Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2008-05-26
Board elections: Candidate questions
Ting Chen wins 2008 Board Election
26 June 2008
Board elections completed; results forthcoming
23 June 2008
Board elections continue
9 June 2008
Board elections open
2 June 2008
Board elections: Candidate questions
26 May 2008
Board elections: Voting information, new candidates
19 May 2008
Board candidacies open through May 22
12 May 2008
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Ting Chen wins 2008 Board Election |
This week, the Signpost covers the candidates for the 2008 Board elections.
The fifth election to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees begins on Sunday. Fifteen users will be vying for one (1) one-year seat, to be filled in the election.
Last year, we interviewed most of the candidates individually. This year, however, the Election Committee has provided a way for each candidate to answer the same exact questions, by providing a central question-and-answer page where eligible voters can submit questions, and each candidate provides their response. So, instead, we've compiled the answers to some of these questions (particularly those judged most interesting, and those similar to the questions we asked last year, and posted them on a separate page:
Voting will run for three weeks, from 1 June through 21 June. The voting method will be the Schulze method, a form of preferential voting.
On the left is a screenshot of what the interface of the voting system will look like. Voters can give candidates any ranking from "1" to "99" (or leave the field blank), with "1" being the most preferred candidate, higher numbers corresponding to candidates who are less preferred, and a blank space being the least preferred. Where two or more candidates have the same number, or are left blank, none of the candidates are preferred over the other.
Thus, in this example, Jane Doe is the favorite candidate of the voter. John Doe and A.N. Other are tied for the next preference. Joe Bloggs comes next, and John Smith, who is not ranked at all, is the least favorite candidate.
In other election news, the proposal to send an official e-mail to all eligible voters regarding the election was taken up, and an official notice will be sent by the Committee. If a full translation of the notice is not completed, notices will instead be sent in English, so translation continues to be of concern. Many languages also need updates, or full translations, of the voting interface, and many languages also need translations of candidate statements.
As in previous years, election officials will monitor votes for voting irregularities, and discount votes as necessary, if it is deemed that some votes are those of sockpuppets. All voters must have made at least 600 edits before March 1, 2008 on any one wiki, and have made at least 50 edits between January 1 and May 29, 2008 on that particular wiki. The wiki for these requirements must be the same one for both, and edits cannot be combined across multiple wikis to gain suffrage. Exceptions to these edit requirements are given to Wikimedia server administrators with shell access, paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation who began working at the office before March 1, and current and former members of the Board of Trustees.
Next week: The elections begin.
Single User Login opt-in for all users
On Tuesday, Single User Login became available for all users in an opt-in basis.[1] This software feature (known as the CentralAuth extension to the software) will initially allow a user to reserve an account on all public Wikimedia wikis simultaneously; that is, nobody can create an account with the same username as you, and you can log onto any wiki without having to explicitly create an account there. It also means that the accounts are identified within the software as belonging to the same user, and synchronises their email address and passwords; also, logging onto one wiki logs a user onto all other wikis within the same domain (for instance, logging onto the English Wikipedia logs a user with a global account onto other language Wikipedias too, and logging onto Meta also logs a user onto Commons, because they are both at wikimedia.org; this feature was only enabled recently, so you may need to log out and back in again to benefit from this). Note that administrators were able to opt-in to single user login in March, and many have already done so; there is nothing special about single user login accounts created during the pilot, and administrators who already have such an account need not take any special action.
In order to opt-in to single user login, you need to create a global account. The simplest and most common case is where all your accounts have the same username, and nobody else has the same username as you. In this case:
- Make sure that either your email address or your password is the same across all accounts you currently own on public Wikimedia wikis. (Either of these can be changed via Special:Preferences.)
- Go to Special:MergeAccount on the wiki on which you are most active, and retype your password.
However, there are several possible complicating factors:
- If your accounts have different names on different wikis, then you need to ask bureaucrats to rename your accounts such that they all have the same name before you try to create a single user login account. (If you create the single user login account first by mistake, contact a steward at m:Steward requests/SUL requests to resolve the situation.)
- If a user on another project has the same name as you, then only one of you will be able to create a single user login account for the time being (the software will choose based on permissions (i.e. bureaucrat, administrator, etc.) and edit count). Creating a single user login account will not affect other users with the same name as you (because they will have a different password and email); your single user login account will not extend onto wikis where another user already has an account with such a name. However, working out the situation with the other user is recommended.
- Note that if the other user has no contributions, it may be possible to usurp their account to resolve the conflict; however, check the usurpation policy on the relevant wiki first.
If something goes wrong:
- If your passwords and email addresses were not synchronized properly, it is possible to fix the situation by going to Special:MergeAccount and entering passwords for the accounts that were not merged correctly.
