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A look back at Wikipedia's fifth year
Wikipedia has progressed significantly in its fifth year. As Wikipedia enters its sixth year, The Wikipedia Signpost takes a look back at 2005 (and a bit of 2006).
The Signpost published its first issue on 10 January, 2005, five days before Wikipedia Day 2005 was celebrated, marking Wikipedia's fourth anniversary. Under founder and editor-in-chief Michael Snow, the Signpost has delivered news to the Wikipedia community every Monday since then. In August, though, after Michael Snow stepped down temporarily, Ral315 took over as editor-in-chief. We are proud to have continued the Signpost non-stop for over 52 weeks now, with over 400 articles written and published by our volunteers.
Besides in The Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia itself has seen the number of articles grow exponentially. On 18 March, the 500,000th article was created. Less than three months later, on 19 June, Wikipedia had reached the 600,000 article mark. In August, we reached 700,000 articles, and on the first day of November, 800,000 articles. Early in the new year, Wikipedia again reached a milestone with its 900,000th article. According to current projections, Wikipedia will have one million articles sometime in February or March. Besides the number of articles, the number of featured articles also rose, surpassing 500 in February. There are currently 850 featured articles.
The number of editors also rose dramatically. In October, the number of registered users surpassed half a million. Earlier in the year in July, the number of administrators reached 500; the current number is now greater than 750. In addition, four Wikipedians were granted bureaucrat status, bringing the total number over 20: Rdsmith4, Nichalp, Linuxbeak, and Francs2000.
The popularity of Wikipedia also increased greatly. According to the Alexa rankings, Wikipedia started 2005 at approximately rank 150. By September, Wikipedia had moved into the top 50 websites of the world, and in January 2006 reached an all-time high one-day rank of 19. Also in January, Alexa reported that Wikipedia's reach was nearly 30,000 per million, and the number of page views had jumped to nearly 2,000 per million page views.
Several technical aspects of Wikipedia were also modified. MediaWiki 1.4 was implemented in March, and 1.5 in June. Also in June, the Wikimedia servers were transported to a new location in Tampa, Florida, causing a planned shut-down of the site while the servers were moved. Earlier, though, the site had temporarily been shut down twice, once in late February and another time in early March. Both of them were unplanned; one lasted for 24 hours, and the other for approximately two hours. The temporary shut-downs were due to a power failure and faulty equipment, respectively.
Other technical features of Wikipedia were also implemented. After the first Wikipedia:Wikiportal was created in February, the Portal: namespace was created. (The first portal was Portal:Biology and the first in the Portal: namespace was Portal:Cricket). In September, the new users log was created so that it would be easier to block bot-generated usernames and inappropriate user names. Around the same time, Lupin released his popups tool, enhancing navigation of Wikipedia. Earlier in the year, CryptoDerk had released his CDVF, a vandal-fighting tool designed to make RC patrol more efficient. Later, following a debate on CheckUser, seven people (all current Arbitrators at the time) were granted CheckUser privileges. In December, semi-protection, the blocking of editing by new and unregistered users, was implemented on MediaWiki and activated after a poll showed almost unanimous support for it. In addition, new measures were taken toward article validation, although no such feature has been implemented yet.
In December, article creation was restricted to registered users only following the Seigenthaler controversy (see below). Access to Wikipedia sites was also blocked in China in October.
There were also changes in the way Wikipedia operates. In February, the templates that are transcluded onto the main page were protected, following severe vandalism. (Obscene images were placed on those templates.) Though the actual page had been protected since 2003, the transcluded templates had been left open for editing. Due to the severe nature of the vandalism, though, all of the templates have been protected ever since. Starting in July, the main page also started showing featured pictures on weekends, where Did You Know? used to be. (Did you know? still appears on weekdays.)
The Wikimedia Foundation also saw major milestones in the year. In April, the foundation was granted tax-exempt status in the United States. In July, Angela Beesley and Florence Nibart-Devouard were both re-elected to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. The trademark of "Wikipedia" was granted to the foundation in January 2006, completing a process that had begun in September 2004. In October, the Foundation announced that Wikimania 2006 would be held in Boston, Massachusetts. However, the foundation also sparked controversy in October when they announced a partnership with Answers Corporation, parent company of Answers.com. Many users, interpreting the announcement as one to introduce advertising, protested; a WikiProject was even formed to demonstrate against the deal. Board members, such as Jimbo Wales, Angela, and Anthere, later clarified the deal, calming down the situation.
