Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2015-06-24
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-24/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-24/Traffic report
Turkish Wikipedia censorship; "Can Wikipedia survive?"; PR editing
Turkish Wikipedia warns readers of censorship
The Hürriyet Daily News reports that the Turkish Wikipedia has posted banners on the top of the encyclopedia to warn users that a number of articles are being blocked by the Turkish government. Four articles on human anatomy have been blocked since November 2014 and an article on Turkish politics was blocked this month. The articles are:
- Human penis
- Female reproduction organs
- Scrotum
- Vagina
- Opinion polling for the Turkish general election, 2015
Katherine Maher, chief communications officer of the Wikimedia Foundation, told BirGün that the WMF was working on curbing the censorship, both through legal means and through implementing HTTPS on all its projects (see Signpost coverage). She said, "We are trying to overcome these obstacles in countries where access to information is limited or controlled." She added, "[T]he community of Wikipedia is completely against censorship."
The Turkish government has a history of Internet censorship and issues with Wikipedia in particular. Last March, it briefly banned Twitter after evidence of alleged corruption by high-ranking Turkish government officials circulated in social media. Last September, a cabinet minister used Twitter to complain about how President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was depicted in an article on the English Wikipedia (see Signpost coverage). (June 19) G
"Can Wikipedia survive?"
On the opinion pages of the Sunday, June 21 edition of the New York Times, Andrew Lih (Fuzheado), professor of journalism at American University, author of The Wikipedia Revolution, and long-time Wikipedia editor, asks "Can Wikipedia survive?"
Lih writes about the challenges facing Wikipedia: the steady decline in editor participation, the low rates of recruitment of new administrators, tensions between the Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia Foundation, and the rise in the use of mobile devices to access the Internet, which are less likely to be used to edit Wikipedia because "it’s simply too hard to manipulate complex code on a tiny screen." Efforts are being made to address these challenges, such as improvements to Wikipedia mobile apps. Lih highlights some positive developments, such as partnerships between Wikipedia and scientific and cultural institutions like the Wikipedian in Residence program. "These are vital opportunities for Wikipedia to tap external expertise and enlarge its base of editors," he writes.
He concludes:
| “ | The worst scenario is an end to Wikipedia, not with a bang but with a whimper: a long, slow decline in participation, accuracy and usefulness that is not quite dramatic enough to jolt the community into making meaningful reforms.
No effort in history has gotten so much information at so little cost into the hands of so many — a feat made all the more remarkable by the absence of profit and owners. In an age of Internet giants, this most selfless of websites is worth saving. |
” |
Lih's article prompted discussion on Wikipedia and Wikipedia mailing lists, as well as press coverage, such as a column from The Guardian's Andrew Brown, who concluded that mobile devices were the reason that "Wikipedia editors are a dying breed". G
Undisclosed paid editing now in the Sunshine
How paid editors squeeze you dry
31 January 2024
"Wikipedia and the assault on history"
4 December 2023
The "largest con in corporate history"?
20 February 2023
Truth or consequences? A tough month for truth
31 August 2022
The oligarchs' socks
27 March 2022
Fuzzy-headed government editing
30 January 2022
Denial: climate change, mass killings and pornography
29 November 2021
Paid promotional paragraphs in German parliamentary pages
26 September 2021
Enough time left to vote! IP ban
29 August 2021
Paid editing by a former head of state's business enterprise
25 April 2021
A "billionaire battle" on Wikipedia: Sex, lies, and video
28 February 2021
Concealment, data journalism, a non-pig farmer, and some Bluetick Hounds
28 December 2020
How billionaires rewrite Wikipedia
29 November 2020
Ban on IPs on ptwiki, paid editing for Tatarstan, IP masking
1 November 2020
Paid editing with political connections
27 September 2020
WIPO, Seigenthaler incident 15 years later
27 September 2020
Wikipedia for promotional purposes?
