relating to another religion, Scientology. There are probably several editors in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology, like maybe myself, Cirt, ChrisO, Justanother, Spidern, and maybe others who would be willing to talk with you if you so saw fit. In fact, one of the proposals in the current ArbCom is trying to run something in the Signpost to draw more attention to the articles. Let me and maybe some of the others know if you'd like to run a piece on the group. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 20:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

The missing manual

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-31/News and notes

Wikipedia: The missing manual is a new and interesting piece of wikipedia. We who have intrest in this manual would like you to report this in your next edition. As well, wwe'd like to report on our desire for editors to assist with improval and upkeep.--Ipatrol (talk) 03:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

It was mentioned in the Signpost back in January - Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-31/News and notes. Nanonic (talk) 04:00, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

New Program Officer

When the new program officer is hired, we should try to do an interview with them as this is a community-facing position. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 20:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

more news

Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary schools shake-up, Guardian: "The proposals would require: Children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication."
Are we dangerously dependent on Wikipedia?, Salon: largely an interview of Fuzheado on his new book
Is the Los Angeles Times Cribbing from Wikipedia?, Gawker

- Banyan Tree 02:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Article about students writing for Wikipedia as class assignments

"Wikipedia: A scientific and educational opportunity" - interview with University of Florida professor (with link to published paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution)

Part of the paper was quoted in wikien-l:

"As part of a graduate seminar on plant–animal interactions, we set out to assess the quality and content of Wikipedia entries with an ecological focus. To do so, we critiqued entries on five major categories of plant–animal interactions: frugivory, herbivory, pollination, granivory and seed dispersal. We found that the entries were generally limited in both breadth and depth, included only cursory lists of citations and occasionally devoted attention to topics that were at best marginally relevant (one memorable example was the discussion of ‘fruitarians’ – people who consciously adopt a strictly frugivorous diet – in the entry on frugivory)."

"We found the process straightforward and efficient, particularly once we learned the protocol for proposing and implementing changes. Editing was also simplified by adhering to Wikipedia’s clearly established framework for page organization, reference management and the inclusion of tables and pictures...We were occasionally frustrated by interactions with an intransigent author who rapidly and repeatedly reverted our revisions – something that might be common when editing entries on controversial topics. However, we nonetheless found the experience to be rewarding, similar in scope and time commitment to writing a more traditional term paper (Figure 1) and extremely valuable as an exercise in critical thinking and communication skills."

"Although we recognize that the time, professional incentives and public recognition for doing so are limited, we believe that improvements to this now ubiquitous reference source are particularly important given the increasingly public debates on ecological and evolutionary topics. The revision of Wikipedia entries can easily be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate courses, the service activities of student organizations, laboratory meetings, extension programs and the annual meetings of professional societies."

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:40, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikirank

Some new data visualisation gimmick. Wired had a story about it. Skomorokh 19:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Previously featured in the Signpost, now out of beta. Pretzels^Talk! 12:47, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

More news for March 30 edition

British children to study Twitter in school — along with Wikipedia and blogging, supposedly at the expense of mandatory education about World War II
Are we dangerously dependent on Wikipedia? — interview with author Andrew Lih (The Wikipedia Revolution)

—Hermione1980 22:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia: Exploring Fact City

NY Times article that looks at Wikipedia and how it compares to large cities. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:43, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Potemkinpedia, a blog response by Nicholas Carr.--ragesoss (talk) 17:57, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

BLP/Flagged Revs/ Jimbo!

User talk:Jimbo Wales#Update on BLP / Flagged Protection / Flagged Revs might be worth a mention? §hep ^Talk 02:39, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Licensing update progress notice

See message at the village pump. The global vote on the WMF licensing update proposal will be starting several days from now. Dragons flight (talk) 04:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

More on Wikipedia and teaching

Wikipedia: Friend or Foe, a point/counterpoint by Thomas Hammond and David Farhie, in Learning & Leading with Technology, a newsletter of the International Society for Technology in Education.
W.. W.. W.. W.. Wikipedia, e-Learning Stuff Podcast #19, with British educators James Clay, Lisa Valentine, and Nick Jeans.

--ragesoss (talk) 17:55, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Flagged revs poll

This poll is set to end on April 1. A summary of the results should probably be included in April 6's Signpost. Hermione1980 01:30, 30 March 2009

Wikimania 2010/Bids/Public meeting log

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2010/Bids/Public_meeting_log

The city hoasting Wikimania 2010 will be chosen soon. 87.207.83.232 (talk) 11:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Microsoft kills Encarta

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-03-30/News and notes

See announcement here and Wired story here. Although the MS announcement didn't mention Wikipedia, everyone else on the internet did. Raul654 (talk) 22:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The question for us is, can we convince them now to donate the copyright to free content? It would be a graceful end for Encarta, for its content to be incorporated into the new age of free encyclopedias, and a good image gesture for Microsoft.--Pharos (talk) 01:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

There are some discussions going on between Encarta staff and Comcom people on that point. Raul654 (talk) 01:06, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Here is a NYTimes article about this if you are interested. Thingg ^⊕^⊗ 13:10, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

And WSJ. Thingg ^⊕^⊗ 13:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Short comment from Wales at the end of this piece. Pretzels^Talk! 18:36, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

German Government Makes Another Huge Image Donation to Wikipedia

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-03-30/News and notes

Wikimedia Deutschland has worked out an arrangement with Saxon State and University Library. They're going to donate 250,000 images to Commons under a CC-BY-SA license. See here (More details forthcoming tomorrow, March 31). Raul654 (talk) 22:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

What wonderful news! I think we English-speaking folk need to start playing catch-up with soliciting media donations. :-) Dcoetzee 02:35, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Fuzheado on PRI's The World

Andrew Lih discusses his new book in a 3:45 piece on The World and replaces the ant hive metaphor with a piranha feeding frenzy metaphor. He takes over The World's Technology Blog (237) and World in Words (47). - Banyan Tree 23:54, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikia Search is over

Jimbo's wiki-based search site is to close because of limited uptake and profitability. CNET News Wales' blog Pretzels^Talk! 18:35, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

April 1-15 2009

russian wikipedia predicting?

this edit to the russian wikipedia happened about 10 minutes before the news broke that the person in question had been attacked. See here.Geni 22:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

where britannica rules, wikipedia has conquered

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/05/digital-media-referenceandlanguages --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:31, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

DRaMA: Proposed display of date on Merger and Split tags

A tip for DRaMA/Centralized discussions:

Proposed display of date on Merger and Split tags: A discussion about enabling the display of the "date" parameter in all the merge/split templates, such as "Proposed since April 2009". Three propositions: (A1) To maintain the current status of not displaying tagging data on the ground that it would make the tag's sentence too long, (A2) To enable display of tagging date on the ground that it is standard and prevents tags lingering for months without actual discussion, (B) Independantly, to have a bot automatically remove merge/split tags after N months. / The change was briefly enabled on 10 templates then mass-reverted and the discussion started.