- Other problems can be sorted out by stewards and Meta bureaucrats (the relevant request page is m:Steward requests/SUL requests), who can delete single user login accounts.
At present, single user login accounts have no effects other than synchronising email/passwords, preventing other users creating accounts with the same name, simultaneous login within a domain, and allowing their owner to log in to wikis they've never visited without explicitly creating an account; for instance, it will still be possible to have different preferences on different wikis. Note that at present, a single user login account cannot be renamed. Also, note that SUL is currently completely opt-in; you can just ignore it for the time being if you want.
There are several feature requests that single user login may make possible in the future; in particular, developers are currently looking at improving the login system so that it logs people in and out of all public Wikimedia wikis simultaneously (including those on other domains). Some examples of suggestions for other potential uses of the feature that have been made (which may be the basis of future development) include a new-messages bar, the ability to upload images to Commons directly from other wikis, and cross-wiki watchlists.
For more information, see m:Single login specifications, bugzilla:57 (the bug tracker entry), and m:Help:Unified login.
Global groups
Another feature added this week allows "global groups", groups on the Meta-Wiki that give certain users rights on all public Wikimedia projects. Users must be "global users" through the SUL process in order to become a member of a global group. So far, only stewards have rights through the system, allowing them to use most administrative or other rights without explicitly giving themselves the rights each time.
Under discussion is the addition of various other groups, including a group for authorized Wikimedia employees. Global access to privileges like the "rollback" privilege, as well as the ability to move pages across all wikis for trusted users, particularly those who patrol smaller wikis for vandalism, has also been discussed.
Community-related news sources grow
Wikipedia and related projects are beginning to develop a rich spectrum of community-related news and opinion sources, and the Wikipedia Signpost covers only a small portion of wiki news.
For a raw mix of opinion, discussion, criticism, project-wide musing and sporadic insight into editors' psyches, the blog aggregator Open Wiki Blog Planet brings together a host of wiki-centric blogs, including the blogs of several non-Wikimedia projects. A smaller parallel blog aggregator, Planet Wikimedia, draws from much of the same blogger pool but accepts only filtered feeds for project-related posts. New additions are welcome in both blog planets. There is also an ill-maintained list of Wikimedians who blog, but it has largely been superseded by the aggregators. The Wikimedia Foundation recently started an official Foundation blog, and a handful of Wikinews editors run the Wikinewsie Editors' Blog.
The various project mailing lists—particularly WikiEN-l and foundation-l—are also important venues for discussion, although the most active lists have high volume with low signal-to-noise ratio. For general Wikimedia project news, the long-running Signpost companion Wikizine continues to cover significant happenings in the wiki community, with new editions every few weeks.
Wikipedia is now the subject of two podcast programs: Wikipedia Weekly and NotTheWikipediaWeekly. Wikipedia Weekly features (among others) Wikipedia historian Liam Wyatt and media scholar Andrew Lih, while the slightly more chaotic NotTheWikipediaWeekly is usually led by Durova or Privatemusings. Both podcasts have a record of high-profile guests, ranging from prominent editors to foundation board members and employees to banned users and vocal critics.
WikiWorld: "Tomcat and Bobcat"
- This comic originally appeared on August 20, 2007.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Tom Kenny" and "Bobcat Goldthwait". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
Wikimedia Deutschland wins lawsuit, appeal filed
Frankfurter Verlagsgruppe, a German publishing company, sued Wikimedia Deutschland over the article about itself in the German Wikipedia. Last week, the Cologne Landgericht (regional court) ruled that the critical remarks in the article (which were citing a report from a consumer magazine of German TV station ZDF and other sources) were legal. More generally, it rejected the plaintiff's arguments that Wikimedia Deutschland could be held accountable for content in the German Wikipedia because of its relationship with the Wikimedia Foundation, because of its ownership of wikipedia.de (which until last summer had been a domain redirect to de.wikipedia.org), or because it was supposedly "hiring admins" to oversee content.
In the meantime, the article (de:Frankfurter Verlagsgruppe) had been deleted as non-notable, but was later undeleted and moved into userspace (de:Benutzer:Hyperdieter/Frankfurter Verlagsgruppe).
Frankfurter Verlagsgruppe has also announced its intent to appeal the decision. [2]
Relevant links regarding this matter (all in German) include:
Previous court cases where plaintiffs tried unsuccessfully to hold Wikimedia Deutschland accountable for content of the German Wikipedia included a 2006 case involving Tron (hacker) (see archived story) and a 2007 complaint by advocacy group INSM because of an anonymous remark on an article talk page.
Briefly
- The 7th New York City meetup is scheduled for Sunday, June 1, 2008, at 2:30 p.m., on the campus of Columbia University.
