Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2007-12-03
Signpost interview: New Executive Director Sue Gardner
This week, Sue Gardner, who has served as special adviser to the Foundation since July, was named the Foundation's new Executive Director. In a mailing list post on Wednesday, Foundation Chair Florence Devouard said,
I think the title of the message says it all :-) ... There is very little to add really, but for the fact we have been very pleased with Sue's job so far (and have no reason to expect different for the future), so it is a real pleasure to announce this appointment.
The official resolution was approved last week and posted on the Foundation's web site on Wednesday. Four members voted in favor of the resolution, with two members (Michael Davis and Kat Walsh) missing, and Erik Möller recusing.
The announcement of Gardner's new position comes at a busy time for the Wikimedia Foundation, with the fundraiser just over halfway done, and the office's move to San Francisco beginning to take form. This week, the Signpost interviews Sue Gardner:
Wikipedia Signpost: First of all, you were officially named to the position of Executive Director this week -- congratulations!
- Sue Gardner: Thank you :-)
As Executive Director, what are your immediate duties for the Foundation?
- I have two major immediate priorities right now: the relocation, and ensuring we’re okay financially.
- Financial stability is obviously critical – we can’t accomplish anything if we’re bogged down with money problems. So a lot of my attention is going towards fundraising. We have the online fundraiser underway right now, and that is important. And there are other initiatives as well – we’re doing some major donor cultivation, and I am hiring a head of fundraising whose job will be to develop and execute a sustainability strategy for us, etc.
- The second big priority is the relocation: it’s my job to get us safely and successfully to San Francisco. Which involves more than just finding us an office and buying some furniture; it involves a fair amount of hiring too. You may know that when we decided to move to San Francisco we invited all the current U.S.-based staff to come with us. But obviously many people are in no position to do that - they have husbands, they have kids in school, and other constraints. So we will need to replace several of the current staff, and we will also be hiring for a few new positions, like the fundraising one. That's really exciting and fun work, building what is in some ways a new organization.
- There are a bunch of other smaller urgent priorities – but those are the two major ones.
Prior to accepting the position as special advisor and then Executive Director, you served as the senior director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's news site, cbc.ca. What did that job entail, and how is it similar to what you do with the Wikimedia Foundation today?
- At the CBC I ran the website. Which meant I had responsibility for the strategy, the money, the staffing, the quality of the content, technology, usability and accessibility – all that.
- There are some interesting similarities between that and what I am doing now. First and most obvious are the public service element and the informational element. Both jobs are fundamentally about trying to support people in getting information that they want and need. The idea is –in my view- that better-informed people are able to make better decisions and live somewhat richer and more interesting lives. So that's the core of the work at both places, and that’s the part that matters most to me.
- Beyond that, they are both obviously large and popular websites. CBC.CA was the most popular news media site in Canada, and the Wikimedia sites are in the top 10 most popular sites in the world. That implies similarities in the work – popular websites draw a lot of media attention and are often subject to criticism, particularly by people who feel a sense of ownership and personal investment in them. Popularity means capital planning is important, technical stability is important, redundancy is important; that kind of thing.
- And both places, in my opinions, require a similar managerial style. The CBC workforce is about 85% unionized, and the union there is quite strong. There are some interesting parallels between a strong union shop, and a largely volunteer-driven organization. In both, command-and-control style management just doesn't work. And that is fine with me: I'm not particularly inclined that way regardless. In leading at both organizations, you need to lean quite heavily on influence, on persuasion, and sometimes as well -not always!- rational argument. Some people are very uncomfortable with that, but I like it.
While the fall fundraiser has raised over $1,000,000 so far, this number falls well short of the $4.6 million in the 2007-2008 Planned Spending Distribution. How will the Foundation ensure that the budget is balanced?
- Yes, the online fundraiser will not cover our operating costs - nor did we expect it to. And that's okay. We have a couple of major donations coming in within the next few weeks: they’ve been committed to, and will arrive in the bank before the new year. I will be going on a mini-tour of potential major donors, starting in the middle of December. We’ll probably do another one in January. And the German chapter is doing its own fundraising, and will be pitching in to buy 15 new squid servers for Amsterdam – which is fabulous and will be very helpful.
- In the short term, I will need to focus quite a bit of my energy on fundraising, to ensure we’re okay for the coming year. In the medium and long term though, I am not particularly worried. We are going to have a head of fundraising, whose job will be –mainly- to cultivate major donations. And I think she or he will have a lot of fun in that role, and will be able to be really successful. Lots of people love Wikipedia: there is an awful lot of warmth and good feeling towards it, and also – to a lesser extent because they are lesser-known - towards the other projects. And I understand that. If I were a philanthropist, I would want to put my money towards initiatives that were able to be effective on a shoestring. And there is no denying the impact Wikimedia is having with a ridiculously small staff.
