Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2013-04-22

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-04-22. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Sexology case nears closure after stalling over topic ban (2,133 bytes · 💬)

• As expected, we see ArbCom being used to the benefits of angry cabals and special interest groups on the encyclopedia, as opposed to protecting valuable content builders from having their work eroded by POV warriors. Wer900 • talk 22:32, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
• So, wait, we're going to prohibit a noted subject-matter expert -- one notable enough to have her own WP article -- from editing within her topic area of expertise? This seems very ill-considered. Powers ^T 16:00, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
• It seems very well-considered by me. Experts are often able to act in a way that exhibits the only true marker of adulthood, the ability to disagree without being disagreeable. But "often" isn't "always". Academia has its own, imperfect, way of dealing with the cases where experts are in conflict. And we have ours. Where an expert or experts turn wikipedia into a new battleground for his, her or their off-wiki disagreements, the benefit to the project of their expertise is outweighed by the disruption they cause. Here, ArbCom is asked to fashion a remedy for what no sane person could dispute is disruptive behavior by at least one expert. I can't help with that. They have a thankless job. I CAN help with that. Yo, ArbCom: Thanks. David in DC (talk) 03:00, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Except they only took action against one half of the problem, thereby for all practical purposes officially endorsing the actions of the other. It is deeply troubling that Cantor is not being topic banned as well, considering his obvious bias and self-promotional activities. It seems like he's getting a pass because the opinion he is pushing is more socially acceptable, despite it not having the academic backing he pretends it does. DreamGuy (talk) 00:52, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

In the media: Wikipedia inaccurate, says Florence; New Wikipedia app for breaking news (5,784 bytes · 💬)

Florence

I took a look at the crime section in the Florence article and the recent changes. The material now there is fully documented and citing crime statistics certainly seems encyclopedic to me. Those statistics should be updated every several years as conditions change -- as should any other statistics in the article.

I don't have any problem with the city of Florence correcting mistakes in the article about the city. However, I believe that an editor should be identifiable as connected with the city of Florence. In the past few edits, that has not been the case and the editors for the city have not been correcting errors, but rather erasing verifiable statistics on crime. The explanation for the edits is pretty lame, stating that the statistics for the year cited were not representative. It' highly unlikely that crime statistics spiked so dramatically in a single year -- but if so the city can demonstrate that by introducing more representative, alternative statistics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smallchief (talk • contribs) 07:02, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The worst thing isn't that Wikipedia has misinformation on the city, it's that a major company were basing their multi-million dollar deal on information from an encyclopedia. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 13:38, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

+1 Master... I can't believe Otis are that silly... - Rich(MTCD)^T|C|E-Mail 17:26, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Reading the title I thought Florence Devouard has said something. How boring is the actual topic, in contrast! LOL. --MF-W 14:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

LOL, I got the same impression, MF-W! odder (talk) 15:46, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

If only more officials everywhere would realize that they should be helping out here... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:24, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Number of Unique Visitors? Number of Visits? Number of views?

Why is it that Web Pro News can figure out how many unique visitors a month we have, but when I asked about the number of visits and/or number of page views (here and here and here, also see here and here), nobody on Wikipedia seemed to know how to make our NUMBEROFVIEWS Magic Word work properly? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

It does work just fine, when page view counters are enabled. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 14:27, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The difference between "doesn't work because it is broken" and "doesn't work because it causes a large performance hit and thus was turned off" is rather academic; in either case the feature does not work. The question is, why can't we update the NUMBEROFVIEWS Magic Word once a day, week, or month, thus avoiding the performance hit? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:41, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Women subcats

Puzzling that there's such an outcry over the "American woman novelists" category, when I've tried and failed to fix a similar problem with sportsperson categories. Powers ^T 21:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Most people accept the overwhelming evidence that there are gender differences in athletic ability. See Sex differences#Humans and Sex differences in humans. There exists no compelling evidence supporting the view that there are major gender differences in writing ability. Having separate categories for male and female novelists is a lot more controversial than is the case with, say, Olympic weightlifting. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, but the issue is not that the women are separated from the men; I think a lot of those who object to the novelist category wouldn't have a problem if we had "American men novelists" and "American women novelists". Many (the merge and keep folks) would even accept just the women's category if they were included in the "American novelists" category as well. The issue is the same with the sportsperson categories: Cats where the men are "American foo players" but the women are "American women's foo players". It's the imbalance that is problematic, not the separation by gender. Powers ^T 13:49, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

News and notes: Milan conference a mixed bag (14,802 bytes · 💬)

• The National Library of Scotland story has spread beyond the BBC - as of this morning, it was in the Times, Scotsman, Daily Record and Scottish Daily Mail (no web version, I think). JISC in the UK is also looking for a "Wikimedia Ambassador" to run a training program for researchers.

