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12 July 2010

 

2010-07-12

British politicians accused of WP cover-ups

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By Wackywace
The Houses of Parliament in London, the source of alterations to sensitive information in WP articles on UK politicians

The Sunday Telegraph reported at the weekend on "suggestions that some [British politicians] have tried to rewrite history by deleting mentions of their career low-points from Wikipedia." The newspaper looked at edits to Wikipedia articles on UK Members of Parliament:

An investigation has uncovered dozens of cases where MPs' biographical pages on Wikipedia were altered to remove details of past humiliations which had been added by members of the public. Embarrassments which have been deleted include an MP who employed a male escort, an MP who lost his front bench job in a row over racist language, and a female MP whose ex-husband was arrested and deported. On every occasion, the change was made either by someone working within the parliamentary estate or by a user who appeared to have links to the MP.

One editor named in the report is suggested to be User:jamesthomas101, who had removed the controversies section from the article on Clive Betts, Labour MP for Sheffield South East. A man named James Thomas is said to be Mr Betts' partner and parliamentary assistant.

The article mentions a controversy regarding User:Tonybaldry, who reportedly changed the article on Tony Baldry three times in March 2010. According to the article, "information was removed about alleged lobbying by Mr Baldry on behalf of Milestone Trading, a diamond mining company from which a company in which he was a one-third shareholder had reportedly received payments." The article reports that the same editor deleted information about an honours controversy over which Mr Baldry had been forced to apologise in the House of Commons.

Mr Baldry responded in the report that Wikipedia's rules "are self-serving rules of engagement. It's impracticable to sue Wikipedia so the only thing you can do is to hope that the entries are accurate. It seems wholly unreasonable that people can go onto the website and simply write stuff that is inaccurate or libellous about public figures. I'm not sure who one can rely on unless oneself to correct the information. I was simply trying to ensure that it wasn't libellous and that it wasn't seriously misleading."

The article lists numerous other occasions where articles on members of parliament have been altered from inside the building, including instances where entries regarding Speaker John Bercow and former Cabinet minister Caroline Flint had been changed using parliamentary computers. The newspaper reported that:

"The Wikipedia entry for Harriet Harman, the acting Labour leader, was changed in July 2008 by a parliamentary user to delete a reference to a protest on the roof of her London house by Fathers 4 Justice campaigners which had taken place the previous month. The section has since been reinserted, although it has been substantially rewritten."

Also noteworthy was that in January last year the entry for former Conservative minister Nigel Waterson, who lost his seat in the May 2010 general election, "was edited from parliament to delete a reference to reports that he had been arrested for allegedly assaulting his two teenage children, before being released without charge. It was subsequently reinserted."

The Houses of Parliament have no rules prohibiting staff from changing Wikipedia entries on politicians.

The report resonates with many earlier incidents involving self-interested edits by politicians or their staff: In 2007, aides working for the Australian prime minister made many edits to articles about his government, including removing an alleged nickname of the then Australian deputy prime minister from Wikipedia's article on him. In 2006 similar editing behaviour emanating from Congressional IP addresses in Washington in 2006 received media attention (see Wikinews report and Signpost coverage). In 2005, articles about candidates in a German regional election were edited from IP addresses of the German federal parliament (see Signpost coverage).

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2010-07-12

Board changes, Wikimania, Public Policy Initiative

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By Wackywace and Tilman Bayer

Board changes

The new Board of Trustees, including outgoing Chair Michael Snow, and WMF Head of Communications Jay Walsh (right), at last week's Wikimania

On July 8, the Wikimedia Foundation announced several changes to the Board of Trustees.

Phoebe Ayers and Arne Klempert have been elected as members of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees by the Wikimedia chapters. The two chapter-selected seats had previously been filled by Klempert and Michael Snow (who has served as the Board's Chair for the last two years), which meant that Snow was leaving the Board. Ting Chen became the new Chair.

This is the first time the new Chapter-selected seat process was used to select the two new members. As briefly noted in an earlier Signpost issue, the chapter selection process is not public and candidates are not generally known unless they announce their candidacy themselves. According to a Q&A, this year nine candidates submitted applications or were nominated, but two of them withdrew during the process.

Some other roles changed between the existing Trustees. Stuart West became Vice-chair of the Board, taking over from Jan-Bart de Vreede who had had that role for four years, while Samuel Klein (User:SJ) took over as Secretary from Kat Walsh (User:Mindspillage).