(This is an attempt at a sample NPOV prose that you can copyedit at will, of course. — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 20:55, 5 April 2009 (UTC))

"The making of a wiki page" - blog post

May be of interest, about a Wikipedia page: The making of a wiki page, April 5th, 2009. --Chriswaterguy talk 21:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

for may issue: it.wiki festival of digital freedoms

http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Wikimedia_news/numero_24/en#What_will_happen_next_month

Court: Congress can't put public domain back into copyright

Ars Technica reports that a U.S. federal court issued a ruling on the copyright case Golan v. Gonzales, finding that it violates the First Amendment for a law to move works back under copyright after they have passed into the public domain. While copyright activists such as Lawrence Lessig and Anthony Falzone hail this as an important victory, further appeals are expected.--ragesoss (talk) 22:24, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

WSJ: Wikipedia's Old Fashioned Revolution

A Wall Street Journal in the April 6, 2009 edition entitled Wikipedia's Old Fashioned Revolution. Article mentions Lih's book, Encarta, and how administrators monitor the site as well as how they are elected. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:FILMS Coordinator election

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

Since the Military History coordinator election was mentioned in last week's edition, I'll also point out WP:FILMS' recent election completed on March 29, with 7 elected coordinators. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Retiring Users

I don't know if this would be possible or plausible, but it would be nice if there was a mention of well-known users who retired in the week before the Signpost came out. If that's too much, then just admins would be fine. Thanks, Genius 101^Guestbook 22:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

It did that for Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-03-21/Top admin leaves, only to have the admin in question wander back fairly quickly. Given that a significant number of the editors who declare their departure end up editing again within three months, I would oppose this proposal. - Banyan Tree 22:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've thought about this before but it's simply too difficult to do it well. Some people announce retirement and then return, others stop participating gradually without any fanfare (and may still be lurking and not considered themselves retired even when they haven't edited in many months).--ragesoss (talk) 01:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Which admin are we talking about here? Sorry for being slow lately and didn't catch any wind of this news until now. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:18, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

BanyanTree was referring to Ta bu shi da yu in 2005. I don't know if there was any particular retirement that inspired this thread, but the attrition rate among once-active editors is high enough that there are always a few who recently left the project.--ragesoss (talk) 02:55, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I am talking about the recent departure of an admin, not the one that departed in 2005..... OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 12:39, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Why we would want to encourage editors to formally announce their retirement? Plus once they have been semi-officially recognized as being retired, that would be at least a minor disincentive for them to return. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:31, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

History Engine, "a Wikipedia for undergraduate scholars"

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "U. of Richmond Creates a Wikipedia for Undergraduate Scholars". The website, called History Engine, is a forum for collecting, tagging, and curating short topical essays on history. Described as "Wikipedia for students", "[e]xcept better", History Engine is an attempt to solve the problem that "the volume of historical scholarship get[s] in the way of our ability to make sense of history". It provides a venue for participating college history classes to publish assigned essays. According to the History Engine website, the project "subjects its contents to a careful academic screening process on the part of library staff, archivists, professors, and teaching assistants", essentially establishing an undergraduate analog to traditionally published historical scholarship.--ragesoss (talk) 01:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Here's an excerpt from the instructions to students:

"But the goal of the [student] assignment is also different: an episode should be built around a story, not an argument. The focus of your episode should be one primary source (or a couple of documents about the same family, issue, town, etc.). Your job will be to tell the story of this source and explain its significance to American life."

I looked at a half-dozen articles/assignments/episodes, which were one to four paragraphs in length. Here is one of the longer ones, for those interested. (It's one which doesn't seem to follow the instructions about focusing on a single source, perhaps reflecting the difficulty of getting academics in different colleges in universities to do things exactly the same.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:27, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Locr travel photobooks

This is really interesting. Locr lets you build photobooks online, adding maps and other geo related information to them, including relevant excerpts from Wikipedia articles. http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/Locr-intros-location-enabled-travel-photo-book_a1453.html There is a youtube video there that illustrates the process. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:46, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK formed

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

Wikimedia UK - the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom - has been reformed and is holding its first AGM on 26th April. Elections for the first permanent Board of Trustees are currently underway. AndrewRT(Talk) 23:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Draft arbitration policy

The Arbitration Committee has prepared a provisional draft of an updated arbitration policy for initial community review. All editors are invited to examine the text and to provide any comments or suggestions they may have via one of the two methods specified on the draft page.

[[Sam Korn]] ^(smoddy) 11:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

"Wikipedia-generation not ready for university"

(translated from Dutch by MacGyverMagic) Spits News, April 8, 2009:

The "Wikipedia-youth" is not ready for a university education. First-year students are immature, rely too much on internet sources like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and they expect success without making too much of an effort. That is the outcome of a Canadian poll of 2000 professors.

Over 55 percent of them believe students are less well-prepared than three years ago. " They see something on the internet and copy it," says professor Brian Brown in the Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen. According to him solid research is hard to find among students. Brown is the chairman of the confederation of universities in the Canadian province of Ontario.

Earned

The current youth culture of self confidence, which makes the youths believe they can handle everything, means they no longer know the word 'failure'. They think that because their curiculum is paid for, they 'earn' good grades.

I think a response to this bollocks would be in place. Especially since it's based on the personal opinions of the professors rather than solid research of facts which they seem to find so important. The irony! Let's start with the choice of students. Obviously first-years are a bad choice because they haven't been thought how to handle sources that's something those professors should be instilling themselves. As for the second paragraph of the article: the feeling they can handle everything is commonly found in young adults and a medical fact of the brain. I doubt anyone in their right mind would agree with the second sentence... - 87.211.75.45 (talk) 09:00, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Here's the entry in the Ottawa Citizen itself: [14] - 87.211.75.45 (talk) 09:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

AFD discussions extended to 7 days

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

You might want to have something in the Signpost about the change; see Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Proposal to change the length of deletion discussions to 7 days, which passed today. –Drilnoth (T • C) 03:03, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

"Scale-free topology of the interlanguage links in Wikipedia"

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

Physics-based paper on arXiv investigating the "Scale-free topology of the interlanguage links in Wikipedia" by Łukasz Bolikowski: [15]. Mike Peel (talk) 15:17, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Licensing update vote begins

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/License_vote

The licensing update vote has begun. Because of issues with how central notices function, not everyone is yet seeing the announcement but the vote is live and can be accessed via Special:SecurePoll/vote/1. Dragons flight (talk) 20:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation joins protest against Obama's RIAA appointments

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/News_and_notes

David Kravets: Obama: Stop Filling Administration with RIAA Insiders Wired.com, April 2, 2009

The Wikimedia Foundation, together with 18 other public interest groups, library associations, and trade associations representing the technology, consumer electronics, and telecommunications industries (among them the Internet Archive, Public Knowledge, the American Library Association and Educause) has signed an open letter to U.S. president Barack Obama expressing concern that

several of your appointees to positions that oversee the formulation and implementation of IP [ intellectual property ] policy have, immediately prior to their appointments, represented the concentrated copyright industries

(Wired indicates that two of these are the former Recording Industry Association of America attorneys Donald Verrilli Jr. and Tom Perrilli who were appointed to two of the highest ranking positions in the US Department of Justice (Associate Deputy Attorney General and Associate Attorney General), which subsequently already sided with the RIAA in an important lawsuit [16].) The letter asks Obama

to consider that individuals who support overly broad IP protection might favor established distribution models at the expense of technological innovators, creative artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and an increasingly participatory public. Overzealous expansion and enforcement of copyright, for example, can quash innovative information technologies, the development and marketing of new and useful devices, and the creation of new works, as well as prohibit the public from accessing and using its cultural heritage.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikia considering GFDL to CC-by-sa switch

Wikia, which had been silent on the issue until now, has mooted the possibility of updating their licenses from GFDL to CC-by-sa. See http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Licensing_update .--ragesoss (talk) 16:15, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

WMF announces "Letter of Support"