- I would also want to encourage philanthropists to attend Wikimania. It was incredibly inspiring to me to see those hundreds of very very different people, all voluntarily coming together for no reason other than to do something exciting and positive and good.
As a follow-up to that question: You mentioned "major donors", whose checks should be coming in by the new year. Without revealing anything confidential, can you give us an idea of how much these donations will be for?
- Sure. The total is expected to be over US$1 million. I don't want to say anything more specific than that though - since some of the donors have asked to be anonymous, and others haven't specified.
Is the move to San Francisco still planned for late January/early February? What will be done over the next two months in order to guarantee a smooth transition?
- The move will happen in December and January. Brion has already left St. Petersburg for San Francisco, and Cary will leave soon. We have begun hiring the new people, and you'll start hearing some of their names announced over the next few weeks.
- Relocation is always clunky, and there will be plenty of noise and confusion. But I'm not worried. The heart and soul of the projects is the volunteer community, which will be almost wholly unaffected by the move. The servers are unaffected. And we have three staff members, Delphine and Mark and Tim, who are relatively unaffected. So all in all, I think there will be enough continuity and stability that for the readership and the volunteers, the move will not be terribly visible. It will be difficult for the U.S.-based staff, but that's unavoidable and I think in general those people are excited and happy about it.
- The rough timeline is as follows: Brion, Cary and Mike will turn up in the Bay Area towards the end of December. The new hires will start at the beginning-to-middle of January, with the exception of the office manager, who will start earlier so that she can focus on getting the office set up. We are planning to have the office ready towards the beginning of January, although it will be a bit of a work-in-progress in the beginning.
What do you see as the primary obstacles facing the Foundation over the next year? How do you plan to handle these challenges?
- If you look at the Foundation’s strengths, they are amazing: Wikipedia is huge, it is popular, it offers relevant information that people want. The community behind it is self-sustaining and engaged. Wikipedia provides the other projects with a preexisting community of engaged volunteers and a built-in readership. The public goodwill is amazing. We couldn’t ask for a better and more committed founder and ambassador than Jimmy. So we have lots to work with.
- Our obstacles pale by comparison. We are a young organization that needs to grow up a little. We are missing lots of skills and experience: we don’t have a good understanding of the grants development process, how to fundraise well, etc. We need to do some serious thinking about a number of things – the relationship between the chapters and the Foundation, how to best tap into the volunteer community for work that goes beyond editing and governing the content of the projects, how to best get the material of the projects delivered to people who aren’t online.
- And there are other, more external obstacles. One of our goals is to encourage other organizations –like for example the BBC, National Geographic, PBS- to free up their content. That is difficult and slow work. We have challenges on the legal front: the licensing situation is difficult and complex, and we are sometimes the target of people’s anger when they feel the projects depict them unfairly. And we have challenges on the public perception front: in my opinion, we are perceived as less credible than we actually are. In general, we are trying to encourage a freer and more open world, and obviously there are lots of countervailing forces to that. But I am confident we’re on the right side of history :-)
With the CBC, you handled the day-to-day operations of a website known for its quality and accuracy. How do you think the Foundation can overcome public perception of inaccuracy, and begin to foster a public image of quality growth?
- First, let me thank you on behalf of my previous employer. CBC is truly well-regarded for its quality and accuracy: it is regularly cited in surveys as the most trusted news source for Canadians.
- Regarding the perception-of-inaccuracy issue for us, I believe that part of the issue is simply time lag between perception and reality. First Monday published a study a few months ago that helped to validate our fundamental premise. It concluded that the best articles in Wikipedia had benefited from massive, open collaboration: working together in the way we do is critical to achieve high-quality articles.
- So, although I don’t want to minimize quality problems where they actually exist, I do believe that part of this is a perception issue rather than a reality issue. And my feeling is, some of the attacks on us will subside as people get more used to the idea of projects like ours. My mother has learned to embrace Wikipedia. So gradually, will other people who have been dubious about us.
- Part of the challenge is to make it clear to our readers that our core community of contributors is diligently working on building an ever improving reference work. Our fundamental openness is essential for that community to grow and thrive, but it also creates unique challenges. Recently we launched the quality portal, which lists some of the strategies we're supporting to make it easier for readers to distinguish high-quality articles from text that is in the draft stage or from random vandalism.
Before joining the Wikimedia Foundation, what experience did you have with Wikimedia projects? What was your initial impression of the Wikimedia projects, and what made you decide that working for the Foundation would be an enjoyable position?
- My experience with the projects was a pretty normal and conventional one, I think. I had used them for years, like everybody. I made my first edit about five years ago, and edited anonymously intermittently since then. Mostly small fixes - I didn't do much new article creation or serious big edits. I liked the projects, especially Wikipedia and Wikinews: I would say I had a pretty shallow understanding of the rest of them, and Commons, which is less of a public-facing wiki, was invisible to me.