Board Chair Ting Chen recognized the long-standing contribution of former Board Chair Michael Snow, who held that post since early 2008. Chen said of Snow, "[he] has been a loyal and devoted leader in the Wikimedia movement. I am grateful to count him as a colleague and a friend, and I know he will continue to make important contributions." A post on the Wikimedia blog read: "A huge thanks to the longstanding and substantial contribution from Michael Snow, and a warm welcome to Phoebe Ayers."

Phoebe Ayers, a valued contributor to the Signpost, spoke to the Foundation's press department. "This is an exciting and hugely important time in the history of Wikimedia", she stated. "I'm thrilled to play a greater role, and I'm honored to have been chosen by the Chapters. It's a time of flux and change and important decisions, and I can't think of a better place to put my energy." She is a highly active member of the volunteer community and has co-authored a book about the English-language Wikipedia called How Wikipedia works: and how you can be a part of It.

A press statement from the Foundation stated "there are 10 seats on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and according to the Foundation's bylaws, three members are elected by the Wikimedia community, two are selected by the Wikimedia chapters, the Founder seat is held by Jimmy Wales, and four members are appointed by the Board itself to provide additional, specific expertise. Currently all seats on the Board of Trustees are filled." The chapters seat selection process was created in April 2008, in order to express the Board's belief that the chapters are an important player in the fulfillment of the Wikimedia mission, and that they deserve a voice in how the Wikimedia Foundation should be run.

"The chapters are very grateful for this opportunity to play a key role in the governance of the Wikimedia Foundation", offered Thomas Dalton, Treasurer of Wikimedia UK and moderator of the chapter board seat selection process. "We received nominations of several very highly qualified candidates and had a very difficult decision to make. We are confident that our chosen candidates will be able to help guide the Foundation as it continues its rapid growth and support of the ever-increasing success of the Wikimedia projects. Michael Snow's service to the board and to the Wikimedia movement, has been exemplary and we're excited he has agreed to join our Advisory Board and continue to work with the movement."

Wikimania

From July 9 to 11, the sixth annual Wikimania conference took part at the Baltic Philharmonic in Gdańsk, Poland.

According to the organizers the event was attended by over 400 participants. As announced by the Program Chair, Jacek Jankowski, the Call for Participation had yielded 170 submissions, of which 129 were accepted, resulting in a busy schedule of presentations mostly running in four parallel tracks, posters, etc. (see also last week's preview).

Sessions were streamed live from all conference rooms, and the recordings will be made available online (see this week's Technology Report).

In her opening speech, the Wikimedia Foundation's executive director Sue Gardner mentioned the strategic planning process and the five-year plan coming out of it, as well as the expansion of Foundation staff planned for next year (generating media coverage, see this week's In the news).

The presentation by Erik Möller, the deputy director of the Wikimedia foundation, was titled Beyond the Encyclopedia: The frontiers of free knowledge (a follow-up on Ten things that will be free, Jimmy Wales' keynote speech at Wikimania 2005, that had in turn been inspired by Hilbert's problems). Möller gave an overview of free knowledge projects other than Wikipedia, both those run by Wikimedia and the most promising ones outside the Foundation, such as OpenStreetMap and Thingiverse. He assessed the opportunities and difficulties for each of Wikipedia's sister projects. He was most concerned about Wikiversity, which he said suffers from the lack of a clear mission statement and had "serious governance issues" (see also Signpost coverage).

Saturday saw the first ever screening of Truth in Numbers, a documentary about Wikipedia whose completion has long been awaited (at Wikimania 2007, a trailer and some clips had already been shown). In the discussion following the screening, with the two filmmakers, Andrew Lih and Jimmy Wales as panelists, several Wikipedians lauded the film. However, User:Witty lama (Liam Wyatt) said he felt "attacked" by the movie, which quoted many critics without allowing room to address their criticism. Sue Gardner did not share his concern, noting that it should become apparent to the viewers that the critics mostly belonged to an older generation struggling with the change that Wikipedia represented.

The tagline featured on the conference T-shirts – "Free Knowledge in the City of Freedom" – tied Wikimedia values to the history of Gdańsk, a notion that had already been present in the organizers' bid (see 2008 interview by Wikinews). Saturday's conference party took place in a location on the shipyard area where workers led by Lech Wałęsa had defied communist rulers in a 1980 strike leading to the Solidarność movement, and at the closing ceremony a local representative relayed greetings from Wałęsa, noting that he was a frequent user of Wikipedia.