- This week, fifteen new wikis were created: Erzya Wikipedia, Extremaduran Wikipedia, Fiji Hindi Wikipedia, Gan Wikipedia, Karakalpak Wikipedia, Moksha Wikipedia, Sakha Wikipedia, Silesian Wikipedia, Sranan Tongo Wikipedia, Czech Wikinews, Hungarian Wikinews, Limburgish Wikisource, Czech Wikiversity, Japanese Wikiversity and Portuguese Wikiversity.
- The Ukrainian Wiktionary has reached 6,000 articles.
- The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached 200,000 revisions.
In the news
High-school students study course on Wikipedia
HSC students to get Wikipedia course – As of next year, the English curriculum for students sitting for the Higher School Certificate, which is taken in New South Wales, Australia, will incorporate an elective called "Global Village", which will include the option of studying Wikipedia. Explaining the choice of Wikipedia, the English inspector at the Board of Studies, which oversees the HSC, said that Wikipedia reflects "notions of the global village", and that the course will allow students to examine communications on a global scale. There has been a positive response from education.au, a not-for-profit educational organisation that brought Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to Australia on a speaking engagement last year. The CEO of education.au, Greg Black, said that young people need to learn how to understand and contextualise the information they gather on the Internet and to determine "whether there's an alternative view".
Other mentions
Other recent mentions in the online press include:
- Clinton's entry in Wikipedia has a watchdog – One of the editors watching over Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia biography has been brought unexpected celebrity and is profiled by this article.
- The Wiki business plan – Sue Gardner and Kul Wadhwa talk about growth plans for Wikimedia, the business side of the foundation, and future opportunities.
- REPN TRI to the FULLEST!!! - "[A]s a model of discourse, it's a killjoy"; this author believes that the style of the prose on Wikipedia is apt to lead students to believe that intellectual discourse is "leaden" and "spiritless".
Dispatches: Featured sounds
February 2007 was a milestone in the creation of a formal set of featured sound criteria, leading to the first promotion within weeks. The criteria stated that a featured sound:
- is of high fidelity and technical quality;
- is available in the public domain or has a free license;
- adds value to an article, helping readers to understand it;
- has a good caption and image description page; and
- is accurate, supported by facts in the article or references cited on the image page.
In a major review of the criteria three months later, high fidelity and technical quality were expressed in terms of balance, reverberation, frequency response and stereophony, the requirement for musical performances was raised from "competent" to "of a high technical and artistic standard", and significantly more detailed requirements were laid out for the sound description page. Exceptions to the technical requirements for recordings made under extenuating circumstances were widened to include historical recordings. This is essentially the form of the current featured sound criteria.
The featured-sound process
The process is similar to that of nominating and reviewing other featured content. A nominator lists on the candidates page a sound file that appears to meet all of the criteria. Reviewers audition and comment on the file and its description page in relation to the criteria, usually declaring "support" or "oppose". Nominations are archived or promoted when it is clear that consensus has developed. Currently, archiving and promoting can be done by anyone; if the volume of nominations increases, it may be necessary to consider the appointment of a director to perform this task, as has recently happened at featured list candidates.
What has been promoted?
Despite this wealth of opportunity, only 25 sound files have ever been nominated, leading to just 15 featured sounds, one of which has been demoted. Of the 14 current featured sounds:
- seven are music recordings, five of which are of European art-music from the medieval to baroque periods;
- four are historical recordings of speech, including the famous "One small step for (a) man ..." and Roosevelt's Infamy Speech that changed the course of World War II;
- two are field recordings of animal sounds; and
- one is an an auditory illusion based on an algorithmic innovation.
The future
It is no coincidence that the featured sound process has emerged just as fast Internet connectivity is becoming the norm in many parts of the world. This has given a rapidly increasing proportion of our readers fast access to sound files in our articles, and suggests that a featured-videos project may eventually result from the experiment with featured sounds. Sounds are becoming an important resource in pursuing Wikipedia's mission to bring free, high-quality information to the world, and the featured-sounds project has set high standards for the use of audio illustrations in the project. Now that the FSC process has been formally operating for 16 months, we need more nominators and reviewers to expand the use of sound at Wikipedia, ensuring that the recordings, their accompanying documentation, and their relationships with articles are of the highest quality and improve the reading experience. In particular, we need to widen the scope to include content from more countries, both English- and non-English-speaking.
Newcomers to the process are welcome, whether they have skills in audio recording, music, oral history, or related fields, or simply—like most of us—a keen ear for quality!
Examples of featured sounds
The assistance of Zginder is acknowledged in the preparation of this article.
Features and admins
Administrators
Four users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Jza84 (nom), Travellingcari (nom), Slp1 (nom), and Gwen Gale (nom).
Bots
Eight bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: SoxBot (task request), LemmeyBOT (task request), CarsracBot (task request), MelonBot (task request), Town-bot (task request), SoxBot VIII (task request), Bot0612 (task request), and PseudoBot (task request).