- The first time I seriously considered getting involved was the day of the Virginia Tech massacre. I was out of the office at a conference, and catching up on the story during our quick breaks. CBC.CA had pretty good coverage - fairly thorough, fast and accurate. But I was hungry for much more, and I found myself, eventually, at Wikipedia. Which I was astounded by. It was much fuller, richer and more thorough than what any of the conventional news sites were offering. And when I went to the talk page, the conversation there was every journalists' dream: intelligent, thoughtful people analyzing the story from every possible angle to ensure it was as fair and accurate as possible. I remember reading it, hoping that back at the CBC they were having an identical conversation in our newsroom there.
- That was a big moment for me. Like everyone in a conventional newsroom, I had been doing a lot of thinking about the future of news and information, the power of collaboration, how to involve the news audience in productive ways. And we had been trying various experiments, some of which had worked well, and some of which had not. But the Wikipedia coverage of Virginia Tech was unmistakably, unignorably excellent. I wanted to be a part of the organization that had created that – it was that simple.
- So I did a little research and I determined three things that mattered to me:
- The Wikimedia mission is compelling and important. Free information for the world, to me, is a necessary recondition that paves the way to great cultural changes we can't even necessarily imagine, but which are unambiguously good. For example: people's decision quality will improve, and their lives will be better as a result. Institutions will get a little more transparent. The world will be a little more collaborative.
- The projects are making an impact. People are interested in what they’re offering. They make a difference in people’s lives. We are not very good yet at actually telling those stories, but we know they exist. So it was important to me that Wikimedia be not just well-intentioned, but that it be effective. Which it is.
- The final thing for me: I wanted to be somewhere where I personally could have an impact – an organization that needed what I could bring to the table. And that has absolutely been the case. So it’s all good. :-)
What are your long-term goals for the Foundation? Ideally, what role do you see the Foundation playing 10 years from now?
- I look at the mission and I ask myself, where are we currently failing, where can we do better? And I think there are a couple of areas where I’d like to see us focus:
- One goal I have, is I would like to make it easier and friendlier for new people to contribute. This is not uncontroversial: I know there are people who think, particularly about English Wikipedia, that it is “full” or “done” or “mature” – that the presence of new people poses more risk than it offers reward. And that may be true. But I know a man in his seventies who has an enormous amount of primary-source information on the Canadian fur trade, which is an important piece of Canadian history. He has Jesuit missionary diaries, he has original maps, he has first-edition histories dating back 50, 100 years. And the English Wikipedia is weak on the fur trade. But I cannot in good conscience encourage him to get involved with Wikipedia, because it is not friendly enough - and I find that sad.
- I would like to see us continue to increase quality, and better label quality - through both technical and non-technical means. I’d like to see us develop lots of partnerships encouraging institutions who own informational material to contribute it to Commons. I’d like to see us develop ways to encourage contributions of particular kinds of material from schools and individuals – stuff like illustrations, diagrams, particular types of photographs – whatever is missing. I’d like to see us stage 50 Wikipedia Academies around the world every year, targeting potential contributors who we think could really offer something valuable, either because of the language they speak or their particular expertise.
- And lastly, I would like to see us make it much easier for other organizations and individuals to use our material in different ways. This is important, because our goal here isn’t to build a website, it’s to make information available to people – and a significant number of people are not online, or are better served by DVDs or books or USB sticks. So I would like to see us develop strong partnerships and linkages to organizations who can help disseminate the materials. And I would like to see us make the material accessible to them in different ways – by fixing the database dumps so they are reliably and regularly available, by enabling offline readers/editors, by facilitating all kinds of different outputs in different formats.
- The Wikimedia projects are the most important educational initiatives in the world, in my opinion. Our goal together is to provide free information for people anywhere in the world, for free. We do a pretty good job today of some aspects of that mission, but there are areas where we’re weak. And those are where I think we should focus our attention.
Arbitration Committee elections: Elections open
This week, the Signpost covers the opening of the Arbitration Committee elections.
The December 2007 elections to the Arbitration Committee started on Monday, and will run for two weeks, ending on Sunday, 16 December. It is anticipated that Jimbo Wales will make his selections soon afterward, and the newly elected Arbitrators will take their positions on 1 January, 2008.
Newyorkbrad and FT2 lead the elections by far, with 99% and 95% support, respectively. Newyorkbrad also has set a record with 338 supporters, surpassing Can't sleep, who amassed 303 support and 100 oppose votes in an unsuccessful bid last year. In third is Rebecca, a former arbitrator, with 80% support. Deskana currently has 79% support, followed by FayssalF with 78% support, and Sam Blacketer in sixth with 77%.