The next edition of the Signpost will feature more coverage of the 2010 Wikimania conference, including Jimbo Wales' keynote speech and the concert, once the team arrive back from Poland.

Public Policy Initiative starts assessing articles

LiAnna Davis, the communications associate for the Wikimedia Foundation's new Public Policy Initiative (a project collaborating with U.S. educational institutions to improve Wikipedia coverage on public policy topics, see previous Signpost coverage) invited Wikipedians to join in an article assessment drive that started last week:

We're finalizing our list of professors who will be participating in the Initiative for the fall, so stay tuned for more information about that but at the moment, we're in the middle of an article assessment drive, and we encourage everyone to join us. Our on-Wikipedia home is the WikiProject United States Public Policy, and we've started a challenge to tag and assess as many articles relevant to our project as you can."

— LiAnna Davis, Update on the Public Policy Initiative

The Initiative is also looking for experienced Wikipedians to act as "Campus Ambassadors" and "Online Ambassadors", helping students to learn editing Wikipedia.

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2010-07-12

Foundation plans, David Barton, dangerous occasional glitches

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By extransit and Wackywace

Foundation plans

The Foundation's 2010–11 annual plan (see last week's coverage) and its 2010-15 strategic plan (see earlier Signpost coverage) have been receiving media attention following the keynote speech of its executive director, Sue Gardner, at Wikimania (see also this week's News and notes):

[A] five-year strategic planning project, which is still being worked on (and lives on an editable wiki), resulted in the goals that Ms. Gardner outlined today. She also stressed that the expansion plan goals involved input from Wikipedians: 1,000 people working on the strategy, which included 900 separate proposals."

— Noam Cohen, "Wikipedia’s Foundation Plans Expansion". The New York Times

"Many of the new employees will work either at marketing Wikipedia to could-be contributors, or providing technical support to keep them from getting flustered. “Nobody knows what this will look like”, executive director Sue Gardner told the Times. Because yes, the company’s plans are being managed on a wiki."

— Paul Boutin, "Wikipedia seeks fresh blood". VentureBeat

"Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world, yet, unlike pretty much every other website its size, it has no direct revenue. Operated by Wikimedia, a non-profit organization, all of the site’s funding comes from donations. Operating a top 10 site is not cheap, though, and Wikimedia has struggled each year to drum up more donations. Yet, the latest plans are to almost double its yearly budget and double its staff in the next year, all of this while increasing editorial contributions and the number of visitors."

— Lucian Parfeni, "Wikipedia wants 680 million visitors by 2015". Softpedia

Does David Barton edit Wikipedia to promote his views?

American website newshounds.us (a Fox News watchdog) has noticed an unusual similarity between a passage from the Wikipedia article on Phillis Wheatley to a statement by historian David Barton on a show with Glenn Beck about women in the Revolutionary War:

Barton said this about Wheatley: “She was bought by the Wheatley family and adopted her as a daughter. She became a daughter ... a lot of Christian families would adopt slaves, buy them from slaves to make them part of the family and to keep them from going into slavery.” Now check out Wikipedia: “Wheatley and his wife Susanna adopted her as their daughter to keep her from becoming a slave. This was common in Christian families of the time who were anti-slavery.”

— Glenn Beck’s Resident “Historian”, David Barton, edits or uses Wikipedia to promote historical lie?

The News Hounds writer claims she is unable to find any confirmation of the idea that this happened or that Christians would adopt slave children, and wondered if either Barton was getting his history from Wikipedia or if Barton himself was editing Wikipedia to push his views.

Looking at the logs, the statement was introduced to the Wikipedia article on July 4 ([1]), but it has since been reverted, while the Glenn Beck show was on July 2nd, so your author (user:extransit) considers it most likely that one of the show's viewers added the statement to the Wikipedia article, not Barton himself.

Make sure you read your own Wikipedia entry, blogs Daniel Hannan

The conservative British MEP and journalist Daniel Hannan writes in his Daily Telegraph blog this week that he has spotted a number of errors on his own Wikipedia page.

"If there are any Wiki-editors reading – and this is your call, obviously – it seems odd to give prominence to my relatively tangential writings about Afghanistan and the International Court while barely mentioning the philosophy that informs my entire political career. Oh, and I stopped writing Telegraph editorials shortly after I began this blog. Other than that, though, it’s pretty accurate. Crowd-sourcing, you see, works. Which is what makes the occasional glitch so dangerous."

