Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2008-05-02
From the editor
This week marks one of the hardest editorial decisions I've had to make: Balancing the need for the reader to know about a situation, with the unique privacy considerations of that situation. I hope our article on Newyorkbrad's retirement has done so.
In Brad's honor, an effort to raise the article on judge Learned Hand to a featured article has been organized on the article's talk page.
Thank you for reading the Signpost.
— Ral315
Wikimedia Board to expand, restructure
The Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation announced on Saturday a plan to restructure the board. Board membership will expand from eight to ten, with three elected positions, two positions to be selected by Wikimedia chapters, one "Community Founder" position (presumably to be occupied indefinitely by Jimmy Wales at the discretion of the rest of the board), and four board positions reserved for appointed members with "special expertise".
The board expanded from seven to eight earlier this month when it appointed Stuart West as Treasurer. According to the press release issued last week, "West brings over 15 years of financial experience, including senior executive roles at publicly-traded companies including Yahoo! Inc., TiVo Inc., and in investment banking at J.P. Morgan & Co. He also worked with the United States Mission to the United Nations. Stuart's educational background includes a B.A. in History from Yale University, where he focused on 20th century diplomacy, and the Executive Program for Growing Companies at the Stanford Business School. He is a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom." West will hold one of the "special expertise" seats in the restructured board. Jan-Bart de Vreede, an appointed board member since December 2006, will hold another "special expertise" seat. The final two appointed seats are unfilled at the present.
Of the current board, only two—Kat Walsh and Frieda Brioschi—hold elected positions, while the third member elected in 2007—Erik Möller—resigned in December 2007 to become Deputy Director of the Foundation. Chair Florence Nibart-Devouard currently holds an appointed position, but was elected twice previously, in 2004 and 2005, and her seat will be up for election in 2008. The two members appointed in February 2008, Michael Snow and Domas Mituzas, hold seats that will ultimately be selected by the chapters. No process for chapter selections has been specified, but the restructuring announcement states that "the two chapters-selected seats are not intended to represent the interests of the chapters vis-a-vis the Foundation. The chapters are being asked to pick trustees who they feel will represent the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation, and help it fulfill its mission as well as it possibly can."
The restructuring announcement has caused some controversy in the community. Because only three of ten board members will be elected—and the board also recently rejected a proposal to create a Volunteer Council—a number of Wikimedians feel that community input in the foundation is being diminished. In response to complaints on the Foundation-l mailing list, Jimmy Wales insisted that the restructuring "absolutely is not a removal of power from the editing community". Wales characterized the new board structure as strongly community-oriented, with the three elected members, the two chapter-selected members and himself all representing the interests of the community.
Durova initiated a petition requesting "a full explanation for recent board decisions" and a reconsideration of the board's "top-down approach". As she explained in a post to the mailing list after 63 people had signed, the intended message "is that the board is not necessarily wrong in its decision to restructure, but it did a poor job of communicating".
Arbitrator leaves Wikipedia
On Tuesday, arbitrator Newyorkbrad resigned from all positions and rights on Wikipedia, in good standing, due to sudden circumstances beyond his control. He left a message on his talk page:
For once I'll be brief. Due to some external events, which have the potential to affect not just me but many uninvolved people, I will not be able to continue editing. I would like to thank everyone I have worked with here. The community has extended me extraordinary kindness and support. I am sorry for the pages that never got written and the FA that never got done. I apologize to the 552 people who voted for me for breaking my commitment to them, and to anyone whose case I never had the chance to review.
Newyorkbrad, who was elected to the Arbitration Committee in December with an unprecedented 552 users supporting, had taken a one-week wikibreak after it was stated on another website that his identity had been uncovered. Newyorkbrad's departure followed a harassment campaign against his off-wiki life.
Jimbo Wales commented on the situation, saying, "I consider it a tragedy when trolls drive good people away from charity work by engaging in underhanded personal attacks."
See also the Note from the editor.
Bot approvals group, checkuser nominations briefly held on RfA
This week, seven bot approvals group nominations were added to the requests for adminship page; following this move, requests for checkusership were briefly added. The checkuser applications were removed shortly thereafter; bot approvals group nominations continue, but no new nominations are being taken while the issue is discussed.
Bot approvals group
The bot approvals group handles the approval of bot accounts on Wikipedia. The group began in March 2006, with an initial seven-person membership. New members have been added to the group mainly through nominations on the talk page, and the group currently contains 28 members, 14 of whom are active members of the group.
Over the last year, concerns have been raised about how the group has selected itself, amid concerns that the community did not have enough say in bot nominations. Durin nominated the group for deletion in May 2007, arguing that "this group seems to have (perhaps over time) created a rather massive bureaucracy for itself that seems to be self-enforcing". The page was kept, with a suggestion by the MFD's closer, Sean William, that "some reform might be needed". Following some discussion, a trial "open membership" was instituted, where anyone could join the group if they had experience with running or writing bots, had programming experience, and understood bot policy and the role of the Bot Approvals Group. This trial ended in February, however, after a self-nominated BAG member speedily approved a bot that did not follow bot policy.