Trailing further back, in seventh, is Thebainer, with 69%. Meanwhile, of the five arbitrators whose terms expire this year, only one, Raul654, is standing for re-election. He currently stands at 66.1%, ranking eighth.
Perhaps the vote with the most fluctuation was that of Giano II, who ranked at 71% after the first hour of voting, but declined over the next day; at press time, Giano had 57% support, ranking in 11th. His vote has generated the second-most interest behind Newyorkbrad's, with 178 supporters and 132 opposers.
If one thing can be gleaned from the results so far, it's clear that users are generally dissatisfied with the slate of candidates this year. Last year, of 31 candidates who did not withdraw from the elections, seven (23%) gathered at least 83% (5-to-1) support. This year, of 28 candidates, only two (7.1%) gathered at least 83% support.
Six candidates have withdrawn since the beginning of the election: Danny, Mercury, Monsieurdl, Phil Sandifer, Pilotguy, and Stifle. Additionally, two candidates, ^demon and LordHarris, withdrew in the last week, but before the elections started.
Regularly updated statistics from the elections can be found at User:Gurch/Reports/ArbComElections and User:Mathbot/ArbCom Election December 2007.
Candidates in the December 2007 Arbitration Committee elections were interviewed last week for an election guide; this guide is still available. The election guide is intended to be a brief overview of each candidate's beliefs and experiences. More detailed information about each candidate may be gleaned from their user pages, as well as their responses to questions from other users.
Due to size, the guide has been split up alphabetically, though a page transcluding all sections is available below:
Possible license migration sparks debate
Reports that Wikipedia could migrate to a new content license gained circulation after Jimmy Wales confirmed the progress in that direction at a Creative Commons party. Precise details remain uncertain, and the change ultimately hinges on formal approval following a discussion in the Wikipedia community.
Since its launch, Wikipedia text has always been under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), one of the Free Software Foundation's licenses designed for manuals rather than software. Among the common concerns raised about the GFDL has been its burdens on reuse, such as requiring reproduction of the full text of the license. Also much-requested has been greater compatibility with the Creative Commons family of licenses; some of these are among the free content licenses permitted on Wikimedia Commons, and thus apply to many of the images that illustrate Wikipedia articles. These licenses did not exist at the time Wikipedia started, but have gained more widespread use than the GFDL outside the field of software.
Because of these issues, the Free Software Foundation, Creative Commons, and the Wikimedia Foundation have been involved for several years in consulting and negotiating with each other on efforts to harmonize the licenses. Recent conversations suggested progress was being made, but gave no clear sign that would boost the confidence of those hoping for this step, or indicate when to expect it. The Creative Commons function, held 30 November in San Francisco, seems to promise a commitment to bringing it about, and Wales was quoted as calling the event a "party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia."
The Wikimedia Foundation published a board resolution on the subject 1 December. It formally requests that the Free Software Foundation modify the GFDL to allow migration to the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. The vote on the resolution was 5-0 in favor (one member, Kat Walsh, did not vote, while another board position is currently vacant following the departure of Michael Davis). Board chair Florence Devouard emphasized that once a modified license is finalized, the possible migration would depend on "a process of community discussion and voting before making a final decision on relicensing."
The promised discussion is arguably underway already, as the news prompted a vigorous debate on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list. One particular issue involved the extent to which a copyleft license for an image, when used in conjunction with text, applies to the accompanying text, with some feeling that this was a point of distinction between the GFDL and CC-BY-SA licenses. Greg Maxwell reiterated his objections to Creative Commons licenses, arguing that the guidance for using them was confusing or contradicted the actual license text, and that they might jeopardize the right of attribution for the original creator of content.
Benjamin Mako Hill, who is a member of the Free Software Foundation board while also serving on Wikimedia's advisory board, argued that the image issue was not an obstacle to compatibility. Hill said he understood the problem to involve the definition of a derivative work, something that can vary from one jurisdiction to another, thus producing different results even if one license was used consistently (regardless of which license). Meanwhile, the discussion left some uncertain as to whether the migration would involve simply replacing the GFDL with CC-BY-SA, or some combined version that might resemble "dual-licensing". As geni pointed out, without the actual text of any new licenses people would have to wait and see.
Featured articles director names deputy
Acknowledging the increasing workload, Featured Articles Director Raul654 has decided to appoint a deputy to assist him, choosing SandyGeorgia for that role. Other participants in the featured articles process generally supported the choice, although the discussion also led to some past disagreements being dredged up.
Raul654 and featured articles
A long-time Wikipedia contributor, Raul654 has been heavily involved with featured articles for most of his editing career (among other things). Having registered his account in August 2003, by the end of the year he had worked enough putting together an article on Isaac Asimov's Foundation series to nominate it as "brilliant prose" (as the featured article designation was then known). In a reflection of the gradual shift toward more stringent standards for featuring articles, today Foundation series is marked with cleanup tags instead.