— Hannan, Daniel (10 July 2010). "Wikipedia's occasional errors are more dangerous than ever". Telegraph.co.uk. Telegraph Media Group. Retrieved 11 July 2010.


Briefly

2010-07-12

Article ownership, WikiProjects vs. Manual of Style, Unverifiable village

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By Mono and Wackywace


After a long hiatus, the Discussion Report is back this week, with drama, discussions, deletions and RfCs from the English Wikipedia.

Protection against "ownership": how much of WP?

On June 28, H3llkn0wz requested that Wikipedia:Ownership of articles be renamed and moved to Wikipedia:Page ownership, a name that is shorter and avoids the implication that only articles can become the subject of ownership by an editor, as opposed to talk and administrative pages.

Crazycomputers weakly opposed the idea of a move: "the use of the term 'article' is much more appropriate in the context of an encyclopedia than 'page'. Obviously, as this policy is meant to apply to all articles/pages/documents/whatevers on Wikipedia, not just those in article-space, the name 'page' does make sense. But if we make a sweeping terminology change from 'article' to 'page' that may lead others, especially companies that try to self-promote themselves on Wikipedia, to justify their non-encyclopedic edits."

Good Olfactory supported the change: "however it is phrased, it's clear that we need to expand the concept beyond articles—certainly to templates and categories at least, which are covered in 'page'."

Dcoetzee opposed the change: "This policy has always been primarily concerned with articles, and it's much more important as applied to articles. A person is understood to have a (limited) level of control over editing of their user space and their own comments in discussions. By all means the policy should describe how it applies to other types of pages, but I think the title should focus on the most important part."

Before long, several other names were suggested, including WP:Ownership, WP:Own, and WP:Content ownership. Colonel Warden said that "ownership seems the simplest and clearest title. The guideline can then explain how ownership varies depending upon the nature of the object – article, userpage, talk-page comment, RfA vote, fair-use image or whatever."

Towards the end of the week, all votes were opposed to the change. Warrior4321 said, "ownership primarily relates to articles. It's just much more easier for anybody who's new to Wikipedia". Carrite agreed: "the current wording is more descriptive of the problem being addressed than the proposed wording: the issue relates to encyclopedia articles in mainspace."

The discussion was eventually closed as no consensus to move.

Style guidelines: should WikiProjects override the MoS?

On June 30, Moonriddengirl started a debate at Wikipedia talk:Consensus over the extent of custom article appearances that deviate from the manual of style. After a recent RfC regarding color usage in tables was closed with no consensus, Moonriddengirl believes that these issues raise certain questions, such as:

  • Who determines when deviations are gratuitous or constitute a substantial semantic distinction?
  • Should a WikiProject launch a central conversation before adopting such deviations, or may they decide such matters locally?
  • If they adopt such deviations locally and these are challenged, where is the matter to be settled?
  • If customized styling is employed, how and where should this be implemented? (inline, templates, stylesheets...)

Sunray responded: "the community should make the decision on whether there should be a deviation from site-wide style guidelines." Meanwhile, Active Banana responded to all of the points, saying "To what an extent? To the extent of their influence (muscle power) and dedication (lunacy). Either they silence the opposition, or step back, or get slapped."

Crohnie said, "Wikipedia projects should be allowed to make consensus about what concerns them, of course within reasonable standards". At the same time, LeadSongDog thinks "On the off chance that there is some sustainable justification for having wikiproject-specific colours, they should be implemented using some form of stylesheet that will be applicable without hand-coding of individual articles." RexxS offered a technical viewpoint, focusing on "future-proof[ing]" Wikipedia: "inline styles are inferior to classes, but I accept that it's difficult for end users to make use of that. Nevertheless, for styles that have widespread usage across the encyclopedia, there is an argument that they would be better implemented as classes within one of the sitewide style sheets."

Ntsimp takes a different view: "I never understood the obsession some Wikipedians have with stylistic consistency. It's okay for different articles and different kinds of articles to look different. When there are legitimate questions of larger concern, such as accessibility, these can be raised on the relevant talk pages. But most of the time it doesn't matter; there is no One True Way, and local consensus is sufficient."