Not sure WHERE Sue actually announced this, but sounds interesting regardless. http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/2009/04/letter-of-support.html --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Might also be a good idea to get clarification on what a 'letter of support' actually is. Raul654 (talk) 19:52, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Foundation hires Chief Program Officer

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-20/News_and_notes

The Foundation has announced the hire of Jennifer Riggs as Chief Program Officer, a position responsible for "all non-technical program activities such as volunteer recruitment and public outreach."--ragesoss (talk) 14:07, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

April 16-30 2009

Wikimania 2010 delay

The bidding procces was due to be closed on or before 16th April. [17] Either the Wikimania 2010 jury are following a much more strict decision making process, or they are having a hard time chosing beetween the bids. IMHO Amsterdam and Gdańsk currently have made the most well organised and interesting bids and it might be difficult to choose between one of them, with the Oxford bid being slightly behind.Mieciu K (talk) 12:57, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I have a conflict of interest here, since I'm moderating the jury, but the fact that the jury is late doesn't mean much -- the jury has been late each of the last three years :) Anyway this is maybe newsworthy for a quick mention but nothing more than that until the bid actually does get chosen, imho. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 19:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia opts out of Phorm trial

Via wikitech blog. Reported on wired, El Reg and others. Nanonic (talk) 14:22, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Preliminary results of UNU-Merit survey

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-20/News_and_notes

Only 13% of Wikipedia editors are female, and the average editor is a twentysomething. Skomorokh 17:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Mapping the Contents in Wikipedia

The Augmented Social Cognition Research Group at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC): "What topics are the most well-represented? Where topic areas have the most conflict?"

Turns out that "philosophy" and "religion" have generated 28% of the conflicts each. This is despite the fact that they were only 1% and 2%, respectively, of the total distribution of topics.

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Google books settlement

Slightly OT but relevant to us, I think: [18]. This happened last week but I'm going to put off writing about it for a week, no time to properly research atm. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 03:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Dutch museums cooperate with Commons photographers

http://www.nieuwsuitamsterdam.nl/en/2009/04/volunteers-put-art-online-wikipedia --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Physicians using Wikipedia

"Nearly 50% of US physicians going online for professional purposes are visiting Wikipedia for health and medical information, especially condition information" and "only about 10% of the 1,900 physicians surveyed created new posts or edited existing posts on Wikipedia, the study found." http://www.mmm-online.com/Docs-look-to-Wikipedia-for-condition-info-Manhattan-Research/article/131038/ (mmm-online.com) - Banyan Tree 05:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

ArbCom case makes it to the news

I wouldn't want to make this a story to be included anytime soon, but, yeah, it's happened. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Workshop#Participation of newly registered users and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Greek nationalist canvassing off-wiki. And I'm one of the lucky parties involved in this one. Oooohhh my head.... John Carter (talk) 19:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Art

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-27/In_the_news

Apparently the WMF is suing some artists for cybersquatting [19] . Samuell Lift me up or put me down 21:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

No, they're not. Some performance artists, with a history of using Wikipedia inappropriately for non-encyclopedic purposes, were running a website that was ambiguous about their relation to Wikipedia (namely, none). The WMF sent them a cease and desist letter (the gentlest "demand letter" one can possibly write is how Mike Godwin, the letter's author, described it.), and they agreed to put up a disclaimer saying they are not affiliated with us. Raul654 (talk) 21:20, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Read the original letter and make up your own mind. It certainly appears to be threatening to a non-lawyer (emphasis in original): "... please let me know in writing by April 6, 2009, if you will transfer <wikipediaart.org> to Wikimedia and cease using the WIKIPEDIA trademark". Perhaps a lawyer would find it gentle according to their own standards. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 21:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh p-s-shaw. The letter is asking them nicely to stop using the name. It does have to set a timeframe though. Would you have been happier with "some time in the next thousand years"? The real world has its own constraints, including laches (IANAL). How much more non-threatening can "stop doiing this" get? Smile everyone, we're part of the artwork! Franamax (talk) 23:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Consider if the shoe were on the other foot, and such a letter had been sent to Wikipedia, with phrases like "investigate whether your actions violate (legal cite), (legal cite), (legal cite), etc, etc, etc, ...". Can you argue to me with a straight face that there wouldn't be a massive hue and cry about NO LEGAL THREATS!!!, and anyone who talked about relative gentleness wouldn't be ruthlessly mocked for cluelessness and not-getting it? This is one of the most blatant double-standards in Wikipedia insider/outsider treatment I've seen in a while. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 23:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

"No legal threats" is a user conduct policy for on-wiki behavior, not a general principle for the Foundation; in fact, it explicitly directs people to contact the Foundation about legal matters involving Wikipedia itself rather than the conduct of specific users. That's why, instead of community members threatening the users who came to Wikipedia to instigate their little bit of performance art, the issue was brought to the attention of the Foundation, and handled by the WMF lawyer and the Wikipedia Art people directly. On the mailing list, some Wikipedians have been arguing over 'gentleness' of the letter, but it's sort of moot now; Wikipedia Art has put up a disclaimer, and WMF is satisfied. Please, let's not make this page another venue for extending the performance.--ragesoss (talk) 00:10, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Some more coverage. Skomorokh 04:54, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

France Telecom’s Orange has partnered with Wikimedia

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-27/News_and_notes

In the news, [20],[21], i guess 2008 was the last year with volunteer donations..... Mion (talk) 20:15, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I would have thought that was unlikely. Presumably the WMF will be revealing the terms of the deal in due course. -- The Anome (talk) 22:25, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

It was announced on Foundation-l and the Wikimedia blog [22] a few days ago. Dragons flight (talk) 22:28, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I thought Wikia was the commercial entitity, but it seems Wikimedia wants to play that role as well, thats Novell a commercial Non-profit, good luck with it, i'm out. Mion (talk) 06:03, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia has been involved with things like this before now, e.g., with Answers.com. Basically, (if it's along similar lines) it means Orange pays for a priority feed and the right to say "This article brought to you by Wikipedia" when they serve up content through their web portal or mobile platform. It shouldn't have any impact on users unless they are Orange customers, and even then it will only be additional Wikimedia project content available in new places. Involvement with commercial corporations has been going on for a while.--ragesoss (talk) 14:03, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikia is a completely different entity from the WMF. -- The Anome (talk) 09:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Its contrary to the role of a charity that lives from donations, other telecoms might donate for free for the good cause, thats thrown away now because WMF is advertised together with Orange, you cant have both, in this way they are killing the free donations and get hooked up in commercial company interests witch are not for the good of the Wikipedia community. But quick money is appealing , yes. Mion (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

See ragesoss' comments above: this kind of activity is not a new development, and there has not been any perceptible impact to donations in the past. Nor does it affect the WMF's status: nonprofit charitable organizations are perfectly entitled to raise money by activities such as this, providing the money made from the activity is spent on their charitable goals. -- The Anome (talk) 08:07, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

That its not a new development doesn't make it right, you have to proof that it doesn't have an impact on donations, which you can't because other telecoms and multinationals wont donate to this project anymore, the only thing thats happening is that the WMF is building the commercial cathedral with a few companies around it instead of the bazaar model, but i have another approach, if this strategy is right, show me the statistics that volunteer contributions and small donateurs are rising.... Mion (talk) 01:22, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