30 August 2020
Dog days gone bad
2 August 2020
Fox News, a flight of RfAs, and banning policy
2 August 2020
Some strange people edit Wikipedia for money
2 August 2020
Trying to find COI or paid editors? Just read the news
28 June 2020
Automatic detection of covert paid editing; Wiki Workshop 2020
31 May 2020
2019 Picture of the Year, 200 French paid editing accounts blocked, 10 years of Guild Copyediting
31 May 2020
English Wikipedia community's conclusions on talk pages
30 April 2019
Women's history month
31 March 2019
Court-ordered article redaction, paid editing, and rock stars
1 December 2018
Kalanick's nipples; Episode #138 of Drama on the Hill
23 June 2017
Massive paid editing network unearthed on the English Wikipedia
2 September 2015
Orangemoody sockpuppet case sparks widespread coverage
2 September 2015
Paid editing; traffic drop; Nicki Minaj
12 August 2015
Community voices on paid editing
12 August 2015
On paid editing and advocacy: when the Bright Line fails to shine, and what we can do about it
15 July 2015
Turkish Wikipedia censorship; "Can Wikipedia survive?"; PR editing
24 June 2015
A quick way of becoming an admin
17 June 2015
Meet a paid editor
4 March 2015
Is Wikipedia for sale?
4 February 2015
Shifting values in the paid content debate; cross-language bot detection
30 July 2014
With paid advocacy in its sights, the Wikimedia Foundation amends their terms of use
18 June 2014
Does Wikipedia Pay? The Moderator: William Beutler
11 June 2014
PR agencies commit to ethical interactions with Wikipedia
11 June 2014
Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
26 February 2014
Foundation takes aim at undisclosed paid editing; Greek Wikipedia editor faces down legal challenge
19 February 2014
Special report: Contesting contests
29 January 2014
WMF employee forced out over "paid advocacy editing"
8 January 2014
Foundation to Wiki-PR: cease and desist; Arbitration Committee elections starting
20 November 2013
More discussion of paid advocacy, upcoming arbitrator elections, research hackathon, and more
23 October 2013
Vice on Wiki-PR's paid advocacy; Featured list elections begin
16 October 2013
Ada Lovelace Day, paid advocacy on Wikipedia, sidebar update, and more
16 October 2013
Wiki-PR's extensive network of clandestine paid advocacy exposed
9 October 2013
Q&A on Public Relations and Wikipedia
25 September 2013
PR firm accused of editing Wikipedia for government clients; can Wikipedia predict the stock market?
13 May 2013
Court ruling complicates the paid-editing debate
12 November 2012
Does Wikipedia Pay? The Founder: Jimmy Wales
1 October 2012
Does Wikipedia pay? The skeptic: Orange Mike
23 July 2012
Does Wikipedia Pay? The Communicator: Phil Gomes
7 May 2012
Does Wikipedia Pay? The Consultant: Pete Forsyth
30 April 2012
Showdown as featured article writer openly solicits commercial opportunities
30 April 2012
Does Wikipedia Pay? The Facilitator: Silver seren
16 April 2012
Wikimedia announcements, Wikipedia advertising, and more!
26 April 2010
License update, Google Translate, GLAM conference, Paid editing
15 June 2009
Report of diploma mill offering pay for edits
12 March 2007
AstroTurf PR firm discovered astroturfing
5 February 2007
Account used to create paid corporate entries shut down
9 October 2006
Editing for hire leads to intervention
14 August 2006
Proposal to pay editors for contributions
24 April 2006
German Wikipedia introduces incentive scheme
18 July 2005
The New York Times reports on claims of paid editing of Wikipedia by employees of the public relations firm Sunshine Sachs. Sunshine Sachs has represented a number of celebrity clients, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, Barbra Streisand, Guy Fieri, The Jonas Brothers, and Trisha Yearwood. In 2012, Business Insider listed its CEOs, Shawn Sachs and Ken Sunshine as among the "most powerful publicists in Hollywood".
Paid editing without disclosing a conflict of interest is a violation of the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use. Last year, after much community input and debate, the Terms of Use were strengthened in regards to undisclosed paid editing.