Tony1 said, "The style guides make WP a cohesive force on the Internet. In my view, they should be contravened only where: (1) the relevant MoS talk page had been notified of the discussion; and (2) editors have generated consensus at the WikiProject talk page that a contravention is in keeping with the particular nature or needs of the WikiProject topic, with well-stated arguments that this will improve the articles. This should be limited to exceptional cases."

Carcharoth related the issue to the need to publicize style-guide discussions more widely in the community.

The discussion continues at Wikipedia talk:Consensus/RfC.

If it looks like a village and quacks like a village, is it a village?

On July 12, Vardough was nominated for deletion. In the nominator's words, the article was about "a village with no references. I was unable to find any verification of its existence. Of course, if verification of it arises, it can be speedy kept. Otherwise it should be deleted."

The first comment was from Oakshade, who stated that he "was about to say "Of course it's notable, it's a village." But so far I can't find any evidence of a place with this name. There does appear to be a small village approximately 5 miles from Miyaneh with the Latin character spelling of Vardevaq." [2] If this is the place the article creator meant, I wouldn't be opposed to [renaming the article] Vardevaq"

TheCatalyst31 supported the nomination for deletion: "I'd guess that this is Vardevaq (or Vardūq, as the GEOnet Names Server calls it) based on the location, but unless there's a source, that can't really be proven. Since practically everything in the article is unsourced/unverifiable anyway, nothing will be lost by deleting this article and creating one for Vardevaq. (If anyone finds a source for the name Vardough, the article should just be moved.)".

CaliforniaAliBaba suggested the article be kept, but renamed: "[A] place with this name seems to exist, there's a Persian Wikipedia page on it [3] and a reasonable number of "natural" GHits mentioning it in Persian (e.g. not just endless lists of placenames copied and recopied from geographic databases, like in the English hits). "Vardough" is a slightly odd but certainly reasonable transcription of that (transcribing "و" as "ou" instead of "u", and "ق" as "gh" instead of "q")".

The nomination was closed when TheCatalyst31 replied to CaliforniaAliBaba that he was retracting his support for deletion. "I'll take your word for it on the transcription, since I don't speak Persian; I'm changing my vote to kep and rename based on that evidence." The deletion discussion was closed by Jujutacular, who had nominated the article. The result was keep and move to Vardevaq.

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2010-07-12

WikiProject Apple Inc.

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By Mabeenot
WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

WikiProject Apple Inc., formerly WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject iPhone OS, is an evolving project that dates back to December 2005. It assumed its current form in May 2010, with two task forces handling the duties of the old Macintosh and iPhone OS projects. WikiProject Apple Inc. is home to 4 featured articles and lists, 18 good and A-class articles, and a total of over 4,000 articles maintained by 20 members. The project hosted an unassessed article backlog elimination drive last month, resulting in the elimination of the entire backlog of over 500 articles.

This week we interviewed five contributors. HereToHelp joined the Macintosh project several years ago and claims to be the project's oldest active member. Mono, a writer for the Signpost, describes himself as an Apple "fanboy" and initiated the project's transition from WikiProject Macintosh to WikiProject Apple Inc. SuperHamster participated in the project's backlog elimination drive in May, later "officially" becoming a member of the project. RN describes himself as "not historically a wikiproject person," but he joined recently after editing Apple-related articles for several years. David Fuchs is an admin and graphic designer with experience reviewing FACs, GANs, and peer reviews. Members Airplaneman and NerdyScienceDude also contributed to this report.

The project has undergone some major reorganization in the past couple months, including the merging of WikiProject Macintosh and WikiProject Apple. Why were these changes necessary and how have they improved the project?

Mono: After joining, I began to realize that most of the stuff on the project page was two years old and nothing really happened there. Eventually, I was working on a portal somewhere and I floated the idea for a revival on Airplaneman's talkpage. Soon after, we rebuilt the project page, notified all old members (most didn't respond), and slowly began reorganizing. People began to show up, and we found consensus to shift the project's scope, renaming Macintosh to Apple Inc. This change allowed more collaboration, and I'm certainly looking forward to future project endeavors.
HereToHelp: A few months ago, several people started showing up on the long-dead project talk page. I was skeptical at first, but out of the blue, or so it seemed, there were new people who wanted to get involved. I had previously tried to rename the project to Apple, but it fell through almost immediately. Now, we've been able to make progress towards articles and retain a critical mass of editors.
David Fuchs: Part of the problem with having too many overlapping projects is that it divides editor attention and leads to higher attrition. In practical terms, WikiProject Macintosh was covering almost everything created by Apple Inc., such as the iPod. Merging the projects together was common sense to gather everyone under the same umbrella. Another benefit of the merge and resulting discussions was narrowing the scope to shed articles that were better covered by other projects—video games whose only relevance to the project was they were released on the Mac platform at some point, for example. A leaner, meaner project is a happier project.