You're speculating. No one has shown that this type of deal has either a positive or negative effect on overall donations. If we were receiving a large donation stream from a competitor of Orange, certainly we would think twice about partnering with them - but we're not. Dcoetzee 01:34, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm speculating ?, first volunteer contributions are heavily down, secondly, its not only other telecoms, but other multinationals as well, WMF broadcasted it would work as a non profit, and now its going commercial ? and should we trust that ? Mion (talk) 01:40, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, speculating. If donations are down (evidence of which you have not presented), that doesn't prove anything about why they're down - the most likely reason to me seems to be that people donate less during a recession. As for trust, commercial entities are not inherently evil; it's deceptive and exploitative practices that are evil. This is all very much in the open, and no one is going to reach the conclusion that Orange is influencing our content. Dcoetzee 01:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Dont twist my words Dcoetzee Mion (talk) 02:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

for the people who follow the news : Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Orange_Wikimedia_partnership Mion (talk) 02:25, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

←The WMF has more money now rather than less (money is now available for some individual WMF chapters), and if they start running out, I'm sure they'll let us know. I don't see the mechanism that would corrupt, or even influence, Wikipedian content as a result of taking money from Orange. None of the people who write and improve articles care what Orange is doing, AFAIK. - Dank (formerly Dank55) (push to talk) 03:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment. What exactly is "co-branding" in the context of this Orange Wikimedia partnership? Maybe the Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost can flesh out some of the details in their next newsletter. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:19, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Academic study of the search impact of Wikipedia's coverage of medical topics

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-27/In_the_news

Abstract, comment from Wikimedian. Skomorokh 04:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Somewhat tangentially-related: nearly half of American doctors researching conditions online use Wikipedia. The article contains more interesting factoids. Skomorokh 05:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like we need to make the medical disclaimer more prominent. MER-C 11:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I concur. Skomorokh 04:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This AP article is about the same study I presume? Mentions Michael Laurent and Tim Vickers by name. Steven Walling (talk) 22:58, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Further adventures in legal land

A ruling that Wikipedia could be relied upon as a source is overturned in New Jersey.[23][24] Skomorokh 05:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Attack on BLP subject predicted in advance

According to this article in the LA Times, shortly before human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov was assaulted on Mar 31/Apr 1, his Russian Wikipedia entry was edited to say that he had been killed in an attack. Here's the article history for his Russian article. I can't read Russian but perhaps someone who can could look at it and verify if this actually occurred. Cla68 (talk) 23:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

See above. Skomorokh 19:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Some assorted news

From Geek.com: Report: MDs could inject Wikipedia with a syringe of accuracy.
Apparently, there's also a book titled Stupedia: The Most Useless Facts on Wikipedia (ISBN 9789185869466). [25] Entirely misstates the purpose of Wikipedia, in my view, but it may be worth looking to see if a book review can be done.

bibliomaniac 15 The annual review... 23:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Original Sun "story" here. Nanonic (talk) 00:23, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Amazon has it-Ravedave (talk) 01:16, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I've added it to the review desk. Once a few people sign up to review it, I'll contact the publisher to see if we can get some review copies before the official release (which is not until September).--ragesoss (talk) 16:26, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

May 1-15 2009

I'm sorry, I don't know where to add this link: Parallel article writing contest in 3 WPs. Avjoska (talk) 20:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

It is almost ready to use in any part of Signpost now. Avjoska (talk) 17:48, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:Update

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-04/News_and_notes

The April update of all content policy, deletion policy and enforcement policy pages and all the general style guidelines is done, and I'll try to get the updates done on the first of each month from now on. - Dank (formerly Dank55) (push to talk) 03:45, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Found this just now, by accident. Very useful. How about putting a link to the page in every issue of the Signpost?--Goodmorningworld (talk) 20:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

It only gets updated on a monthly basis, so the plan is to mention the new updates in the first issue after they get made each month. I had intended to make sure this happened for earlier months, but it slipped by until Dank's note.--ragesoss (talk) 21:14, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

"Wikipedia article's role in attempt to solve 60 year-old mystery"

People may be interested to hear the role the article Taman Shud Case is playing in an attempt to solve the 60 year old case. The case itself has everything: The Cold War, mysterious ciphers, red herrings aplenty, a strange cast of characters and at the centre of it all, a dead man with no name or even a cause of death. I'm the main editor of the article and have been trading information on the case with a team of Adelaide University academics as they seek to crack the code and exhume the body to solve the case.

My day job is hack journo so I can write the article although I would be referring to myself in the third person, which could look odd. Otherwise someone else could write and interview Professor Derek Abbott (who is leading the Adelaide Uni team) and me. Any questions, fire away. --Roisterer (talk) 05:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

that sounds amazing! I don't think it's a problem if you want to throw together an article yourself... or if not perhaps you can help lay out the facts of the case for someone else to write about. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:35, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

2500 Featured articles

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-11/News_and_notes

Just in case you managed to miss that headline, relayed at WP:ANN. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 15:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Hoax

A Wikipedia hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world. The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died at the end of March."[26] Lectonar (talk) 12:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Apparently the uncited quote remained in the article for 24 hours despite our BLP policies. Kaldari (talk) 17:58, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

So do BLP policies apply to dead people? ;) Conicidentally, today's Dilbert is of interest.--194.106.220.83 (talk) 12:03, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, BLP policies do apply to recently dead people. Kaldari (talk) 19:09, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I've just looked at the BLP policy and its requirements re BDP are that they "must still comply with all wikipedia policies", not that they need any special attention compared to, say, a frog species or a chemical compound. Still, after reminiscing on some horror films from 30 years ago I reckon one shouldn't get on the wrong side of potential zombies.--94.196.92.246 (talk) 09:32, 9 May 2009 (UTC) (a.k.a. 194.106.220.83)

Also appeared on The Register. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:13, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia for Journalists & Bloggers

Yesterday, I gave a presentation on Wikipedia for journalists and bloggers at the Portland WikiWednesday, which was followed by a panel including myself, Pete Forsyth and two local journalists. Today, my slides from the presentation are featured on the front page of Slideshare. Steven Walling (talk) 21:17, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

"Citizen Sanger" - Larry Sanger interview in _Hot Press_

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-11/In_the_news

"Citizen Sanger" I will simply quote their summary - "In an exclusive interview, LARRY SANGER - widely credited as co-founder of Wikipedia - takes issue with a number of comments made by ex-colleague Jimmy Wales in Hot Press recently, and explains why his new online encyclopedia, Citizendium, will eventually conquer cyberspace." (paywall'ed) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 20:01, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

A shame about the paywalling. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:22, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Jimmy on Web 2.0 advertising

How Consumer Generated Content Is Changing Advertising - A video of an Interview with Jimmy, WebProNews discusses advertising in the age of user generated content. A small blurp on Wikia Search is also present. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:20, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

One of our images used by the BBC

Compare the people at the bottem of File:Rodina mat zovet.jpg and this bbc image.Geni 22:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

This image is now up for deletion on commons, on grounds of being an unfree image due to Freedom of Panorama restrictions. -mattbuck (Talk) 08:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Dilbert mentions WP

Featured. Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-05-11/In_the_news

See today's strip. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 03:27, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I guess this is something for the new page patrollers to watch out for too, right? John Carter (talk) 14:54, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

New BAG member

User:Tinucherian has been promoted to become a member of the BAG. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 11:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Report on the state of bracket-led disambiguation published

A small scale report has been published : introduction, findings. It builds on work done in January 2007 and looks at changes that have happened between. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 11:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Collaboration with Chemicals Abstracts announced

WP:CHEMS has been working with Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society) for over a year now to free up some of their information. We have now got the go ahead to shout about it [27], so we shall do. Myself or Walkerma for more details, although I'll obviously try to add them here as well! Physchim62 (talk) 21:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

There's a dispatches piece at User:Physchim62/Signpost. Physchim62 (talk) 01:00, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

New someecards on Wikipedia

There's a new Someecards satirizing Wikipedia (direct link). Steven Walling (talk) 00:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Loves Art contest winners

Contest winners for Wikipedia Loves Art held in February have been announced. [28] --Aude (talk) 04:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, we've announced winners at 12 of the 15 participating institutions so far; still to come are winners from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New-York Historical Society and the Victoria and Albert Museum.--Pharos (talk) 18:02, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

May 16-31 2009

BBC Digital Planet

There was an article on this week's Digital Planet about the history of Wikipedia and trying to predict its future. There is no transcript available but the audio can be obtained at this link. Orderinchaos 13:01, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Flagged revisions update

Brion gave a quick update on wikitech-l on the status of flagged revisions for English Wikipedia:

Quick update:
Yes, we do plan to roll out an English Wikipedia test setup for Flagged Revs.