In an attempt to get more community input into the process, these nominations were added to the RfA page on April 19, with a reconfirmation nomination by BAG member Coren. It was suggested that all current members of the BAG should reconfirm through the process within a six-month period, in order to retain membership within the group.
Six other nominations have been added since, including reconfirmation nominations for Cobi, Soxred93, Werdna, and ST47, and new applications from OverlordQ and Ilmari Karonen. A moratorium has been placed on any more requests, until input is gained on whether the process should be continued. Four of the nominations have been closed as of press time, with the reconfirmations of Coren, Cobi, Soxred93, and Werdna all successful.
It's unclear whether Bot Approvals Group nominations will continue to be hosted on the RfA page, along with adminship and bureaucratship requests; in a straw poll, nearly 90% of users commenting opposed the inclusion of the nominations. Some users have discussed placing the requests on the Bot Requests for Approval page, although no decision has been made as to where future requests will be handled.
Checkusership requests
After Bot Approvals Group requests were added to the page, discussion on the RfA talk page centered around whether other user rights, including that of checkuser, should be handled via the same process. Citing WP:BOLD, Walton One added requests for checkusership to the page as a "proposed process".
1.5 hours later, Majorly made the first request under the new process. His request (since deleted) remained on the page for 13 minutes before bureaucrat and arbitrator Deskana removed it, saying, "this has now officially bordered into the totally ridiculous. this has only been discussed for about two days with an extremely limited subset of people..."
In a later talk page message, Deskana noted that the process had been discussed by a small number of people, for just a few days:
This is madness. Yes, the checkuser policy says that if the community prefers a public vote, then it can have one. But do you honestly think that Foundation would accept the definiton of "community" as "about 10 people talking on a single talk page for a few days", then agree that a person nominated by this totally newfound procedure should be given checkuser rights? I really don't. As such, I've put a stop to that checkuser nomination. I asked, as a fellow Wikipedian, for people to wait. It seems that fell on deaf ears. Now I'm acting as a bureaucrat and putting a forceful stop to this process until there is meaningful discussion on this process. Love me or hate it me for it, it needed doing.
The Wikimedia Foundation's CheckUser policy says that "On wikis with an Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) which has been approved by the Foundation to assign CheckUser status, users can be appointed by the Arbitrators only," but provides an exception allowing communities that "[prefer] independent elections" to hold a discussion, with at least 70–80% consensus, in order to obtain the status.
Discussion was moved to Wikipedia talk:Requests for checkusership. The discussion has, however, stalled over the last few days, and it's unclear whether the effort to let the community decide on the position is ongoing.
WikiWorld: "World domination"
- This comic originally appeared on July 23, 2007.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "World domination". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
2008 board elections officially announced
The election committee for the 2008 board elections officially announced the elections, and some of the procedures behind the elections, in a post circulated across various pages and mailing lists last week:
The 2008 Board election committee announces the 2008 election process. Wikimedians will have the opportunity to elect one candidate from the Wikimedia community to serve as a representative on the Board of Trustees. The successful candidate will serve a one-year term, ending in July 2009.
Candidates may nominate themselves for election between May 8 and May 22, and the voting will occur between 1 June and 21 June. For more information on the voting and candidate requirements, see <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008>.
The voting system to be used in this election has not yet been confirmed, however voting will be by secret ballot, and confidentiality will be strictly maintained.
Votes will again be cast and counted on a server owned by an independent, neutral third party, Software in the Public Interest (SPI). SPI will hold cryptographic keys and be responsible for tallying the votes and providing final vote counts to the Election Committee. SPI provided excellent help during the 2007 elections.
Further information can be found at m:Board elections/2008/en Questions may be directed to the Election Committee at m:Talk:Board elections/2008/en. If you are interested in translating official election pages into your own language, please see m:Board elections/2008/Translation.
For the election committee,
RecentChangesCamp to be held in May
The annual RecentChangesCamp meeting will be held this year on May 9–11. RecentChangesCamp is a working meeting for all wiki-involved people from around the world. Three previous events have been held in Portland, Oregon and Montreal, and this year's will be in Palo Alto, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Everyone involved in wikis—especially Wikipedians and other Wikimedians—are invited to participate. The two-day working event is free-of-charge for all comers. The volunteer organizers sincerely request an RSVP by participants.
Alexa ranks Wikipedia as #7 internet site
After a mid-April expansion of their dataset, Alexa Internet now ranks Wikipedia.org as the 7th most-trafficked Internet domain, up from 9th. According to Alexa's new estimates, Wikipedia reaches about 10% of all Internet users each day (with 52% of that traffic for English Wikipedia); before the revision the average was about 6% reach.