After the renaming to featured articles, Raul654 progressively began doing more of the maintenance work to keep this process running smoothly. The first half of 2004 also saw some major developments on the road to Wikipedia's current layout, including a design overhaul of the Main Page and the introduction of the template namespace, which facilitated automating the rotation of featured articles to be displayed there. Meanwhile, featured article nominations were drawing more detailed critiques and competition to have articles chosen for the Main Page was increasing, and to the extent that someone was needed to make final decisions in the process, Raul654 added this to his activities. The title of Featured Articles Director was created and Raul654's work in this capacity formalized in some sense by a ratification process in August 2004.
Since then, the amount of activity in the featured article process has steadily increased. At various times, this has led some people to doubt whether Raul654 could adequately continue to oversee the process alone. He said he didn't feel overburdened, however, and kept on even as the volume of nominations swelled. He did become less personally involved in removal of the featured designation, which can only happen after a featured article review, and has largely been handled by Marskell and Joelr31 for the past year.
Appointment of SandyGeorgia and reaction
Finally relenting on this point for the core featured articles process, on Monday, 26 November, Raul654 said "I've re-evaluated my position on the matter" and announced that he was selecting SandyGeorgia to assist him. Raul654 explained that the two would share the workload and he would remain actively involved in the process on a day-to-day basis. If necessary Raul654 said he would pick an additional deputy as well, indicating that he already had a candidate in mind.
A much newer contributor, relatively speaking, SandyGeorgia made her first edits in February 2006, becoming a regular participant in the featured articles process within a few months. Interestingly, she is not an administrator and says she has no desire to become one. Her selection as Raul654's deputy quickly drew comments from other participants agreeing with the wisdom of the choice.
The appointment did draw questions, however, initially just about the procedure, with Rlevse raising the issue of whether the director and deputies should be subject to some kind of reconfirmation process at intervals. SandyGeorgia responded that with the demands of the work, "The term will probably be self-limiting." Later, David Shankbone also expressed a concern that "she tends to hold grudges", citing a disagreement going back to whether one of his images would be included in the Hugo Chávez article. SandyGeorgia tried to explain that the issue wasn't personal, but an acute sensitivity to potential conflict of interest, which kept coming up in this context because Shankbone, a prolific photographer, was seeking to have his images included in articles over others' objections.
Software bug fixed, overuse of parser function curtailed
This week, a bug that was introduced in a new revision of MediaWiki caused an infrequent bug that resulted in the rendering of an internal marker within templates and wikitext; the bug was quickly fixed, but left a series of articles affected by the bug. Meanwhile, developers put a limit on the usage of the {{#ifexist:}} parser function; overuse of this function (thousands of times for one page view, in some cases) led to unusually heavy traffic on database servers.
UNIQ bug
A new preprocessor is being developed; the preprocessor is the part of MediaWiki that processes transclusions and some related constructs before a page is parsed. This has lead to some unusual problems involving 'strip markers', which are used internally by the parser to handle some constructs (notably <nowiki> and <ref> tags, but also some others). The problems involved have had one obvious symptom: strip markers, instead of being merely an internal concept in the parser, have shown up in rendered pages and sometimes even in wikitext as strings starting with UNIQ and ending with QINU. This has lead to two bugs, which were set to maximum priority in the bug tracker.
The first known bug related to this, bug 12056, was discovered on some non-Wikimedia wikis; among other things, it broke the use of <charinsert> (which is used to create the box of characters visible under the edit box). This particular problem was fixed in r27871.
However, a more obvious and serious, yet unpredictable and therefore not as quickly noticed, bug (bug 12154) also existed with similar symptoms, and has caused problems on Wikimedia wikis, including here on the English Wikipedia (Village pump discussion); it caused strip markers to show up in the rendered view of many pages, and worse, some of them ended up in the wikitext of pages. User:Splarka/UNIQ list is a list of the pages known to be permanently affected by this bug.
The software update that caused the second bug was applied at 19:10 UTC on 29 November; it was reverted 18 minutes later due to widespread problems it was causing in relation to the <ref> tag. A developer script (analogous to a bot) was run by developers to help to solve some of the permanent problems caused by the bug.
A potential fix for the bug has been submitted to the code base as r28004; this fix has apparently worked on other wikis, although developers have not yet confirmed that it is a final fix for this problem.