There's not yet a fixed schedule for it, but I'd like to see it up and running in production before Wikimania. :) [August]

Right now we're running round tidying up general things, getting the 1.15 release set up, and prepping to get our live sites updated to development trunk -- nice things are afoot like a total upgrade to the preferences backend which Werdna has done, yay!

As we get back up to speed, we'll want to coordinate w/ Aaron to confirm that we've got a configuration planned and that it'll look good, and get that test config on en.labs.wikimedia.org and test.wikipedia for a while before we roll it to en.wikipedia.

I'd also like to see folks ponder a bit on the final terminology for things -- we'd also like to roll out the Drafts extension (for saving your in-progress edit page in the background so you can return to it if you accidentally close it or your browser crashes), but Flagged Revs also uses the 'draft' terminology sometimes. We want to make sure we're not going to be looking too confusing having both of those things in the system.
-- brion

--ragesoss (talk) 19:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

WikiAlarm: offsite watchlist?

See http://wikialarm.com/ . Two related stories are the Jarre quotation hoax and the concept of "wiki circularity", where OR is picked up in reliable sources which are then used to source it. Some blog posts: [29] [30] [31] [32] Skomorokh 19:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikinews finishes its OR "Eurovision special"

As Europeans will know, the Eurovision Song Contest is now over. The "Eurovision special," which we started in February, is now over as well. We interviewed 13 past contestants, which is a record number of interviews for Wikinews in such a short time. Of those 13 past contestants, six were past winners (Anne Marie David '73, Nicole '82, Charlotte Perrelli '99, Niels Olsen '00, Marie N '02, and Ruslana '04). In addition, we got freely-licensed photographs when possible, so all those biographies now have photos. Most of the other singers we interviewed, Edsilia Rombley, Chiara, Jessica Garlick, Ani Lorak, Sirusho, Tajci and Hanna Pakarinen have new media if not just the interviews. Mike H. Fierce! 22:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, Mike. Do you have links to the relevant Wikinews pages? Skomorokh 22:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I just linked to the "Eurovision special" page up there, and it has links to all the interviews. Mike H. Fierce! 22:27, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Cheers (edit conflicted with your second post). Skomorokh 22:29, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec) For my final interview set (with eight singers), I had countering systemic bias in mind. Half of the eight interviewed in the final piece are from Eastern Europe or the Caucasus (Tajci is from Croatia, Marie N is from Latvia, Ani Lorak is from Ukraine and Sirusho is from Armenia). Mike H. Fierce! 22:30, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, the interviews with the final eight in the series were translated into nine different languages (Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian), another first for Wikinews in terms of sheer cross-wiki collaboration and translation. Since unlike on Wikipedia, Wikinews has a "newsworthiness" time limit of only a few days, and the interview sets were VERY large, this was a big feat for all involved and I can't thank them enough. Mike H. Fierce! 22:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Judge directs scary obsessive towards Wikipedia

It would be criminal not to include this funnier than The Onion "item" in the next Signpost :) --Goodmorningworld (talk) 13:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Not bad, but the bit about the "Star Wars discussion board" was off. Mike R (talk) 13:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Sweet shop swizzler claimed he had billions (but he only had hundreds and thousands)

An article from The Independent which mentions Wikipedia. ISD (talk) 14:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Open textbooks

in the Netherlands; in California -- phoebe / (talk to me) 05:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Licensing update vote result

The result of the licensing update poll has been announced: m:Licensing update/Result.

Dragons flight (talk) 05:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC) (for the Licensing Update Committee)

This morning a Foundation Resolution was added and now the migration plans are adopted and set to take effect June 15th. Dragons flight (talk) 18:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Heresy on BBC Radio 4

Tuesday's episode of Heresy, a comedy panel game on BBC Radio 4, had a section about Wikipedia and whether you can trust information on the Internet. David Mitchell made a spirited (and funny) defense. If you're in the UK, you can listen on iPlayer at [33] (available until next Tuesday). The relevant section starts at around 19m30s. the wub "?!" 17:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Victoria Coren, presenter, comments "Sadly, false information is put up on Wikipedia by saboteurs who frankly should have better things to do with their time. Luckily, it's then taken down by a team of dedicated, round-the-clock, voluntary moderators who frankly should have better things to do with their time." Defending Wikipedia, Mitchell replies "Wikipedia has become like a shortcut to a joke about it being rubbish, and that's not fair, because most things things on Wikipedia are completely true... and also, it's worth remembering that no reference work - no book at all - is necessarily true... You should question everything you read." Yes, a very spirited defence. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 14:30, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Also interesting to note that on their mini "Is Wikipedia true?" test, Wikipedia came out fighting. All of their chosen "facts" were indeed true, if you consider that for comedic effect "what the David Mitchell article said about you" was a little mis-represented and what the article actually did say much more closely resembled the truth. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 14:43, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Omar Khadr's sister met boyfriend on Wikipedia

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-marriage-thrust-into-the-public-eye/article1146437/

Khadr is a Canadian in Gitmo, and apparently his sister met her match on Wikipedia. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Chryon Operator:Television character generator for the various printed words that show up on the screen as you watch..

This was the occupation that was given for a two day winner on this weeks Jeopardy...(05/19/ and 05/20/09.

StringFunctions

Bug 6455 is closed as the StringFunctions extension is folded into ParserFunctions. After r50997 is pushed live to the Wikimedia wikis, templates will be able to make use of basic string-handling operations, such as len (string length) and replace. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:33, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

This sounds interesting. If it means what I think, it probably merits a full article in the Signpost explaining the new template possibilities. Anyone proficient with templates care want to take this on? Or at least flesh out some of the implications informally right here?--ragesoss (talk) 05:07, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Briefly:

#len: String length.
#sub: Generate substring specified by index and length.
#count: Number of times substring appears in a string.
#pos (#rpos) : Position of first (last) occurrence of substring in string.
#replace: Replace occurrences of a target substring with a new substring.
#explode: Break string into chunks and return a specified chunk.