I've pulled together a list of everyone currently looking for a WiR - seven in total that I know about, in the UK, US, Germany and Switzerland - and posted it here, if it's of interest. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:55, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Andrew, I've added the latter link to the article. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 11:59, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Great - I had worried it was too late to get in this time around :-). Andrew Gray (talk) 12:03, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I take a pretty fluid approach to adding minor things after our nominal publication time—this is a wiki, after all. ;-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 12:05, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

• « Chair of WMF Trustees will resign: » I believe Kat Walsh is the chair of Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. She succeeded Ting Chen in July 2012. Jean-Fred (talk) 12:30, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for spotting so soon, Jean-Fred. Fixed. Tony (talk) 12:50, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
    • Ack, that was a silly error by me. Thank you. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 13:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

• The main story on the Milan Conference seems to be very critical. I guess this is the old question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. It does seem that they could have been more organized and accomplished more. On the other hand, IMHO we do need to have people interacting face-to-face in an effort to grow the movement. Comparing the face-to-face interaction that we have now to, say, that of 3 years ago, we have made great strides forward.

I'd like to bring up a related question that seems to be ignored in the general conversation. Probably 98% of Wikipedia editors never attend a face-to-face meeting, probably the majority of editors fit the stereotype of guys typing alone at their computers (at night, in their underwear) who are perfectly happy interacting only online. In fact, the easy and mostly impersonal access by internet has to be viewed as a main strength of Wikipedia. I'll recommend that these folks check out some of the various types of meetings that go on - they can be fun and informative. But if folks don't want to meet, that's ok too.

Probably the biggest potential disagreement along these lines will be the money involved. Did I notice some implied complaints in the story about $200,000+ being spent? Budgeting always needs to be carried out carefully - sloppiness in this regards will just invite problems - but with the WMF's resources being in the multiple $10s of millions, we can afford a conference like this if it is done well. The guys typing in their underwear at night don't need to have this type of money spent on them, except for pure technical support. So while the face-to-face organizers and conference attenders need to understand that they are in a distinct minority around here, the "lone typers" should also understand that it does make some sense to support these meetings. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:28, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm one of those lone typers, and I'd revel in the chance to attend conferences like this. Sadly, nobody's offering to send me to them, and I sure can't afford to pay my own way. (In all fairness, I have been brought in for two much tinier Wikimedia events here in my own country at Foundation expense, which undoubtedly puts me ahead of many Wiki eds.) --Orange Mike | Talk 16:30, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe that the story is overly critical. Giving flattering or purely positive coverage is of little use; true, critical, and comprehensive feedback, which we strive to provide each week, should always be welcomed. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