#ifexist limit
The {{#ifexist:}} parser function (which checks for a page's existence) has been causing some concern among developers recently. The function is in heavy use in some templates and on some pages; so heavy, in fact, that it was causing problems for the server. After some discussion on the developer's mailing list, Werdna blanked Template:Highrfc-loop (part of {{usercheck}}), with the edit summary "This page is making hundreds of requests from the database for every parse, tying up the database servers for no good reason. Treat as developer intervention. Use Special:Prefixindex instead". ({{usercheck}} has since been modified to use Special:Prefixindex instead.) This sparked off a discussion at the village pump; one concern raised at that point was that Wikipedia:Protected titles might cause similar problems.
To prevent similar problems in the future, developers have implemented a limit of 100 #ifexist: calls per page maximum; this caused many templates to break across Wikipedia.[1] (The limit was raised to 2000 for a 1-week period to give time to fix this; however, it will be reduced back to 100 afterwards.) As with the template limits (which serve a similar function, of disallowing pages so complicated that they strain the servers), an HTML comment is placed in the HTML source of pages to show how close they are to the limit. A second village pump discussion discussed this, and discussed what other pages might have problems (including the technical village pump itself; {{archive list}} turned out to be responsible for about half the ifexists there). Developers have compiled a list (note: large page with duplicates) of pages that will fail to render properly with the new limit. Users are advised to change or simplify the coding of any page or template that causes problems with the new limits.
WikiWorld comic: "Wordplay"
Cruciverbalist Gary J. Whitehead has produced a related crossword ("What's Puzzling You?") especially for readers of The Wikipedia Signpost. The answer will be posted next week.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Wordplay (film)", "Crossword", "Will Shortz", and "Merl Reagle". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
Wikipedian honored by Puerto Rican Senate
On Wednesday, Wikipedian Marine 69-71 (Tony the Marine) was honored by the Senate of Puerto Rico. In a resolution (near the top of page 4), the Senate decreed:
Para expresar el reconocimiento y agradecimiento del Senado de Puerto Rico al señor Antonio Santiago por su dedicación y entrega a la causa de ayudar a difundir a través de los nuevos medios electrónicos de difusión, información sobre distinguidos puertorriqueños y, en particular, aquellos que han servido con distinción en la milicia.
A resolution to recognize and acknowledge the gratefulness of the Senate of Puerto Rico for Mr. Antonio Santiago, for his dedication to the cause of helping spread information about distinguished Puerto Ricans through new media, and in particular, those who have served with distinction in the military.
Fundraiser continues
The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser continued this week. In the first five weeks of the fundraiser, about 32,950 people had donated at least US$1, and the Foundation had raised about $1,016,000.
Monday's total donations ($13,096.63) and number of contributions (375) reached a fundraiser low; however, the average donation of $34.92 was the fifth-highest total of the fundraiser.
Briefly
- A London meetup has been scheduled for Wednesday, to mark Wiki Wednesday. The meetup coincides with a trip to London by Wikimedia officials; Jimbo Wales is expected to attend, and Executive Director Sue Gardner may also attend.
- The military history WikiProject has started a tag-and-assess drive, spanning over 165,000 articles. The drive runs through December 31, and help is requested.
- The Galician Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles.
- The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 90,000 articles.
- The English Wiktionary has reached 600,000 entries.
- The Arabic Wikipedia has reached 200,000 pages.
- The Bikol Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
- The Aromanian Wikipedia reaches 1000 articles.
In the news
Wales discusses future of Wikipedia
As Wikipedia moves to S.F., founder discusses planned changes - The article begins by noting that Wikimedia Foundation is beginning a new chapter in San Francisco, as it expands beyond all initial expectations. In a series of questions, Jimmy Wales answers questions on the growth of Wikimedia as a charity, changes to the editing experience from users, quality control, and the ability of Wikipedia to retain and motivate its volunteers.
Rebuttal against ban by librarians
Ban Wikipedia? No Way! - In response to one of the articles that we covered last week, a parent has expressed concern that librarians have banned Wikipedia in schools. The author is a self-proclaimed "Wikipedia junkie", and notes that printed works are not absolute truths. He suggests that the teachers and librarians could have their students improve Wikipedia instead.
Other mentions
Other recent mentions of Wikipedia in the online press include:
- Instinct wins Singapore deal to provide mobile Wikipedia - A New Zealand company has produced a version of Wikipedia for access on mobile phones in Singapore.
- French Google, Yahoo Alike (& Loving Wikipedia) - Similarities between the French Google and Yahoo are noted, and the author notes that search engines are outdated by tools that allow users to jump straight to encyclopedic information.
- Use Wikipedia 'facts' at your own risk - This is a somewhat witty look at Wikipedia's trustworthiness.
- Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia - The Register has a write-up on the mailing list controversy that erupted from the Durova arbitration case.
WikiProject Report: LGBT studies
Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies is a WikiProject that aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to the study of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people, or LGBT. It was initially created by Davodd (talk · contribs) on 23 April 2006. With 180 active members and 82 inactive members, it is one of Wikipedia's largest projects.