Those functions, plus obvious derivatives, should cover most common string operations. String operations are limited to strings of 1000 characters or less. Dragons flight (talk) 06:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

That would mean the ability for templates (albeit with a performance hit) to manipulate strings passed to them automatically then. Incidentally, would these be subst: safe? And could #pos also be used like in some programming languages as a "contains" check? - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 08:57, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

This is added as a special section of this week's technology report, but don't think this requires a special story. --Aude (talk) 23:36, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The Museum of Curiosity on Radio 4

Wikipedia was mentioned on The Museum of Curiosity last night. It was mentioned by John Hodgman when he donated "Complete world knowledge" to the Museum and covered several encyclopedias, including Wikipedia. The episode is on the BBC iPlayer here. ISD (talk) 08:12, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Section starts around 18 minutes in and last approximately five minutes. Despite lamenting the idea he loves - the concept of the encyclopedia - as an "arrogant" one, Hodgman makes an exception for Wikipedia, on the grounds that it is the only encyclopedia which could actually succeed in containing everything. He also admits that it "is where most of everything [he] just said [about encyclopedias in history] was sourced". After Hodgman's piece, he and the presenters (Sean Lock and John Lloyd) briefly debate whether an encyclopedia should contain everything or merely everything worth knowing; Hodgman mentions the controversy that the Encyclopaedia Britannica found itself in for following the latter directive to the letter, but does not pass comment on Wikipedia's own notability guidelines. - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 08:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

100,000 articles on the Arabic Wikipedia

100,000 articles on the Arabic Wikipedia [34] --Aude (talk) 17:15, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Here's a translation of the announcement: "Finally, after a long wait, the Arabic Wikipedia has crossed the 100,000 article mark. Article #100,000 is "The Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts" [35] (of the University of Gabès in Tunisia), created by User م ض." --Aude (talk) 17:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed changes to the Featured picture process

I wondered if this ongoing discussion qualified as a tip, :-)

This star symbolizes the featured content on Wikipedia.

Please help determine the future of the Featured picture process. Discussions regarding the current issues affecting featured picture contributors can be found here. We welcome your input!

Maedin\^talk 18:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Sotomayor

The wonder of wiki mentioned on Huffpost. Nice to see someone saying something nice. Darrenhusted (talk) 09:34, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Navify

via techcrunch - Navify is a new site that lets users search for and display a Wikipedia article whilst also pulling in related Flickr and Youtube content. Something that has no doubt been attempted before but this one seems to work ok. My only complaint is related to 'Navify CEO Alan Rutledge says what triggered development was the thought: “If people around the world can help each other by building a free collaborative encyclopedia, couldn’t we make it more useful for everyone by illustrating it together?”' - which would be nice if we were the recipient of the images, but all it's doing is scraping content of various licences. Shame. Nanonic (talk) 22:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Biggest shame is that they have failed to attribute the authors of the images under a number of licenses (Excluding PD)! Bidgee (talk) 12:32, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The attribution issue has been fixed after I sent them a email about it. Bidgee (talk) 07:10, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

creator of Wikipedia's first logo didn't know he was

Bjørn Smestad, the creator of Wikipedia's first official logo (right), which was in use for about eight months in 2001, has come forward as User:Bjornsm. Smestad, a teacher of mathematics instruction in Norway, had responded to a logo contest held for Nupedia, the precursor to Wikipedia, in about 2000. However, his submission lost the Nupedia contest and Smestad, who states he was never very active on either Nupedia or Wikipedia, was unaware that Jimmy Wales had chosen his logo to replace the American flag placeholder image used when Wikipedia was started. It was not until User:Mosca dug through some old web archives to reconstruct the history of the logo that Smestad's role was uncovered and mentioned in March 2009, at which point Smestad stumbled upon his previously unknown claim to fame after Googling himself in May 2009. Smestad states, "The two black vertical lines were included in an effort to make the logo seem like an 'N'. However, it is ironical that while I probably didn't succeed too much in making it appear like an 'N', that may be precisely why it could be used for Wikipedia," and remarks, "this may therefore be one of my most welcome failures ever." (Smestad's blog post) - Banyan Tree 01:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

BBC uses wiki image

The BBC used File:Dendroaspis polylepis head.jpg in their slideshow on the world's deadliest creatures. The photo, released into the public domain by User:TimVickers, was unattributed. - Banyan Tree 07:15, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, previous BBC-used image, File:Rodina mat zovet.jpg, is now up for deletion on commons on grounds of being an unfree image due to Freedom of Panorama restrictions. -mattbuck (Talk) 18:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Images released to public domain usually doesn't require attribution. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 13:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Church of Scientology news

From The Register -mattbuck (Talk) 08:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

and Huffpost. Darrenhusted (talk) 18:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

They seem to conclude that Scientology editors were banned from Wikipedia. The ArbCom decision was to ban one user, whereas the others are just "topic-banned" from Scientology-related articles, but may otherwise still edit Wikipedia. (To give them the benefit of doubt, perhaps they were confused because the editor banned was "Justallofthem".) Mind matrix 18:37, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Story is at Wired too. Mind matrix 18:40, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Now general, including AFP, CNET, Telegraph, etc etc. FishbowlLA offers a short interview with a expert professor on Scientology for context. (Why is the only media source doing original journalism a blog? What sort of crazy world do we live in?) National Review wins the award for most amusing coverage with "Wikipedia Breaks Scientologists' Editing Pencils". Astonishingly, much of the coverage is linking to and quoting from Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Scientology, which may be a first. - Banyan Tree 02:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Update: Just noticed the guy interviewed by FishbowlLA is named in the case as StephenAKent (talk · contribs) - Banyan Tree 02:58, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

ABC News offers a long original article. - Banyan Tree 03:17, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Anyone want to volunteer to write this up for the Signpost? It ought to have its own story.--ragesoss (talk) 05:00, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

The Dongle of Donald Trefusis

An article from Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten which was reporting on The Dongle of Donald Trefusis mentioned the Wikipedia article covering the show, which is strange when you consider it was created yesterday. The quote is "På Wikipedia kan man lese at den populære Frys album er en blanding av podcast, lydbok og radiomonolog, og er både skrevet og lest opp av multitalentet Stephen Fry." It roughly translates as "On Wikipedia you can read that the popular Freeze album is a mix of podcasts, audiobooks and radio monolog, and are both written and spoken by multi-talented Stephen Fry." ISD (talk) 17:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

June 1-15 2009

Bing

Microsoft's new bing.com search engine seems to have a taste for returning Wikipedia articles at the top, or near the top, of its search results listings for a wide range of terms. It might be interesting to compare this with Google's rankings for the same searches. -- The Anome (talk) 09:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

More on this: from the Register on 4th June 2009 -- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/04/bing_and_powerset/ -- quote:

According to a blog post from Scott Prevost, general manager of Microsoft's Powerset division, the division has tweaked Microsoft's primary search engine in certain "subtle" ways. But its main contribution is a secondary engine that searches nothing but Wikipedia. In essence, Microsoft's has taken Powerset's existing Wikitool and latched it to the Bing torso.