Briefly
- The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached 40,000 articles.
- The Malayalam Wiktionary has reached 2,000 articles.
In the news
Threats made up to a year ago
Violent threats on Wilson High's Wikipedia page went unchecked – Following last week's story on the school threat made on Wikipedia, it appears that the student has been posting offensive messages onto the school's Wikipedia entry for more than a year. The article recounts the events leading up to the arrest, stating that police did not close the school after the first threat, but only searched the students' bags as they entered the school and requested that the message be removed from the Wikipedia page. Some parents now blame the school for not acting earlier; others blame Wikipedia. Back on Wikipedia, users are deliberating on whether to make mention of the shooting threats in the school's Wikipedia article.
Other mentions
Other recent mentions in the online media include:
- University's defence straight off Wikipedia – Griffith University staff apparently copied content from Wikipedia when writing a response to claims made in a newspaper.
- 'Free' Can Disrupt Your Business – Yes, free can disrupt your business, as the Encyclopedia Britannica is finding out.
- Germany to Get Printed Version Wikipedia – "The One Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia" will contain content related to almost 50,000 widely used terms from the German Wikipedia.
Dispatches: Did You Know ...
... that Did You Know (DYK) is the section on Wikipedia's Main Page that highlights our best new and expanded articles from the previous five days?
DYK features hooks—brief, catchy phrases or surprising facts—taken from these articles. An interesting hook attracts readers, encouraging them to click through to learn more. The DYK section is also a way to thank editors who create new content, and to encourage other editors to contribute to and improve that content and the encyclopedia as a whole. DYK entries appear on the Main Page for at least six hours. The section is updated as many as four times a day, and about 800 articles have appeared over the past month—that's more than 25 a day! DYK shows how the encyclopedia continues to evolve, and how editors are constantly adding fascinating new content.
The DYK program has been running for more than four years; among its editors are prolific contributors who have been responsible for hundreds of these snippets of information. You too can nominate an article at the DYK suggestion area.
Eligibility
Under DYK rules, all material must have been created over the past five days. Two kinds of article are eligible—new articles and articles that have been expanded at least fivefold. In either case, they should have 1,500 characters or more of main-body text (that is, excluding such material as references, lists, tables and infoboxes).
Strict adherence to the Manual of Style is not expected, but nominated articles do have to meet notability standards, be written in a neutral point of view, and have no maintenance tags. In the hook, shorter phrases are preferred, the information must be fully referenced with an inline citation, and the article content must not be misrepresented. Content forks of existing articles are ineligible.
History
DYK made its first appearance on the Main Page on February 22, 2004. The hook here was somewhat ironic: "Did you know that a pencil sharpener 'is a device for sharpening a pencil's point by shaving the end of the pencil'? Well, OK, you probably did." The pencil sharpener article had been created and developed by Raul654, an editor who had been on Wikipedia for only six months and is now a bureaucrat and the Featured article director. So great things grow from small beginnings on Did You Know!
As the DYK program has grown in significance, a number of innovations have been added. From November 2004, article creators have been formally recognized for their efforts. From January 2006, DYK notifications have been added to article talk pages. And from May 2006, nominators have been credited.
There is a DYK Hall of Fame and an unofficial list of the most prolific DYK contributors. Editors are awarded medals after 25, 50 100, and 200 DYK contributions. Blnguyen tops the list as the only editor to have created or expanded more than 200 articles. Blnguyen's DYKs include the revelation "... that Bobby Pearce won the single sculls at the 1928 Summer Olympics despite stopping mid-race for a passing flock of ducks".
Piotrus, Ghirlandajo, ALoan, IvoShandor, Yomangani, TonyTheTiger, Carabinieri, Tim1965, Wetman and P.K. Niyogi have all contributed over 100 new or expanded articles. When nominations are included, at least six editors have surpassed 200 total contributions—this group is led by Piotrus and includes Ghirlandajo, GeeJo, Blnguyen, ALoan, and PFHLai. Piotrus's many contributions include the fact "... that a part of Rawa River in Silesia is currently so polluted it is officially classified as a sewage channel". Wikipedians are urged to forgo the temptation to bathe in it.
DYK is also one of the three elements of the "Triple Crown" rewards for contributing DYKs, Good articles, and a piece of Featured content. On 30 April, following the promotion of his 15th Featured article—the 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt—Blnguyen became the third recipient of the "Alexander the Great edition triple laurel crown" for contributing more than 15 DYKs, 15 Good articles, and 15 Featured articles. Cirt and Awadewit are the editors who have previously received this award. Cirt's Main Page gems include the tidbit "... that the 1937 Western fiction book Buckskin Brigades was Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's first published novel".