There were also multiple changes in the Arbitration Committee and the stewards. Nine new stewards were elected in January 2006, while one current steward failed to successfully keep his rights. The ArbCom also saw new members. Sannse, Ambi, Delirium, Maveric149, Grunt, and Nohat all resigned in 2005, and Kelly Martin resigned in January 2006. Jimbo Wales appointed five people to the committee this past year (Jdforrester, Fennec, Jayjg, Mindspillage, and Kelly Martin) and also changed the format of the annual elections for ArbCom. The elections were held in January 2006, using support and oppose votes for the first time ever. As of press time, the elections were still ongoing.
Wikipedia came under immense public scrutiny in November and December. The John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy was sparked after John Seigenthaler Sr. wrote an editorial in USA Today, criticizing the biography about himself in Wikipedia, which erroneously reported that he had been involved in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. The person who added the incorrect information, Brian Chase, was later uncovered by Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt; Chase resigned from his job (from where he had posted the information) and apologized. In response, article creation was restricted to registered users in December in an effort to reduce vandalism and incorrect entries.
Finally, the scientific journal Nature published [1] the results of a comparative review between Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia concerning scientific articles. This was the first comparative review concerning Wikipedia using professionals and was done by scientific experts. After examining 42 articles in both the encyclopedias, Nature concluded that Britannica had 124 total factual errors in the articles (for an average of 2.92 errors per article), while Wikipedia had 162 total errors, for an average of 3.86 per article. Most of the errors in Wikipedia were corrected after the study.
Wikipedia has seen tremendous growth and development in its fifth year, which was primarily in 2005. We've grown into a top-20 website of the world and have become a valuable resource and free encyclopedia to millions. We look forward to a successful 2006 - and we'll be here reporting on it.
Reporter who plagiarized Wikipedia gets dismissed
Tim Ryan, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter whose plagiarism was recently discovered by Wikipedia editors, has been dismissed after additional instances of plagiarism were reported. This brought his tenure to an end last week after more than twenty years at the newspaper.
Ryan, an entertainment reporter who has worked for the Star-Bulletin since 1984, as well as writing for other publications during that time, was found to have copied material without attribution in multiple articles dating back as far as 2001, drawing from a variety of online sources. The plagiarism was originally reported in The Signpost two weeks ago and later picked up by a local news website, the Hawaii Reporter. Reporter editor Malia Zimmerman published a story on Tuesday, 10 January, pointing to two more articles by Ryan with passages that matched verbatim to content on other websites.
Zimmerman also noted what proved to be Ryan's last article for the Star-Bulletin, a 28 December column published after the plagiarism had been discovered but before news of the case spread. In the column, Ryan thanked a number of publicists and other sources and commented, "To write "Reel News," I usually can't name any sources because there could be serious repercussions to them." He added, "All who have helped me write this column -- and you do know who you are -- I thank you for your contributions and trust."
Officially, Star-Bulletin editor Frank Bridgewater initially indicated that any disciplinary action against Ryan was a confidential matter, but Zimmerman reported that according to her sources, he had been given a one-month suspension. She added that the Star-Bulletin had earlier been running an advertising campaign touting the paper as the source of "Truth" from among the state's news outlets, with Ryan featured prominently in one such ad.
After the Hawaii Reporter's discovery of additional problem articles, the Star-Bulletin announced Ryan's dismissal in its 13 January edition. In a statement, Bridgewater acknowledged that six Ryan articles contained unattributed content from other sources, including one case found during the paper's investigation that had not been publicly identified before. The statement also pointed out that Ryan's stories "did not include inaccurate information or any fabrications."
Craig Silverman, whose Regret The Error blog reports on corrections and retractions in the news media, commented on the Star-Bulletin's response: "This is the correct course of action, and it's good that the paper lists the plagiarized articles and placed corrections/Editor's Notes in them." Other industry coverage appeared in Editor & Publisher and on Jim Romenesko's site for journalism news, Romenesko. Rob Malda also posted an item about the incident on Slashdot, where among other discussion it prompted a form of humor that might be called recursive plagiarism. And Talk Stink, a blog focusing on Hawaii, ran a cartoon depicting a mock interview with Ryan.