-- The Anome (talk) 10:23, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Bigipedia

BBC Radio 4 is to broadcast a new comedy series called Bigipedia which is described as "a malevolent mix between Google, Microsoft and Wikipedia". Co-creator Nick Doody wrote that, "a piss-take of Wikipedia, with all the same inaccuracies, written by nutters". It is to be recorded next week and broadcast this July. More information is reported at Chortle.co.uk and Pozzitive (see news section). ISD (talk) 14:06, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

25000 articles on is.wp

The Icelandic Wikipedia reached 25k articles recently - see [36]. -- Schneelocke (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Block graphs

I'm a little bit late with this, sorry... but this is kind of interesting. The folks at RationalWiki have been keenly following the user and IP range block statistics at Conservapedia - to put it in easily digestible vernacular terms, there's one sysop there who likes to eat breakfast and then kill a country. In May 22nd, they made a survey which also included the range blocks in Wikipedia. And made xkcd-inspired Peano-curve maps of the blocked IP spaces. Right here. Regrettably the images don't have licences specified so we can't just copy them here, but the concept was pretty neat, and the differences between the two wikis and the blocking policies are quite staggering =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 20:17, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

How did they get the list of blocked ranges? Raul654 (talk) 22:23, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I never knew that Halliburton owned 1/256th of the internet. Kaldari (talk) 22:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm assuming they just parsed Special:BlockList. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 10:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Colbert on Scientology arbitration

The first segment on The Colbert Report for June 4 was about the Scientology arbitration decision. Colbert mocks the usernames of arbitrators Carcharoth, FloNight, Newyorkbrad, and Wizardman, and says "They're just like the Supreme Court, only their robes are bathrobes."--ragesoss (talk) 13:56, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Study of coverage in the English Wikipedia of 40 large Italian companies

"The research looked at the companies of the S&P Mib 40 index of the Milan stock exchange to see how well they were covered on the English language Wikipedia." The [report contained] pointers ... as to how companies can better engage with the Wikipedia community in order to improve their profiles." (The executive summary, available online lists the "top five tips".) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

New Zealand MP's staffer blocked

Stuff.co.nz reports that a New Zealand Parliament IP was blocked after attempts by a staffer for New Zealand MP Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga to remove material the MP's Wikipedia article. Asked for comment, Lotu-Iiga described Wikipedia as "an open forum for people to sabotage or write remarks about politicians".--ragesoss (talk) 04:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

The [edit] button

Thanks for mentioning the proposal to move the [edit] button in the Signpost of 25 May. I'd appreciate it if another mention could be given in the next edition of Signpost. I appreciate it may be too late for tomorrow's edition, so would be happy with next weeks edition. This issue needs the input of as many editors as possible. Mjroots (talk) 06:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia 'sentinel' quits after using alias to alter entries

Another article on the David Boothroyd story. Currently the 2nd most read article on independent.co.uk, and wrong in countless ways. Choice quotes include "Wikimedia UK, the British arm of the American company" [37] the wub "?!" 09:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Ouch. What an example of really sloppy journalism. --seav (talk) 02:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

NYT on Scientology

I haven't been following the Scientology case in much detail, or, indeed, The Signpost's coverage of it, but a link on Milhist took me to this New York Times report, published yesterday (Sunday), which seems (to me) to be more balanced that some of the reports that came out in the hours after the decision. They've got interviews, and seem to be more factually correct (blocks vs. bans; right to appeal). - Jarry1250 ^{(t, c)} 11:40, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Picasso edit

Don't know if anyone noticed or if I should go elsewhere with this one. User:Jeanfuzzy made their first and so far only edit on Talk:Main Page at 01:36 on 8 June 2009. The edit in question concerned "some articles" about Picasso, "such as some erotic drawings and a picture of three naked women standing up". The user asked if they might keep them or dump them and said they had received them after a friend had passed away... innocent enough, until I read this less than twenty-four hours later. Obviously I'm aware that the user may have indulged in a prank or maybe has no relationship with this at all but I thought I would point it out nonetheless... the theft was apparently discovered today though... the item has since been removed from Talk:Main Page by another user who felt it did not have any connection to the Main Page... --can dle •wicke 23:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Um, I don't really see a strong connection here.--Pharos (talk) 17:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Google News experimenting with links to Wikipedia on its homepage

I don't know if you saw it, but Google News is apparently experimenting with links to Wikipedia. -- Luk ^talk 13:04, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Paid editing

RfC and Register story. Cla68 (talk) 05:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales: No one can make money from Wikipedia... -mattbuck (Talk) 06:03, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

See also User:Ha!/paid editing adverts, Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#Nichalp, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brad Sugars. IMHO this is the most important story (from a community viewpoint) this week, and it is a bit unfortunate that (except for a brief mention of the RfC in the Discussion report section which doesn't explain the background) we don't have it covered yet.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:54, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Added some lines to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-06-15/News and notes. Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Coverage of the Usability Initiative

Wrote a post for ReadWriteWeb on the design/mockups from the initiative, and the potential for improvements to affect more than just Wikipedia. (Read here) Steven Walling (talk) 23:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Swedish Aftonbladet article

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet hails Wikipedia's up to date coverage and admonishes universities and colleges to allocate resources to improve Wikipedia.[38] Siawase (talk) 11:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

June 16-30 2009

Study on Wikipedia vandalism

This recent report (or a summary) might be interesting to your readers: User:Aetheling/Vandalism survival. —Aetheling (talk) 18:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC).

Paid editing in the news

[39] (CNN). hmwith τ 14:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

British Library makes available online 2 million articles from 19th/20th century newspapers

Site
The Guardian article

This massively increases the number of topics Wikipedia can now cover in accordance with the WP:GNG. Free access for UK students, some public libraries and some foreign institutions. Skomorokh 08:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

It could be a massive help for sourcing material in Wiktionary. But it's a paywall. *deadpan* woot. Circeus (talk) 22:47, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

HSC students to get Wikipedia course.

-- Taku (talk) 02:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

This article is from 2008. It somehow popped back up as a supposedly new article in Google News.--ragesoss (talk) 02:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Ouch. -- Taku (talk) 11:26, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Outline of Knowledge

An up and coming project aiming to cover and index every element of human knowledge. Outlines function like a contents, outlining all wikipedia has to offer on that topic. Having created outlines for all main topics and countries and US states etc. we plan to continue building, in collaboration with relevant wikiprojects and slowly link outlines into the mainspace.

For a list of hundreds of outlines, see Portal:Contents/Outline of knowledge. For more information (including why does Wikipedia need outlines? and what are outlines?) see Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge, contact me or speak to User:The Transhumanist.

Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 11:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Rfc on self-elected groups in Wikipedia

On the offchance that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Self electing groups is going strong by the time of you next issue, could you include it please? I'm conscious that not everybody reads the village pump or other notcieboards where I've just spammed this. MickMacNee (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Bot creating large number of erroneous algae articles

Two IP editors (69.226.103.13 and 213.214.136.54) raised the alarm that a bot (User:Anybot) have created thousands of algae articles with incorrect and/or factual information errors. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 15:34, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

MeatballWiki

If anyone is interested in writing it, I think it might be useful to have a Signpost piece about MeatballWiki and its relevance to the Wikipedia community. Lots of newer users are not familiar with it, so a sort of guide or overview of important insights would be worthwhile, I think.--ragesoss (talk) 17:09, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you're overestimating the importance of Meatball wiki. It was marginally relevant to Wikipedia in 2003, and not at all today. I'd be surprised if 1 in 10 new users (2006-and-after) have even heard of it. Raul654 (talk) 19:01, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying it was super important, but it's still interesting and, at least in my opinion, worthwhile to let more people know about. If others don't think it's worth writing about, or if people think it shouldn't be in the Signpost, that's fine; this was just an offhand idea.--ragesoss (talk) 20:26, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It shows up occasionally across various pages in project space. It would be interesting to trace the connections between the project. Personally, I never quite understood it myself. MeatBall Wiki itself does not make much sense to me at all. Circeus (talk) 22:52, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

It seems that MeatballWiki's influence on today's Wikipedia community is huge, but indirect: It influenced many early principles which were later taken for granted. This would explain why Wikipedians who joined in 2003 (like me) or later are not likely to have read its name in day-to-day policy discussion very often.