How to suggest an article
Nominations are submitted at the DYK suggestion area. The suggestion area is organized by nomination date, which means either the date the article was created or the date its fivefold expansion began. The nominator writes a hook of fewer than 200 characters that presents an unusual or interesting fact to follow the words "Did You Know ..."; for example, this April Fool's Day we featured the hook "Did you know ... that in a few villages and towns of southern France and Spain it is illegal to die?, and that there are attempts to have the same law in a town in Brazil?"
Other editors review the list of suggestions to ensure that all of the requirements are met and that the hook has an inline citation. It's important to keep an eye out for any comments these editors leave where an article needs attention. Around the fifth day after the creation or expansion started, five to eight articles that meet the criteria are moved from the suggestion list to a staging area. Administrators update the Main Page from this staging area every six hours or so. The administrators announce on the article's talk page that the article was displayed on the Main Page, and credit the nominators and major contributors.
Finally, did you know ... that no head or lead administrator runs DYK? Rather, because DYK promotion occurs around the clock, a large group of dedicated administrators takes care of the process.
Features and admins
Administrators
Three users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: VanTucky (nom), MilborneOne (nom), and Bigtimepeace (nom).
Bots
Seven bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: PseudoBot (task request), BepBot (task request), H92Bot (task request), Eivindbot (task request), John Bot II (task request), SoxBot (task request), and ShepBot (task request).
Featured pages
Twelve articles were promoted to featured status last week: Mario Vargas Llosa (nom), Bob Marshall (wilderness activist) (nom), Halo: Contact Harvest (nom), The Third of May 1808 (nom), Émile Lemoine (nom), Flag of Canada (nom), Black Moshannon State Park (nom), USS Orizaba (ID-1536) (nom), Confirmed Dead (nom), 1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt (nom), Gorgosaurus (nom), and Easy Jet (nom).
Four lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of songs in Guitar Hero II (nom), Record home attendances of English football clubs (nom), List of Detroit Lions head coaches (nom), and SFWA Footballer of the Year (nom).
Two topics were promoted to featured status last week: Lists of UEFA club competition winning managers (nom) and Seasons of Degrassi: The Next Generation (nom).
Three portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Textile Arts (nom), Portal:Mammals (nom), and Portal:New York (nom).
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Monarchy of the United Kingdom, Pearl Jam, Thierry Henry, Vasa (ship), Ocean sunfish, Manzanar, and Peter Jennings.
Former featured pages
Four articles were delisted last week: Che Guevara (nom), History of Jews in Poland (nom), Italian Renaissance (nom), and United States Bill of Rights (nom).
No lists were delisted last week.
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Champ de Mars, Chipping Sparrow, Sun dogs, Eddie Rickenbacker in action, Horehound bug, Frankfurt, and Flatirons.
No sounds were featured last week.
Two featured pictures were demoted last week: FA-18 Hornet breaking sound barrier (7 July 1999) and Interior of tram.
Three pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
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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.5 (d64f667), 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
- An obscure problem with diffs was finally tracked down and (hopefully) fixed this week; it occasionally caused corrupted output from the diff engine. The problem turned out to be a version mismatch between the executable and operating system on some specific Wikimedia servers. (T11533 and many duplicates; was fixed without changing the code (just the executable), so no version number)
- Some actions now work correctly with respect to some pages whose name starts with / (such as Template:/doc). (r33742, bug 13822)
- The drop-down search suggestion box (enabled this week) now works in non-Monobook-based skins. (r33759, bug 13824)
New features
- A range of new mathematical functions was added to {{#expr:}}: sin, cos, tan, asin, acos, atan, exp, ln, abs, floor, trunc, ceil, ^. The constants pi and e were also added. (r33780, bug 13216)
- The API now accepts prop=categoryinfo queries, which queries information such as a category's size. (r33914, bug 13735)
- A warning is now given when uploading an image with the same name as an image on Commons. (r33972, bug 889)
Configuration changes
- Some HTTP cookies are now marked HTTPOnly; this reduces the effects that certain types of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities (if any exist) would have if they were exploited.
- The search box now suggests search terms. (There is an option to turn this behaviour off; see the 'Search' tab of Special:Preferences.)
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 did not open or close any cases this week, leaving three currently open.
Evidence phase
- Homeopathy: A dispute involving a number of editors over the Homeopathy article.
Voting phase
- Tango: A case involving a controversial block of MONGO by Tango under this finding. A remedy suspending Tango's use of the blocking tool for six months has the support of three arbitrators.
Motion to close
- Prem Rawat: A case involving the actions of editors on Prem Rawat and related articles. If closed, remedies would pass placing Rawat-related articles on article probation and reminding editors with a possible or perceived conflict of interest to comply with Wikipedia policies on NPOV and conflict of interest. However, the motion to close is opposed by three arbitrators.