No complaints about Tony's reporting - as usual. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Orangemike, I'm trying not to imagine you dressed in underpants! Smallbones, I'm unsure about the characterisation of online participation as "impersonal". This second conference in the yearly calendar does raise the issue of value for money. I'm not passing judgement here, but who disagrees that the movement needs to keep tally of value of money in an endeavour that will always be essentially online? In reporting on the conference, I didn't find it easy to encapsulate just where the areas of progress were, but admittedly that's never easy after a big and complex meetup. And to be mercenary in this age of turbo-capitalism, the $120,000 plus $78,000 in direct funding didn't include the cost of flying in and out, and incidentals, for nine Board members, 13 WMF staff and the contractor, and the cost of foregoing their normal work input; and the chapter and individual funding of transportation for another 80 or so participants, and where applicable their work leave. All up, from all sources, $350,000? Could we at least have guidelines on best-practice organisation and online documentation both before and after the event? Just sayin'. Tony (talk) 03:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• The 2008 Chapters Meeting (aka Wikimedia Conference) was actually not in Berlin, but in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands. effeietsanders 15:40, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
  • You're quite right. I would wager that Tony was thrown off by meta:Wikimedia Conference, which up until a few minutes ago did not list the 2008 conference or its location. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:00, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
    • It was perplexing that the link Ed points to was unhelpful, and that from the template at the bottom of each dedicated conference home page, the link to the 2008 meeting alone requires some high-level log-in. Why? Tony (talk) 03:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
      • Historical reasons mostly. It was the first meeting, and when you agree during a meeting to have it confidentially under certain conditions, that isn't something you can change afterwards. Thanks for the correction. effeietsanders 13:54, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
• The notes of the Wiki Loves Monuments workshop on Thursday are by the way available as well, on http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/WLM-Milan . (not as well organized though). Help to transform it to a wikipage is of course always welcome. 17 people have attended. effeietsanders 15:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
  • I did try to find them, several times, Effeietsanders. :-) Tony (talk) 03:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
    • I did not doubt your good intentions, but the current statement is incorrect - hence the comment. I hope you will correct both the number and the notes remark? :) effeietsanders 13:54, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

      Added numbers, link. Tony (talk) 14:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• I believe that my comment is misconstrued. I believe I said that the FDC does NOT expect the corporate standards to be met from the entities, and not that they are desired. Also, my understanding of Schiste's remark was different: I remember that he was making an unusual point that the feedback from FDC is sometimes not violent enough, and not that it is overly violent :) Pundit|utter 15:54, 25 April 2013 (UTC) Corrected: I misread, it refers to the survey, and not to the discussion. Pundit|utter 15:57, 25 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Fixed, given that the documentation was a little unclear. Tony (talk) 14:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
• Could you please correct the last point from the Board Q&A? There was a question about the search for the appointed Board member (not the ED). And my user-name is Lyzzy, or just use Alice. Thanks.Lyzzy (talk) 17:49, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

  Mh, confused. I asked for correction, not for deletion. Lyzzy (talk) 07:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

  Fixed. Tony (talk) 14:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

• More than 100 people attended the event. Many aspects can be criticized and actually some were (I hope Wikimedia Italia will sooner or later publish the facilitator's notes on conference feedback). But voicing that one person who thought transportation was "crappy" is completely unfair, unless it is coming from the person on the wheelchair (I don't remember his name or nickname, sorry). --Elitre (talk) 20:26, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

  I understood "connectivity" not as referring to transportation (which was OK) but to the WiFi, which was problematic indeed, especially in conjunction with the small number of available power outlets. -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 20:47, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

  • I am sorry, I thought I read connections (between venue, hotels and so on). Connectivity was not crappy. It didn't exist at all for at least 2 days (my POV here). --Elitre (talk) 22:01, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

    I did not have any problem at all with the wifi (although it was slow sometimes). I really think however it would be better to not include comments of this type as "an attendee said" because it is very easy to always find an attendee here that says A, and another that says the opposite. If you want to include information about crappy wifi, probably best to wait for the survey results. effeietsanders 22:43, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

    There was sufficient evidence to report that the internet connections were poor—and we felt that this was an important issue for an international meeting of one of the world's top internet organisations. Tony (talk) 03:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Terminology

I've boldly corrected the statements that had the Milan conference co-funded by the GAC to correctly state the funding was provided by the Wikimedia Grants Program, which is advised by the GAC. Ijon (talk) 21:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Additionally, I would like to remind The Signpost that despite people's tendency to abuse the trademark by prematurely referring to proto-chapter groups as Wikimedia XX, there is no such entity as Wikimedia Nepal just yet, and The Signpost would do well to not propagate this informal usage in writing aiming to be factual. Ijon (talk) 21:12, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Rather than blame the messengers, please take a look at the official program schedule, which specifies Wikimedia Nepal – State of Chapter, and its slides, where the group is publicly described at the beginning as Wikimedia Nepal Chapter. Not to denigrate the group: although it looks like an almost entirely male affair (like education and literacy generally in Nepal), they've started a Wiki-Women Initiative Nepal that would do some of the funded chapters proud. And they have a big, complex linguistic and cultural challenge.