Interview with the project coordinator
We asked the LGBT project's coordinator, Dev920 (talk · contribs), some questions concerning the project:
What is the best way for users unfamiliar with LGBT topics or new to Wikipedia to get involved in the project?
- Add oneself as a member to our list and the welcome message will provide a number of ideas for someone who would like to get involved but doesn't know where to start. We also have a special section on our main page, Tasks you can do to further help newbies. The Project talkpage has a constant stream of requests for help and assistance - responding to them is a quick and useful way of making your presence known to the rest of the group. We do have an habit of nominating helpful members for adminship, so working with us is a good move for one's Wikipedia career generally.
What are some of the departments in the project?
- Generally, editors on Wikipedia just edit whatever articles they want within their sphere of interest, and come to WikiProject LGBT studies when they need help or wish to collaborate with other editors. To support our members and improve our coverage, we have several “departments”:
- Assessment: Measures our progress in improving articles.
- Collaboration: An article is chosen, currently once a month, for the entire WikiProject to improve.
- Community: Produces a monthly newsletter which keeps everyone up to date, recruits new members and hosts our publicity materials. We also have a “quilt” in which any member can add a patch, containing quotes, images, or whatever they desire.
- Jumpaclass: A original department of WP:LGBT which has since been copied by others, Jumpaclass is a semi-competition where editors can nominate articles and be awarded points on how much they can improve them in seven days. There is also a direct head to head option to encourage friendly competition.
- Translation: An effort to end our bias against foreign LGBT articles, the translation department is an attempt to improve our cross-wiki communication. The department can currently cover over ten languages, including French, German, Swedish and Welsh.
- Peer review: Possibly our greatest asset to Wikipedia, the peer review system exposes articles to closer scrutiny from a broader group of editors, and is intended for high-quality articles that have already undergone extensive work. It helps editors spot what they need to work on.
Are there any ongoing discussions pertaining to project issues or articles in the project's scope?
- There is, as within the LGBT community generally, a perennial discussion over whether "Queer" should be added to our name, to support those who do not identify as LGBT. Recent debate has focussed on whether the intersex articles should be added to our remit. Much of our work also, sadly, has to focus on countering editors who refuse to add (referenced) LGBT-related material to BLPs - a typical example is the vast amount of resources consumed by James I of England, who was well known to have had affections for other men but whose article has been strictly limited to the barest details. Quite a few of the "Sexuality of..." articles have come about not because of excessive information but because editors have refused to put anything in the main article itself. Oh, and you can imagine what it was like when Albus Dumbledore got outed... Discussion related to this issue takes up a lot of our time.
What are some of the features of the project's website?
- We have a chat room on it (but which has now been superseded by the IRC channel) and use it for storing copyrighted materials related to the project - mostly promotional posters. We do actually have an email address as well, wplgbt (at) gmail (dot) com, but I have yet to think of a use for it!
What are of of the project's most recent achievements?
- November saw our anniversary of one year since we really got started as a project. We have created a number of FAs, such as But I'm a Cheerleader, with a few more going through now. Several of us, notably SatyrTN, have been working on a full, accurate list of Gay, lesbian and bisexual people - many of the lists that already exist are either unreferenced or hopelessly wishful thinking (George Clooney, for example, is regularly claimed to be gay). We have currently got six Featured Lists out of it and a seventh is currently nominated. We were also featured in SXNews, an Australian gay newspaper, for our work. At the moment we're considering how we can make the project even more active after the winter slump, so we can be ready to make our articles even better next year.
Features and admins
Administrators
Four users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: SB Johnny (nom), DO11.10 (nom), Dlohcierekim (nom), Hbdragon88 (nom). One user was promoted to bureaucrat status via the Requests for Bureaucratship process this week: WJBscribe (nom).
Bots
Five bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: BOTijo (task request), VeblenBot (task request), Maelgwnbot (task request), ClueBot IV (task request) and BOTarate (task request).
Featured content
Fourteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Hurricane Ioke (nom), Powderfinger (nom), A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant (nom), Brownhills (nom), History of Baltimore City College (nom), Pre-dreadnought (nom), East End of London (nom), M62 motorway (nom), Lethbridge (nom), Riverina (nom), Ann Bannon (nom), Priestfield Stadium (nom), Joe Sakic (nom) and Characters of Kingdom Hearts (nom).
Nine lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of YuYu Hakusho episodes (Season 1) (nom), List of YuYu Hakusho episodes (Season 2) (nom), List of YuYu Hakusho episodes (Season 3) (nom), List of YuYu Hakusho episodes (Season 4) (nom), List of birds of Egypt (nom), List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people: Sa-Sc (nom) and List of 50 Cent awards (nom).
No topics were promoted last week.
No portals or sounds were featured last week.