WikiProject Apple Inc. is home to four pieces of featured content. A fifth piece of featured content, Macintosh, was the subject of a collaboration last month in an effort to prevent delisting, which occurred 5 July 2010. Have you been involved in the promotion of any of these articles or in the recent collaboration? What have you learned from these experiences?

The Macintosh Classic, one of the project's featured articles
HereToHelp: Promoting Macintosh to Featured Article status was the one great achievement of the "old" project. It was nominated for delisting two years later, and by that point I was Wiktator of a dead project and defended the article in a ten-week siege. Now it's up for delisting again, but this time I have help. I've learned that projects can go in cycles as interest waxes and wanes, and that it is extremely helpful to have someone help you improve articles.
When the iPhone 3G came out in 2008, people created a direct copy of the iPhone article and made changes to reflect the new model. This lead to a lot of duplicated content, because the devices have so much more in common than not. It really was a mess, and did the reader a disservice because there was no way to tell what stayed the same other than realizing two paragraphs were verbatim copies. It got merged back when the interest died down—activity spikes around new products and then subsides quickly. When the 3GS came out in 2009, we created List of iOS devices to hold the extra content, although it wasn't called that at the time. I also created every conceivable iPhone-related title as a protected redirect to the main article. With overwhelming consensus against me this time with the iPhone 4 (but mostly from anonymous users), I unlocked four separate articles for each model, promising to stay out of them with the intent of showing how bad an idea it was. Initially, the same problem occurred. I talked to Scott Bywater, who seemed to be the only main contributor, which affirms that far more people talk about writing articles than actually write them. I also suspect that many of the anons (who I am guilty of looking upon disdainfully) were knee-jerk Apple fanboys; I try not to paraphrase Apple's promotional materials and to add relevant historical and 3rd party sources as much as possible. I was upset, and thought that they weren't considering all the options and believed that the most obvious organization was the only option, and didn't stick around afterwards to care — but I digress. I explained to Scott my position, trying to persuade him while also letting him make his own opinion, and we quickly agreed to discuss only the changes each model brought. Once we decided to begin with "The iPhone 4 is an iPhone..." rather than "The iPhone 4 is a multimedia-enabled Internet smartphone," which is how iPhone begins, everything fell into place. (I realized later that the precedent of "The iMac is a Macintosh..." was already in place by another editor long ago.) It looks increasingly likely that the articles by model will remain, rather than get merged somewhere (as I originally planned). They are also allowing for the creation of valuable new content that is too specific for the main article. So keep an open mind when you edit (and in life), and be willing to try new things, even if you're not sure they will work. Never be afraid to explain yourself on talk pages and communicate with other editors. And be ready to admit you were wrong, because sooner or later, you will be.
Mono: I've not been around long enough for the "old" project, nor do I have much expertise (or interest) in the legacy Macs, so I haven't contributed to a featured article. I look forward to doing so in the future. Currently, I'm working to get the MacBook Air article ready for a good-article nomination.
RN: Macintosh is a good example of an article that back in the past FAC were mostly concerned with promoting featured articles that were merely good and self-contained. To an extent, that's still true, but the standards are much higher now—every source is scrutinized, and most importantly for this article the context and focus of the article as a whole is more focused on. The latter often forces complete rethinks and rewrites of articles that before were featured with very few reservations.
Any editor who participated in the backlog drive and assessing 1 article would receive this, um, barnstar

The project recently completed an unassessed articles backlog elimination drive which resulted in clearing out the entire backlog of over 500 articles. Walk us through some of the planning and advertising that went into the drive. What aspect of the drive motivated contributors the most?

Mono: As the coordinator for the drive, I organized the event and was very pleased with the results. I modeled it after the GOCE Backlog Elimination Drive for May, which in turn modeled it after the April GAN backlog drive. There wasn't much advertising that went on, to be honest: I put a notice at the project and we quickly got participants, some who weren't members of the project (they are now). The biggest attraction was the barnstars, which were to be awarded to participants based on the amount of articles they assessed. Any editor who assessed 1 article would get a star for their contributions, and the top 2 assessors (Airplaneman and EdoDodo) received a gold star. We plan to have a bot assess importance.