If the Foundation cares a penny about its trademark, why does it not liaise with the organisers of international WM meetings to ensure that the trademark is not "abused". Why does it target this small developing-country group while turning a blind eye to the widespread use of Wikimedia Chapters Association in the conference documentation, orally at the meetings, and in the etherpad minutes? How are third parties, like us, meant to tell the difference? Tony (talk) 03:52, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Technology report: A flurry of deployments (11,343 bytes · 💬)

Echo

"Proponents" and "detractors" carries no citation or evidence. Could they be provided? :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

As you could probably tell from the lack of quotation, both are agglomerations from multiple sources. For example, the proponents suggestion mirrors some of the MediaWiki page and slides; the detractors section mirrors some of the many discussions on VPT about notification systems in general (though admittedly the application to Echo may be novel; it's hard to tell when you've been reading critical -- not necessarily negative -- commentary about a project for months and months like this). If you had a more specific concern, I could perhaps find a specific reference regarding that point. - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 22:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused. You're telling me that the detractors section is based on discussions on the village pump about the general concept of a notifications system, and therefore applies to a specific implementation? The idea that it would lead to a torrent of notifications is a potentially valid one - we had a bug on MediaWiki.org, for example, that caused that temporarily - but things like that are precisely the sort of statement that need to be specific, not general. "Notifications will make us like Facebook" is a general, conceptual concern that can plausibly (although wrongly) be applied to any implementation, including Echo. "Notifications will include tons of notifications that overwhelm everything" is something entirely dependent on the implementation. Citing generalised discussions really isn't useful in this case. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 03:01, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

---

"rarely causing a stir" I remember a little bit of a stir when in the early stages there was a bug massively spamming users on mediawiki.org (Long since fixed). Bawolff (talk) 15:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

The score tag

Eight years seems a bit long to get it implemented.--Rockfang (talk) 14:47, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Well the current work that resulted in the recent deployment, was really only started in December 2011 when Graf Zahl rewrote the lillypond extension as score. (Which arguably is still a really long time) Bawolff (talk) 15:54, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm presuming it produces only single-line melodies. Is this correct? Tony (talk) 09:21, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

We are still playing on Wikisource where it will allows us to get back to do more work on sheet music. Here is an example of some more complex coding s:Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 1.djvu/24. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:58, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, billinghurst. The tenuto symbols should normally be on the notehead rather than the stem sides, I think. It's a very complex task; the simple outputs I see thus far are pretty good. Notating melodies is useful, but it won't be until more than one part can be displayed that we'll start to see the potential for many western-music articles. Even non-western music traditions often need multistave systems for the (approximate) notation of samples of ensemble music. Tony (talk) 13:59, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Normally, the tenuto marks would be on the notehead side, but if you look at the original source on the page billinghurst posted, you'll see that the marks are indeed all above the staff as rendered. That makes the <score> rendering faithful to the original, which is what we should be aiming for. Powers ^T 16:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

I'd regularise rather than regenerating non-standard and problematic notation. For example, being faithful to an original doesn't involve reproducing the exact spacing between the notes—just as certain changes are permitted to quoted linguistic text by the Manual of Style. As long as the original meaning is reproduced faithfully, ease of reading is a desirable goal. Tony (talk) 10:31, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Well that'd be a question for Wikisource's style mavens. Powers ^T 13:28, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Lilypond

An example with chords and sound-file generation.

Lilypond is great! Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:37, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

How do you get it to play? I press the button and nothing happens. Tony (talk) 03:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC)�

I use Firefox running on Ubuntu's GNU Linux, and I just hit the button; Wikipedia is trusted by my computer, though. With Windows, you might left-click open in a new window (and perhaps reload). Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:44, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Works fine with Opera 12.15 on winxp. -Yyy (talk) 12:52, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Works fine with Firefox 20.0 on a Mac running 10.8.3 (Lion). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:24, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Room for improvement

It is possible to get SVG output from Lilypond which can be animated on playback. See Animated SVG Percussion Music. Here's a nice tech post about it: [1]. See it live on http://percussion360.com/. Click the tiny "play" button. Maybe he'll open source this if we ask nicely. The thread posts are all over the place, I use Google like this to find them. I think ly2video is inferior since everything can be generated client-side, which scales better. Tell me what you think. --Ysangkok (talk) 12:56, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