The alleged paid editing by Sunshine Sachs was exposed by Pete Forsyth (Peteforsyth), a Wikipedia editor and paid consultant who runs Wiki Strategies, which "provides consulting services for organizations engaging with Wikipedia and other collaborative communities". (The Signpost interviewed Forsyth in 2012 on the subject of paid editing.) Prompted by a Sunshine Sachs email Forsyth received which read "Sunshine Sachs has a number of experienced editors on staff that have established profiles on Wikipedia. The changes we make to existing pages are rarely challenged," Forsyth paid journalist Jack Craver to investigate and write a story called "PR firm covertly edits the Wikipedia entries of its celebrity clients" for the Wiki Strategies blog. The story focused primarily on edits to the article for Naomi Campbell, a Sunshine Sachs client, by one editor identified as a Sunshine Sachs employee. The editor removed a number of references to the extremely poor critical reception of her 1994 album babywoman and other potentially unflattering information.
Ken Sunshine acknowledged to the New York Times that Sunshine Sachs employees had violated Wikipedia's terms of use, but said that all of their staff have now disclosed their conflict of interest. It is not known how many Sunshine Sachs employees have edited Wikipedia, but the user pages of the three accounts mentioned in Craver's story now all have disclosure notifications. The Signpost also found one other account with such a disclosure notice.
The story attracted further coverage in a number of news outlets around the world, including the Daily Mail, India Today and stuff.co.nz.
Last year, a number of prominent public relations agencies committed to "ethical engagement practices" when editing Wikipedia (see Signpost coverage). Despite this, a number of companies still do not disclose their COI editing. For example, a April Signpost report revealed undisclosed advocacy editing by Sony. (June 23) G
In brief
- The threat to Freedom of Panorama, highlighted in the Signpost last week, was the subject of a leading article in The Times on June 24. Under the title "Freedom to Photograph" (subscription) the Times thundered:
- "Next time you take a photo of the London Eye, or the Angel of the North, or any monument, artwork or building in a public place, know this: you are exercising a freedom that is under threat".
- Two days later, on June 26, the newspaper also featured two follow-up letters at the top of its letters page, one signed by Jimmy Wales together with the British Photographic Council, the British Press Photographers' Association, the British Institute of Professional Photographers, Amateur Photographer, the Bureau of Freelance Photographers, the Chartered Institute of Journalists, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Open Rights Group; the second by Michael Maggs, chairman of Wikimedia UK.
- The Times's news reporting on the subject (subscription) was followed up by the online editions of The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. (A tracking page on Commons has more UK political and media echo.) The coverage notably included opposition to the change from a spokesperson for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA),
- "We are concerned that the well-intentioned proposals to ensure that architects are paid for the use of images of their work by commercial publishers and broadcasters would instead have negative implications, and represent a potentially damaging restriction of the debate about architecture and public space."
- As of June 26 a petition to "Save the Freedom of Photography" launched by photographer Nico Trinkhaus on the website change.org had reached over 25,000 signatures in its first three days.
- German Wikipedia is now running black banners above its articles to warn of the threat, and a discussion is open at Wikipedia talk:Freedom of Panorama 2015 as to whether the English Wikipedia should do similarly. The hashtag #saveFoP on twitter has also seen extensive traffic. Jheald
- Visualizing Wikipedia editing: A bar graph of the 30 most edited Wikipedia articles as of March 2015 was created by Ramiro Gómez, based on data from Wikipedia:Database reports/Pages with the most revisions. He posted the graph to the Reddit forum DataIsBeautiful. The Independent noted that "The list has little coherence or order. Some at the top are among the most important things in the world...but others are much more insignificant." It concluded that "the list perhaps says more about the people who are using the site than anything to do with the people being written about." Vox wrote that "In some cases, it's about the level of controversy and the scrutiny a certain topic might receive...Other times, however, it can be based on a topic being extremely dynamic or inspiring a lot of passion." Gómez himself attributed some of the traffic to vandalism, writing "Controversial figures certainly attract people who desparately [sic] try to be funny". (June 24-25) G
- Jimmy Wales asked to return UAE money: The Middle East Monitor sharply criticized Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales for having accepted $500,000 from the UAE government last December, a decision controversially discussed at the time, given the UAE's dismal human rights record (see previous Signpost coverage). The renewed criticism was sparked by a Twitter and email exchange between Wales and Alastair Sloan, the article's author. (June 24) A.K.