What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new member get involved today?

SuperHamster: The project has been striving to meet several needs recently. One example was shown with the Backlog Elimination Drive that took place in May, (see above) which ended successfully. Currently, the project is called for a collaboration to improve the article Macintosh, the only top-importance featured article that the project has, as it is currently undergoing a featured article review. There is, of course, always things that the project wants to get done, as the goal of the project is to of improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to Apple Inc. There's always articles to be made and articles to be improved, which is also why one of the project's most pressing needs is the involvement of current and new members, as we could always use a helping hand. Anybody's welcome to join, whether their interest is anywhere in between of getting involved in an active collaboration to helping clean-up and expand articles on an individual basis. Users can sign up by adding their name to the participants list on the main page of the project. If users are interested in more specific areas of Apple, they can also join one of the task forces, which are also looking for some more participants.
HereToHelp: SuperHamster mostly said it. In my mind, the trifecta of Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone should all be featured. As I mentioned above, iPhone (original), iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 are all new articles that need expansion (especially the middle two).
Mono: The project has a section titled "How to help" which basically covers all the ways anyone could help, from creating/expanding articles to tackling the Things to do backlog.
The project's logo, as crisp and clean as the iMac featured in the logo
David Fuchs: Expanding on the above, one of the issues that came up at the Macintosh FAR was what sources were valid for citing things like hardware specifications—essential to any article, but often hard to cite to classic reliable sources (especially since they originally derived from old trade magazines or what have you.) Fixing the project's scope and working on improving top-level articles are important, as is crafting an acceptable formula for structuring articles; the Mac FAR was far more difficult because A) there were few similar FA topics to look to, and B) there was no project guidance on what the article should contain.
HereToHelp: While I've been over most of the Macintosh article, the basic structure was in place when I got here years ago. "What should this article really contain?" never really came up for discussion. What made the FAR so hard, besides sourcing tech specs, was nobody knew (or knows) what the article should look like. Do we organize chronologically or categorically? Is there too much emphasis on new developments, or too little? Sometimes it seems like a bunch of people running around chaotically without communicating, but that is where the Signpost comes in. To be able to talk about these things in a low-stress open forum, and to let other editors learn from our experiences, does a world of good.

Anything else you'd like to add?

RN: The project in general should have more featured articles. Most of the foundation is there in a lot of articles—there are many articles with the "good" tag—it's mostly taking the extra step—in particular making sure the article stays NPOV, which has historically been a problem on Apple articles (many categories of articles suffer from this problem). Take Microsoft articles for instance, many of which of featured in a category where there are not many current featured articles or even wikiprojects! One reason for this is that strangely enough often one's passion for a subject can be more difficult to compromise with then one's simple hatred on a subject.


Next week, we'll take a walk on the wild side. Until then, tame your unruly spirit with some previous reports from the archive.

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2010-07-12

The best of the week

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By Tony1 and Wackywace
The Australian Eastern Rosella, among the new featured pictures this week

Administrators

Two editors were promoted to adminship:

  • Fetchcomms (nom) has been with us since last October and has already made 27,000 edits, half of them to unique pages. Fetchcomms has 14 DYK hooks and two good articles, and helps new Wikipedians, dealing with real-time assistance in #wikipedia-en-help and responding to on-site "helpme" requests.
  • MGA73 (nom) is an admin and CU on the Danish Wikipedia, an admin on Commons, and an OTRS volunteer. Much of MGA's work involves cleaning up the large backlog of images and other content on the Commons and the English Wikipedia.

Nine articles were promoted to featured status:

Evelyn Waugh, at the height of his career as a novelist
Choice of the week: The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Wehwalt to select his number-one for the week. "I reviewed Evelyn Waugh's The Temple at Thatch and recommend it. I'm not an early 20th century literature buff, but not only is this well written and interesting but it will be very useful for someone wanting (or needing!) information on this rather specialized topic. And then he can take the references and go further. That's what Wikipedia is all about."