To quote from Andrew Lih's book "The Wikipedia Revolution":

MeatballWiki would prove to be instrumental in documenting online practices and, specifically, the new emerging wiki culture. Shah saw MeatballWiki as unique among other technology-oriented groups. "What differentiates Meatball-Wiki from many online meta-communities is that participants spend much of their time talking about sociology rather than technology, and when they do talk about technology, they do so in a social context." It would prove later to be a rich resource for Wikipedia, as that nascent community started to run into issues that MeatballWiki had documented and discussed at length.

Lih describes voting as one such issue, in the context of the misunderstanding of deletion discussions as votes (which crept in partly due to the "VfD" misnomer, which was later corrected by the rename to AfD, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-08-29/Roll with the changes): It was never considered a binding vote in order to discourage gaming [...] In fact, Wikipedia took its stance from the original MeatballWiki culture, where online communities have discouraged outright voting. Wikipedia’s stance was very similar: "Don’t vote on everything, and if you can help it, don’t vote on anything."

Another example Lih mentions are barnstars (Wikipedians adopted a convention of recognizing each other’s efforts, derived from the original MeatballWiki community. There, they believed that building an online community was similar to the traditional "barn raising" efforts of German-American farming communities in the 1800s ...).

"Right to leave" and (according to meta:Right to vanish) "Right to vanish" seem to be two other concepts which might have been taken from or at least influenced by Meatballwiki.

Meatballwiki's importance for Wikipedia's genesis was also recognized by the organizers of the June 2004 Wizards of OS conference, who invited Sunir Shah as one of three panelists about "Wikipedia & Co." - alongside Erik Möller and Jimmy Wales.[40]

So I think an Signpost article about MeatballWiki and Wikipedia would be a good thing, although some additional research would be useful to demonstrate the relationship in more detail.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:43, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

news: video editing to be imbedded in site

As well as drag and drop video placement, according to MIT's Technology Review. Already picked up in Reuters. I imagine that there is discussion on some email list. I'm mainly interested in hearing how the devs plan on implementing this without massive 2 Girls 1 Cup vandalism. - Banyan Tree 23:30, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Wiki sourced on 538

Sanford to Minneapolis? Not really more than a mention, but... -mattbuck (Talk) 09:47, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Citizendium Porting

Since you guys are going to cover the license switch, I thought you might be interested in this. Don't know if it is needed; CZ has only about 1000 approved articles, and many of their counterparts here in Wikipedia are already well-developed. (The exception being for instance Ancient Celtic music and Augustin Louis Cauchy, two articles greatly expanded with CZ materials.) -- Taku (talk) 10:54, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Just a minor point, but CZ's number of approved articles is actually closer to 100. And just over 11000 articles total. 189.105.109.94 (talk) 20:51, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Full-date unlinking bot

There is an RFC about a proposal for a bot to unlink some dates. There is already discussion in the RFC, but we could sure use some fresh voices. Date delinking has a small effect on each article, but affects many, so it is something the community should be aware of. --Apoc2400 (talk) 11:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

CNN article

Due to Michael Jackson's death, various websites were overloaded from numerous visitors. This CNN article talks about Jackson's Wikipedia article and the number of revisions in the first 24 hours as well as vandalism to his page. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 18:56, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

The Guardian comments on the edit wars following the many conflicting reports. Matthewedwards : Chat 00:35, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

To my knowledge, it is also the first time it was necessary to add a special "article=Michael Jackson" condition to Mediawiki in order to keep the servers from straining under the intense load. The live hack to keep our site running was discussed on wikitech-l. Dragons flight (talk) 07:06, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Some more sources and coverage, most from Death of Michael Jackson: Web slows after Jackson's death - BBC, broad coverage, Jackson: Did the internet buckle? - BBC blog, "But did the internet actually buckle? Well, there was some strain - but it seems to have come through well.", Michael Jackson Tops the Charts on Twitter - NY Times blog, Michael Jackson's death roils Wikipedia - CNET, some details on the early edit wars etc, Google thought Michael Jackson traffic was attack - CNET. Siawase (talk) 07:53, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

largest successful bulk AfD in the history of Wikipedia?

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anybot's algae articles resulted in the deletion of 4077 articles; possibly the largest successful bulk AfD ever? Hesperian 00:38, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Wales + admins colluded to omit news of NYT journalists kidnapping

Very interesting article in The New York Times about their efforts to keep news of reporter David Rohde's kidnapping by the Taliban in May 2008 out of the press. The history of the David_S._Rohde (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article is illuminating, as is the NOINDEXING of the article's talk page without explanation. Ominous portents. Skomorokh 04:00, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Ominous in what way? People made difficult decisions in an extremely unusual circumstance with real world life and death consequences. I don't see how one can say much about general practices based on such a specialized case. Dragons flight (talk) 07:03, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

This isn't the forum for discussing the moral hazard of stifling the media; if that's what you're looking for you might find these recent related discussions more fitting. Skomorokh 07:13, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Unless I misread you, your comments about "without explanation" and "ominous portents", etc. seem to be implying that the issue has some wider impact for Wikipedia beyond the very specialized circumstances of this specific case. And I would presume you'd want the Signpost to include a comment on that. The facts of the case are fairly simple, but editorializing about the larger implications for Wikipedia would be something else entirely. Personally, I don't really see that there is a larger issue — with respect to the functioning of Wikipedia — that would need to be discussed here beyond the facts of the extremely unusual specific case. Or am I misunderstanding the intent of your comments? Dragons flight (talk) 07:41, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

On a personal note, I am not related to David Rohde in any way that I am aware of. Robert Rohde aka Dragons flight (talk) 07:44, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

It's very clear that the incident has wider implications, but unless I am mistaken, the Signpost exists to disseminate information, not to editorialize. Skomorokh 13:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Also see coverage from TechCrunch and Mashable. There will likely be more, and the Mashable post in particular needs some correcting, hopefully in the comments. *cough* Steven Walling (talk) 09:44, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, if no other news organization has reported on the abduction, how can it be reflected in the BLP article without reliable sources? I think Wikipedia's policies would (or should) work here as it stands even without Jimbo's intervention. --seav (talk) 05:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

The complication is that it was reported by the Italian news agency AKI, whose report was picked up by several bloggers before AKI's article was blanked. See a pissed off anon trying to get multiple blogs referencing the AKI article into the wiki. Michael Yon, whose blog is arguably a credible source given his relevant expertise and publications, has some comments from a March post in which he has some independent reporting on the kidnapping that actually discusses the censorship on Wikipedia. In my experience, this would have been enough for a "Sources such as AKI and the blog of freelance reporter Michael Yon have reported that Rohde was kidnapped in November 2008, though there has been no supporting media coverage from other mainstream sources"-type mention in the article, if there hadn't been a decision to remove all such mention. Leaving aside the wider question of if the censorship was warranted, trying to absolve the responsibility of decision-makers by pointing to the BLP policy is a clear dodge in my opinion. - Banyan Tree 04:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Three million articles

Presumably everyone has noticed that we're approaching three million articles. Surprisingly there wasn't a three millionth topic pool, so I've created it: Wikipedia:Three-millionth topic pool. Stevage 05:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

GLAM - event and challenge

On August 6-7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting the GLAM Wiki as part of the leadup Wikimedia Australia is running the GLAM Challenge. The challenge which is open to all editors not just Australians, purpose is to improve article content and we are offering real prizes which will be posted to the winners. Gnan garra 12:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)