- Apparently they all have manifestos: A white supremacist manifesto has been discovered on a website belonging to Dylann Roof, who has been charged with nine murders in the June 17 Charleston church shooting. The manifesto, presumably written by Roof, details the racist opinions of its author and how he came to them, beginning with learning about the shooting of Trayvon Martin. The author writes, "The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type in the words 'black on White crime' into Google, and I have never been the same since that day." (June 20) G
- New offices for Wikimedia Armenia: ArmeniaNow reports on the opening of the new offices of Wikimedia Armenia on Friday, June 19. The new offices are in the Press Building in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. Serzh Sargsyan, the President of Armenia, toured the offices and participated in discussions about Wikimedia projects in Armenia. Also on hand were Jan-Bart de Vreede, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Asaf Bartof, Head of WMF Grants and Global South Partnerships, Anna Koval, Manager of the Wikipedia Education Program, and Liam Wyatt, GLAM-Wiki Coordinator for Europeana. Wikimedia Armenia was founded in 2013. Last year, their "One Armenian, One Entry" program spurred Armenians to add thousands of articles to the Armenian Wikipedia. It is currently the 40th largest Wikipedia, with over 170,000 articles. De Vreede told ArmeniaNow that Wikimedia had much to learn from Wikimedia Armenia's efforts. (June 19) G
2015 MediaWiki architecture focus and Multimedia roadmap announced
This past week saw the kick-off of the 2015 MediaWiki architecture focus of improving our content platform. The architecture committee identified three main areas needing improvement:
- Storage: To better separate data from presentation, we need the ability to store multiple bits of content and metadata associated with each revision. This storage needs to integrate well with edits, history views, and other features, and should be exposed via a high-performance API.
- Change propagation: Edits to small bits of data need to be reliably and efficiently propagated to all content depending on it. The machinery needed to track dependencies should be easy to use.
- Content composition and caching: Separate data gives us the freedom to render infoboxes, graphs or multimedia elements dynamically, depending on use case and client. For performance and flexibility, it would be desirable to assemble at least some of these renders as late as possible, at the edge or on the client.
More details are available in the announcement email.
Multimedia roadmap announced
Mark Holmquist, the lead engineer of the Multimedia team, announced this week a change in the strategy of the upload tool they are planning to develop. The new plan involves moving the upload API logic into MediaWiki core and creating an interface for uploading files directly from VisualEditor. A heavily summarized roadmap for the team is:
- A mw.Api.plugin.upload JavaScript API to automatically detect what methods are available for the browser, take a File object or file input, and perform the upload
- Tie together the various JavaScript parts into an Upload object or similar in core, so we can handle it with relative ease in our mostly-UI extension
- An upload OOUI widget can then just use all of those things, and it can live in VisualEditor instead of having to be across a couple of extensions.
Syntax highlighting overhaul
-
GeSHi (old highlighter) -
Pygments (new highlighter)
The GeSHi library used by MediaWiki for syntax highlighting was mostly unmaintained and had a significant performance impact for all page views due to the number of stylesheets it contained. It is being replaced by Pygments, which brings support for 492 new languages, and is more actively maintained. We will lose support for 31 smaller languages, most of which are rather obscure. A full list of language changes is available here. From a performance perspective, this will decrease the amount of time that pages take to load and render (including those that don't use syntax highlighting at all!), but will increase the time it takes to save articles with syntax highlighting by about a tenth of a second. More details are available in the announcement. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-24/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-24/Opinion
Board of Trustees propose bylaw amendments
The Board of Trustees is the "ultimate corporate authority" of the Wikimedia Foundation and the level at which the strategic decisions regarding the Wikimedia movement are made. This May saw through the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation elections, the biennial community process which elects the members of the Funds Dissemination Committee (including its ombudsman) as well as the three community appointees on the Board of Trustees itself. With this year's election cycle now firmly concluded the Board is now in an ideal position to tender changes to its structure ahead of the next one—something it has now done with the presentation of proposed changes to the Wikimedia Foundation's legally binding bylaws. A discussion about the need to do so was being conducted at the Board level as far back as November 2014; following a February trustees meeting a community consultation was organized, receiving over 200K bytes of community feedback (see also Signpost coverage at the time). The changes being proposed now, six months later, are the result of that feedback and of further institutional rumination by the members of the current Board.