Featured pages
Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Krulak Mendenhall mission (nom), M-35 (Michigan highway) (nom), Hours of service (nom), Mulholland Drive (film) (nom), Sinestro Corps War (nom), Trevor Linden (nom), Jack Marsh (nom), Tropical Depression Ten (2007) (nom), Characters of Carnivàle (nom), Kannada literature in the Vijayanagara Empire (nom), 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings (nom), The Wiggles (nom), Operation Passage to Freedom (nom), Thomas Cranmer (nom), and Louis Lambert (novel) (nom).
Sixteen lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Atlanta Falcons head coaches (nom), List of East Carolina Pirates in the NFL Draft (nom), The Libertines discography (nom), Memphis Grizzlies draft history (nom), List of San Diego Chargers head coaches (nom), List of Vancouver Canucks players (nom), List of German World War II jet aces (nom), Highlander: The Series (season 1) (nom), 1896 Summer Olympics medal count (nom), Maroon 5 discography (nom), Foo Fighters discography (nom), Smoking Popes discography (nom), List of encyclicals of Pope John XXIII (nom), List of New England Patriots head coaches (nom), List of Philadelphia Eagles head coaches (nom), and List of Edmonton Oilers players (nom).
One topic was promoted to featured status last week: Atlantic Coast Conference football championship games (nom).
Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:James Bond (nom) and Portal:Anglicanism (nom).
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Cannon, Weymouth, Elderly Instruments, Edward Low, Society of the Song Dynasty, Lion, and Stanley Cup.
Former featured pages
Three articles were delisted last week: Windows 2000 (nom), Rajshahi University (nom), and De Lorean DMC-12 (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: 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Mary of Teck, Goalkeeper (football), White-fronted Capuchin, Carpentry, Wayne Gretzky and Water Margin.
No sounds were featured last week.
One featured picture was demoted last week: F1 car.
Two 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.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
- Attempting to delete a redirect to an image no longer deletes the image instead. (r35113, bug 14199)
- The new-messages bar is no longer triggered by the deletion of a user's talk page. (r35133, bug 14077)
- When the preference which determines the maximum number of changes to show in the watchlist is left blank, it now uses a sensible default rather than 0. (r35134, bug 14100)
- A URL-encoded link in an edit summary now links to the correct target. (r35197, bug 14140)
- When a bureaucrat renames themself, the page-moves that move the pages in their userspace to their new username are now attributed to their new username, rather than their old username. (r35211, bug 14219)
New features
- Special:Categories now has an option to start at a particular point in the category listing, in much the same way as Special:Allpages. (r35065, bug 13095)
- It is now possible to move all the subpages of a page at the same time as the page itself. (r33565, bug 9626)
- Opting-in to Single User Login will become possible for all users (not just administrators) from Tuesday (see related story). (bug 57)
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 closed one case this week and did not open any cases, leaving four currently open.
Closed case
- CAMERA lobbying: A case involving lobbying by pro-Israel group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) on Middle East-related articles. The main remedy imposed by the Commitee confirms the sanctions imposed by administrators (an indefinite ban of Gni, a one-year ban of Zeq, and a one-year ban on Arab-Israeli topics for Dajudem). Other remedies provide a general amnesty for other editors who may have been involved in the lobbying group, urge community members to forward evidence about all forms of external group-lobbying to the Committee, and admonish Hypnosadist to "maintain an appropriate level of professionalism at all times, and to avoid misrepresenting Wikipedia policy to other editors."
Evidence phase
- C68-FM-SV: A case involving Cla68, FeloniousMonk, SlimVirgin, and JzG.
- Giovanni33: A case involving the accusation of sockpuppetry by Giovanni33. Giovanni33 and Rafaelsfingers, who has been labeled as a sockpuppet of Giovanni33 by some, have denied the charges.
Voting phase
- Homeopathy: A dispute involving a number of editors over the Homeopathy article. Remedies with the support of five to seven arbitrators include banning DanaUllman for one year, the creation of a "Sourcing Adjudication Board" regarding the inappropriate use of citations, and emphasizing the Committee's ability to issue subsequent sanctions in the case, based on reports of "inappropriate conduct" as judged by the Sourcing Adjudication Board. Another remedy, with the support of five arbitrators, allows uninvolved administrators to impose sanctions on editors involved in Homeopathy-related articles, for various reasons.
Motion to close
- Footnoted quotes: A case involving the use of quotes in footnotes, and general concerns with the biographies of living persons policy. Currently, one arbitrator supports closing the case, with none opposing. Remedies supported by eight arbitrators encourage more enforcement of the BLP policy, and impose a one-year restriction banning Alansohn from making any edits judged to be "uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith". The latter remedy allows his blocking, without warning, should he violate it.