Four articles were de-featured last week: United States Senate (nom), Shroud of Turin (nom), British House of Commons (nom) and Irish poetry (nom).
No pictures, lists, portals, topics, or sounds were de-featured last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Winter service vehicle, Andrew Cunningham, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, Jogaila, Hoysala architecture, Georgetown University and Branded to Kill.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: V-2 rocket destruction, Willamette River, Tvashtar Paterae eruption, Varroa destructor, Robert E. Lee, Seattle skyline, and Kuwaiti oil fires.
Seven pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.2 (8fd6c9c), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
Fixed bugs
- The user interface no longer gives a (nonfunctional) link to patrol a deleted page that has been visited from Special:Newpages. (r27941, bug 12143)
- At least one, and possibly two, bugs related to a new preprocessor that caused strip markers (strings starting with UNIQ and ending with QINU) to show up in pages were fixed. (r27871, bug 12056) (r28004, bug 12154) (see related story)
- A typo in the code caused links to pages which a user had set their preferences to mark as short or 'stub' pages (which should show up in dark brown) instead disappeared altogether; this has been fixed. (r27981, bug 12165)
- Some invalid HTML in Special:Emailuser was fixed. (r27987, bug 12166)
- A bug that caused the API to sometimes cause an "rvrevids" error when there was in fact no error has been fixed. (r28025, bug 12177)
New features
- The form to enter the text of an email on Special:Emailuser now has the id "wpTextbox1" (the same ID as the edit box on an edit page), rather than no id; this makes it easier for user scripts to affect it in a logical manner. (r27868, bug 12082)
Changes to interface messages
- Part of the hide/show code in MediaWiki:Common.js was removed, because it was erroneously trying to apply bug fixes intended for Internet Explorer to Firefox 3, causing the code to break on that browser. (bug 12157, [2])
Ongoing news
- Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee opened one new case this week, and closed six cases.
Closed cases
- Macedonia: A case involving a dispute between editors from Greece and from the Republic of Macedonia over the use of the name "Macedonia" in Wikipedia. As a result of the case, remedies were implemented permitting editing sanctions to be imposed by any uninvolved administrator, after a warning, against any user who violates Wikipedia policies in editing articles concerning the Balkans region.
- Asgardian-Tenebrae: A case involving conflict between Asgardian and Tenebrae. As a result of the case, Asgardian's editing was restricted for one year.
- Privatemusings: A case involving alleged sockpuppetry and BLP violations by Privatemusings. As a result of the case, Privatemusings was limited to one account, banned for 90 days, and subjected to an editing restriction indefinitely.
- Durova and Jehochman: A case involving the actions of Durova and Jehochman, and in particular a controversial block by Durova of !! as an allegedly disruptive sockpuppet, based on evidence she refused to reveal on-wiki on the ground that do so could provide puppetmasters with too much information regarding her investigative techniques. This evidence was provided to some administrators, and was later leaked, with some users, including the Arbitration Committee, arguing that the evidence was insufficient for blocking !!. Durova resigned her adminship, and, in what appears to be an exceptionally quick resolution of the case, remedies were implemented admonishing Durova to exercise greater care when issuing blocks, admonishing all participants in the discussion of the block of !! to act with proper decorum, and noting that Durova must go through normal channels (a request for adminship) if she wishes to regain adminship.
- Eyrian: A case involving checkuser-confirmed sockpuppetry by admin Eyrian. As a result of the case, Eyrian was desysopped, and banned until he explains his actions to the committee.
- Ferrylodge: A case involving a community ban of Ferrylodge on the now-defunct Community sanction noticeboard, but which User:B, in accordance with Wikipedia:Community ban, stated that he was willing to overturn. As a result of the case, the ban was disapproved, but Ferrylodge's editing was restricted and he was instructed not to interact with Bishonen or KillerChihuahua.
New case
- Matthew Hoffman: A case involving a controversial block of MatthewHoffman as a sockpuppet by a vanished user. Arbitrator UninvitedCompany has proposed a remedy calling for Hoffman's block log to be annotated to show that the blocks were unjustified, as well as another remedy, which has been opposed by arbitrator FloNight, desysopping the vanished user.
Evidence phase
- Episodes and characters: A case involving alleged misconduct with regard to the notability of episodes and characters from television series.
Voting phase
- Winter Soldier 2: A case involving alleged misconduct on Winter Soldier-related articles. Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies prohibiting TDC and Xenophrenic from editing any Winter Soldier-related pages.
- Anonimu: A case involving alleged revert warring and incivility by Anonimu, who has not yet commented in the case and was community-banned soon after the case was opened. Some others also allege that Sceptre, who brought the case, has stalked Anonimu. Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies permitting discretionary sanctions to be imposed by any uninvolved administrator, and banning Anonimu for one year.