The Wikimedia Foundation was legally incorporated just over 12 years ago, on 20 June 2003. The organization's bylaws were first issued that year, with heavy revisions coming in 2006. The current structure of the Board—ten members, three elected from the community, two elected from the chapters, four elected by the trustees themselves for expertise and one founder's seat—came about as a result of a restructuring in 2008. More minor changes have been made from time to time, with two having occurred since the Board began publicizing these changes in 2013: a vacancy amendment tendered in 2013 and a January 2014 amendment extending voting privileges for the three affiliate-selected seats from "chapters" to "chapters and thematic organizations" (which never really has taken off—Amical Wikimedia remains the only so-called "thorg"). The composition of the Board has nonetheless remained more or less the same in the seven intervening years: three members who were on the Board at the time—now-chair Jan-Bart de Vreede, former treasurer Stu West, and founder Jimbo Wales—are even still there now.
The proposed changes touch upon two themes of definitional importance in the movement today. The first is one of diversity: as the original proposal stated, "Our two different community [election] processes draw from similar pools of candidates, and our searches for appointees have identified few people outside of the US and Europe." Some members of the community have raised concern over this in the follow-up to this years' election, pointing out that despite the publication of a pair of letters calling for diversity in candidacy, the end result was the election of a Board that will become predominantly white and, with current trustees Phoebe Ayers and Maria Sefidari now outgoing, mostly male. The second has to do with chapter representation. Because chapter members get to vote as a part of their chapter (in the chapter elections) and then again as members of the community (in the public community elections), under the current schema they are essentially provided a double voting opportunity; nor is there strong evidence that this complexity-inducing bifurcation in voting rights results in the election of trustees distinguishably different from the ones that would otherwise be elected by the community anyway.
Speaking of the goals of its oncoming reorganization process, back in March the Board had to say:
- What we want to achieve
- A continuous process of looking for potential trustees
- Diversity (gender, geography, expertise, background, different Wikimedia experiences)
- Finding talent inside and outside our communities
- Providing governance experience and training to potential candidates in our movement
- Providing lower overhead ways to contribute to WMF governance and advise strategic decisions
- Limiting bureaucracy and/or staff involvement
- Flexible Board composition: e.g., allowing for an extra 1-2 Trustees in some years
- What it could look like
- More flexibility in the number of Board members
- Instead of having an absolute, non-variable number of Board members (currently 3 elected, 2 affiliate selected, 4 appointed, 1 founder), we could change to a more flexible model. For example, we could allow a minimum and a maximum of community-based and external seats, permitting us to add additional seats proportionately depending on the present needs of the Board.
- A standing pool of nominees
- To increase diversity of candidates we could start moving towards input from a nominating committee or more active self nominations to create a pool of qualified candidates. This pool could be the base for a selection by the Board or a mixture of selection by the Board and election by the community.
- Merge community and affiliation seats
- Chapters, thematic organizations and user groups are part of the community. While chapters and thematic organizations have an exclusive right to select 2 members of the Board, they can also participate in the community selection of another 3 members. To level this artificial separation it could be helpful to combine both processes.
The text and effect of the changes is presented in full detail on the proposal's meta-wiki page. So far the changes focus on changes related to the proposal's subtitle: "Term Limits". All board terms will now be for three years, though this will not be fully implemented until the 2017 community elections. A six year non-consecutive term limit has been set, with an exception carved out for the founder's seat occupied by Jimbo Wales; Stu West and Jan-Bart de Vreede, who both violate this limit, have both already indicated that their current term (ending in December 2015) will be their last. A technical exception will be made for current trustee Alice Wiegand, who is to satisfy the six-year limit by serving three consecutive two-year terms (her current second term also ends December 2015, and will be renewed). Additionally the terms of service will now be staggered, with elections cycling across all three of the years of a trustee's service: one community-elected seat and two appointed seats one year, two affiliate seats and one appointed seat the next year, and two community-elected seats and one one more board appointment in the last.