Three featured articles were delisted:

Nine lists were promoted to featured status:

Choice of the week: We asked delegate and reviewer The Rambling Man for his opinion. "Two choices actually, for different reasons. The List of New York Yankees no-hitters, nominated by regular contributor Staxringold, exemplifies what FLC nominations should be about: it's notable, meets pretty much all of the criteria, it's interesting (even to a non-baseball enthusiast such as me), and it took little adjustment to get the green light from reviewers. Secondly, and equally important, is Sandman888's List of FC Barcelona presidents. Here was a nominator who took on a great deal of advice, including two peer reviews, made changes swiftly and diligently, and we now have a great list."

Climbing ferns overtake cypress trees, in the Everglades, a new featured topic
Three topics were promoted to featured status:

One featured topic, Canadian election timelines, was delisted, for want of progress in promoting constituent articles.

Six images were promoted:

Tungsten rods with evaporated crystals, partially oxidized with colorful tarnish. Purity 99.98%, as well as a 99.999%-pure 1 cm3 tungsten cube.
Choice of the week: J Milburn, a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost, "Evaporated tungsten crystals, fragments, and cube is another fantastic photo from Alchemist-hp, who has provided many high-quality images of elements, and has more to come. This was a particularly interesting one in terms of composition and texture, to my eyes, and passed without controversy. I also adored Clavaria zollingeri, also known as "Violet coral", as a weird and wonderful example from the world of fungi, but I don't make any secret about my love of mushrooms, so I don't think that would be the most impartial choice from me!"
User:FrancisTyers was on the spot after the 2005 London bombings, and photographed the chaos at Russell Square. The image is at the Terrorism Portal.
Portal:Terrorism was promoted, the first new featured portal since April.

Video on the Main Page

The July 2009 Ürümqi riots, featured on Monday's Main Page, was accompanied by a video—something rarely seen with TFAs—captured on a Wikipedian's cell-phone. Among the other TFA highlights were:

  • The 1930 FIFA World Cup, the inaugural FIFA World Cup championship, which appeared on Sunday to coincide with the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final.
  • Gustav Mahler, the late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation, which appeared on Wednesday. The article describes him as "one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century".

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2010-07-12

Arbitration Report

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By Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving two open.

Open cases

2010-07-12

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250

Wikimania live streaming and rebroadcast

As Wikimania draws to a close, the debate about how best to (re)broadcast video footage has begun on the wikitech-l mailing list. There was general praise for the quality and reliability of this year's live video feeds provided by the iStream.pl company – for instance, User:Bodnotbod commented that "most talks had multiple camera set-ups and live cutting to keep it more visually engaging. It really made me feel a part of the conference". However, User:Gmaxwell criticised the choice of an Adobe Flash-based mechanism for displaying them. Flash, developed commercially, has wide support among operating systems and web browsers but remains proprietary: this conflicts with the Foundation and community-at-large's vision of a world based around open source software. An open source alternative exists in the form of the Theora OGG format (.ogv), though support for OGG remains patchy despite Wikimedia and other groups pushing for its adoption.

Last year, there was almost no live streaming, with just about all video converted to OGG format overnight and relayed via Wikimedia Commons and other sites. This time round, it seems unlikely that OGG files will be available for several weeks, but they could potentially be of a more professional standard. In the meantime, slideshows and PDF versions of the presentations are already available.

Import of French books begins

In April this year, the French chapter of the WMF, Wikimedia France, announced it had reached an agreement with the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) to import about 1400 French public domain texts primarily for use on the French Wikisource (see Signpost coverage). This week, the technical work began. This involved first downloading each text from the BNF in DjVu form on July 7, and reuploading it directly into the system, the following day. It is not known how complete the transition is.

[Update: See the talk page of this section for some corrections and additional information]

In brief

Note: not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

  • Two fixes for the mwEmbed JavaScript library have been produced: the resolution of bug #20962 allows plural forms of words to be translated and used in interface messages and that of bug #24268 fixes functionality when working alongside Twinkle.
  • Bug #24196, referring to problems with Special:ValidationStatistics (itself related to pending changes), has been fixed.
  • The first support for "Special:" namespace pages has been added to the MediaWiki API, namely the ability to check their existence and other basic properties (bug #24185).
  • The Wikipedia pageview statistics visualiser http://stats.grok.se has suffered from intermittent readings. The cause is thought to be an underlying one in the data itself supplied by the software.
  • A dynamic recent changes feed for the latest web browsers has been created and is available on the Toolserver. More details, including how to embed it as a user script, are available.
  • The option "Mark all edits minor by default" is soon to be removed from Special:Preferences, because "users often set it and forget it, causing non-minor edits to be marked minor." (bug #24313).

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