This question is better addressed to the Lilypond project, which does not yet support exporting svg files from within Lilypond, I believe. The manual suggests command line directives. (It would be better for WMF to focus on e.g. guitarists' wishes for alternative tunings and fretboard diagrams). Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:40, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Exporting SVG is indeed supported, see the tech post. The problem is to make the connection between SVG shapes and notes. His solution is kind of hacky. Marrying MusicXML and SVG would be beautiful. --Ysangkok (talk) 14:35, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Please notice the keywords: " from within Lilypond.... The manual suggests [terminal] command-line directives". Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:11, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

What manual? The lilypond one? It has the SVG documented on this page. Command-line directives are passed to the lilypond binary, it does the SVG itself. --Ysangkok (talk) 17:12, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor

The version of the VisualEditor report I edited said VisualEditor is in beta testing. The VisualEditor itself says that it is in alpha test, which is correct based on my experince with it (I mean that as a factual statement, not a criticism).—Finell 18:36, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

I have yet to successfully make an edit with the Visual Editor. Powers ^T 16:18, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Most of my VisualEditor edits worked correctly. A few had weird results, such as text that disappeared. I would do more editing with VisualEditor if it were the default editor when editing just a section.—Finell 21:44, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Perf improvements

Could you explain the perf improvements in MariaDB, since they are not noticeable by users? What performance metrics were improved, if not for the users? (I'm not a techie, which is why I ask). 74.202.39.3 (talk) 02:11, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

To quote the blog post "For our most common query type, 95th percentile times over an 8-hour period dropped from 56ms to 43ms and the average from 15.4ms to 12.7ms. 50th percentile times remained a bit better with the 5.1-facebook build over the sample period, 0.185ms vs. 0.194ms. Many query types were 4-15% faster with MariaDB 5.5.30 under production load, a few were 5% slower, and nothing appeared aberrant beyond those bounds." Im not an ops person, so the following is a total guess and may be totally wrong, but I would guess that db latency isnt exactly a bottleneck, so efficiency improvements are probably more long term scalability benefits rather than immediate make the site faster benefits (although they probably do make the site a bit faster). Bawolff (talk) 22:14, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

My interpretation is the same as Bawolff's, and it's what I consequently hinted at in the report: users are unlikely to notice much of a difference, but hey, every little helps (as we say here in the UK). - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 22:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject report: WikiProject Editor Retention (2,531 bytes · 💬)

See also this week's essay by WereSpielChequers: Going_off_the_boil? Erik Zachte (talk) 12:23, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Declining number of active editors and declining number of monthly edits from all editors

The peak number of edits on English Wikipedia was in March 2007 with 4.8 million edits. From all editors (logged-in and anonymous).

March 2007 was also the peak in the number of active editors.

Correlating with the declining number of active editors there was an overall steady decline since March 2007 in the number of monthly edits from all editors (logged-in and anonymous) on English Wikipedia. Until February and March 2013.

I am curious whether Wikidata bots and other bots are the main reason for the large increase in the number of monthly edits in English Wikipedia and in other Wikipedias in various languages in February and March 2013. I am studying the data dealing with these two charts:

Summary timeline table of edits per month on English Wikipedia, and all Wikipedias. Cropped from Wikipedia Statistics - Tables - Edits per month. This chart shows 4.8 million edits in March 2013 in English Wikipedia, and 1,200 edits in March 2001 in English Wikipedia. The chart shows 25.6 million edits in March 2013 for all Wikipedias in all languages. There is a more detailed monthly breakdown for English Wikipedia here: Wikipedia Statistics - Tables - English. See the "Database" header, and then the "edits" column. That column shows every month going back all the way to Jan. 2001 when Wikipedia started. Note the steady overall decline in monthly edits in English Wikipedia until February 2013 and March 2013.

See this summary chart below. It says the maximum number of active editors (5 or more edits in the last month) was 51,370 in March 2007.

See also: commons:Category:English Wikipedia active editor statistics for more stats and charts. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:38, 27 April 2013 (UTC)