Some illuminating comments from the discussion associated with the announcement:
| “ | To be clear, this is separate discussion from both the challenges of diversity and the number of seats for specific purposes. This is simply a proposed change on term limits because we want to implement those and it has been on the Agenda of the Governance Committee for quite a while. —Jan-Bart de Vreede | ” |
| “ | I do not know where the rationale is written, but this has been discussed for a long time. The main reason for reform is that 2-year appointments are unusual in the nonprofit sector and it would be expected that if the WMF had a stable board, then the appointments should be longer. A major challenge to this idea could be to say that the WMF does not have a stable board. Already the organization has very unusual appointment process through election by organization members, and that is a strong indication that instability should be the norm.
Assuming that the elections are a path to good board appointments, then considering this is a volunteer board and historically has been filled by people without financial means that are commensurate with the responsibility of being on this board, then giving them more time could be a way to increase the chance that they will grow into the position to be effective. Consider any organization which you feel is comparable to Wikipedia, and consider how that organization's board is managed. It will be very different, and this board is very unusual. This board is unusual because of the legacy of unusual circumstances under which it was convened. One of those unusual circumstances was the creation of a founder seat. Wikipedia could have been a one-person project, but then there were concessions granted to the community that there should be several board officers and a lot of instability, then more board officers and more instability, and now there is a trending demand to make this board and WMF governance more like a comparable organization. A problem with this scheme is that it is very difficult to compare the required strange parts of WMF's governance (founder's seat, community elections, chapter seat system) to that of any other organization. —Lane Rasberry |
” |
Brief notes
- Audit subcommittee looking for members: The Audit Committee of the Board of Trustees is looking for community members with financial and accountancy literacy willing to volunteer as members of the Board's audit subcommittee. Members serve on the committee for a one year period, from July 2015 through July 2016. According to the announcement on the wikimedia-l mailing list, "An audit of the past year's financials is carried out August-September, the WMF files its U.S. tax return in April, and publishes its annual plan in June. Time commitment is roughly 20 hours over the course of the year." Interested parties should e-mail Sj.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-24/Serendipity
Content Translation beta is coming to the English Wikipedia
The Wikimedia Foundation's Language Engineering team plans to introduce Content Translation—a tool that makes it easier to translate Wikipedia articles into different languages—as a beta feature on the English Wikipedia.
Content Translation is an article creation tool that allows editors to quickly create an initial version of a new article by translating from an existing Wikipedia page of the same topic in another language. The tool is currently available on 224 Wikipedias as a beta feature, and more than 7,000 articles have been created by more than 1,500 editors since January 2015. For the English Wikipedia, we expect to enable as an opt-in beta feature for logged-in users in early July, after its initial Wikimedia testing in July 2014 and beta deployment to multiple Wikipedias in January 2015.
Content Translation saves translators' time by automating common tasks: it adapts formatting, images, links, categories and references, and it automatically adds an interlanguage link. The translated articles created are otherwise just like any other; the tool simply helps create quality content by allowing editors to focus on translating and expanding articles instead of being consumed with the lengthy manual translation process.
Once the tool is activated on the English Wikipedia, you will be enable to the Content Translation by going to your preferences, you can start a translation in the following ways:
- Your contributions page will show a menu on ways to start new contributions, including translations. You can access these options by hovering over the link to the Contributions page.
- Highlight missing interlanguage links. When reading an article, links to some languages for which the article is missing will be highlighted in the interlanguage link area. In this list only a few languages are displayed, which we expect to be relevant for you. This is a quick way to identify the pages that can be translated for the English Wikipedia.
- Visiting Special:ContentTranslation directly. See, for example, Simple.
These features will be visible only to the users who enable Content Translation. After doing this, you can start translating by following these steps:
- Open the tool by going to Special:ContentTranslation or to your contributions page.
- Click on the button to create a new translation.
- In the displayed dialog select the language of the original article and the article name, and the language you would like to translate to. Also add the title of the new article (or the original title will be inserted) and click on to begin. Your language preferences will be remembered for the next time.
- You will see a screen consisting of three columns. The left column contains the text of the source language and the middle column is for the translated text. Using the right column you can perform several actions such as insert source text, remove the inserted text source text, add or remove links etc.
- After you translate the article, you can publish it directly as a new page on the English Wikipedia by using the publish button that appears. In case the article gets created by another user while you were translating, you will see an option to save the newly published translation under your user namespace.
Users do not need to translate the entire article in one session. You can save the translation as a draft within Content Translation and publish it on-wiki when you are satisfied with the results.
Machine translation
Content Translation supports machine translation for a limited set of languages through Apertium, an open-source system. Machine translation is always available for use within Content Translation for any language supported through Apertium and for which we do not encounter any technical blockers. However, it is the user who makes the final choice whether they would like to use machine translation; it is a configurable option that users can choose to deactivate. With an ongoing survey, we are gathering feedback about the quality of machine translations so that we can work with Apertium to improve the service.
Content Translation is a quickly evolving tool, so we attempt to use all of the feedback we receive to improve the everyday experience of our users. Please send us your suggestions, comments and complaints on the Content Translation talk page or through Phabricator. At any time, the number of published pages and other details can be seen on Special:CXStats, the Content Translation stats page—see, for example, fr:Special:CXStats. This page is visible to all users of the wiki.
With the activation of translations into the English Wikipedia, there is a chance that there may be problems that we are not yet aware of. We will be monitoring the tool for these errors, but please do let us know on the Content Translation talk page or through Phabricator if you spot any problems.
Look for Content Translation in July.
For more information, please see the following pages:
- User Guide
- FAQ
- The general project page: mw:Content_translation
- Recent blog post: "Over 5,000 new articles created with the Content Translation tool"
- The Wikimedia Foundation's Language Engineering team is "responsible for providing standards based internationalization and localization tools support for Wikimedia sites on the Web and mobile platforms." It is composed of six team members working on five different projects, including Content Translation.
- The views expressed in this op-ed are those of the Language Engineering team alone; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments. Editors wishing to submit their own op-ed should use our opinion desk.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-24/In focus
Politics by other means: The American politics 2 arbitration
Clausewitz' pithy summary of warfare as "politics by other means" seems to be the motto of some Wikipedia editors. On the English Wikipedia this struggle is seldom fought more fiercely and at greater lengths than in articles about American politics.
In an earlier arbitration case, American politics, which ended in July 2014, the Arbitration Committee of the time noted: "this is at least the fourth arbitration case in the past year related to American political and social issues" and that new disputes seemed to spring up on the heels of the old. One edit warrior, Arzel, was placed on 1RR (one revert per edit per 7-day period) with the possibility of appeal after one year and every six months after. A mechanism was set up for adding problem articles to discretionary sanctions without the necessity of opening a new arbitration case. In February 2015, by an amendment to the case following further edit warring and incivility, Arzel was topic banned from all articles relating to American politics.
A second bite
The chronic culture of bad faith editing in the topic of American politics continued to present a problem for the community. In March 2015, a case was filed against Collect, who had previously been topic-banned in the Tea Party movement case in 2013. The newly filed arbitration involving Collect finished in May 2015, resulting in Collect receiving a revert restriction and a broad indefinite topic ban from American politics articles.
The Arbitration Committee simultaneously elected to revisit last year's American Politics case, as the lightweight mechanism for creating discretionary sanctions had not been used and no improvement was visible.
In this new American Politics 2 arbitration, which closed on June 19, 2015, the mechanism set up in last year's American Politics case was replaced by discretionary sanctions covering "all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people." The cut-off date was the subject of some debate within the Committee: they also publicly voted on versions of the motion with no cut-off and with a 1980 cut-off, and one Arbitrator alluded to private discussion of the possibility of extending the cut-off date back before the Civil War.
In this case, the conduct of Ubikwit and MONGO was found especially disruptive. Ubikwit was topic-banned, the Committee having noted Ubikwit's previous sanction in the Tea Party movement case in 2013. MONGO was admonished. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-06-24/Humour