Wikipedia editor Calton, one of those who participated in the original discovery of Ryan's plagiarism, commented that he felt bad for Ryan, "Twenty years at the paper down the tubes, for stuff he should have known better about."
Victims of errors defend Wikipedia
Despite encountering significant errors in their biographical articles on Wikipedia, two people have published lengthy defenses of the project. Both article subjects, Cory Doctorow and Bertrand Meyer, took an optimistic view of the experience and argued that Wikipedia's transparent processes make it more useful.
Wikipedia vs. The Register
Doctorow, an author and Fellow with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote an essay Wednesday on the Boing Boing blog that contrasted Wikipedia with one of its most frequent critics. In his piece, Doctorow compared the process of getting information corrected in his Wikipedia biography with his experience in seeking a correction of an article by Andrew Orlowski in The Register.
With respect to his Wikipedia article, Doctorow related that an anonymous editor had misrepresented some of his views and cast aspersions on the success of his books. Doctorow fixed this as soon as he became aware of it, then progressively worked with other editors to produce a satisfactory article. He summarized, "That's what it was like when someone maligned me on Wikipedia: within five minutes of discovering it, I was able to correct it, and subsequently I had a public discussion with the guy, hammering out a consensus."
The Orlowski piece for which Doctorow wanted a correction involved people editing their own Wikipedia biographies, after the reports of Jimmy Wales editing his own article appeared in the press (see archived story). Orlowski failed to realize that the talk page had been refactored, so he took some quotes from it and called Doctorow "silly and foolish" for talking about himself in the third person. However, since Orlowski had gone on vacation, Doctorow was unable to get a correction until after he reached Orlowski's editor. Doctorow also complained that after the misquotations had been removed, no record was left that a correction had been necessary.
Doctorow argued that the test of both systems was not "how they perform when they work as they're intended to -- it's what happens when they fail". On this issue, he favored the Wikipedia process, in which he said you could trace how the truth was negotiated, over the hidden workings of The Register.
The reports of my death...
A similar defense of Wikipedia came from Meyer, a computer scientist whose biography on the German Wikipedia was changed to indicate that he had died on 24 December. The change, actually made on 28 December, survived until someone else noticed it on 3 January. Meyer commented on the events in a treatise entitled "Defense and Illustration of Wikipedia", which he said he had initially prepared in response to another commentary published in Communications of the ACM. The authors of this commentary had cited several dangers associated with Wikipedia, which Meyer acknowledged, but he criticized their failure to cite concrete examples.
Meyer now had his own personal experience to relate as well, in an incident that was also reported by a number of German-language media sources. The offending revisions have been deleted from the page history, but a screenshot was preserved by Christian Kirsch of Heise. In Meyer's own translation, the article stated at the time, "According to the latest reports, Bertrand Meyer died on 24.12.2005 in Zurich. On 23.12.2005, exam results were published; links between that publication and his death couldn't be confirmed".
Like most people, Meyer thought the report of his death amounted to a student joke. In an observation on the media coverage, he gave as his impression that, after the Seigenthaler incident, it reflected a sort of pride in the German-language press having their own Wikipedia scandal to report. Responding to Lauren Weinstein, one of the authors of the Communications of the ACM article, Meyer conceded that an erroneously reported death was less disturbing than a false report of an arrest "for some truly reprehensible offense" would be. Meyer nevertheless concluded, "But if someone is going to slander me horribly on the Web, I'd rather that he chose an editable medium."
Wikimedia Foundation reportedly facing privacy lawsuit
Editor's note: This article discusses a possible lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates this site. The Wikipedia Signpost takes no official position on this lawsuit.
Dutch and German press sources report that the family of Boris Floricic, a.k.a. Tron, is suing the Wikimedia Foundation over the reporting of the hacker's real name in Wikipedia.
The German Chaos Computer Club affiliate, who gained fame within the group for cracking phone chips and digital television boxes, was found dead in 1998 in a Berlin park. Floricic had been hanged by a belt, the cause of death. Police ruled the death a suicide, and the Berlin prosecutor's office stopped its investigation in 2001. [2] However, many of the club's members still suspect foul play may have been a factor. [3] [4]
The family's first announcement of the lawsuit was reportedly on 14 December, 2005. However, the notice was originally addressed to St. Petersburg, Russia, rather than the Foundation's address in St. Petersburg, Florida, causing some delay in the delivery of this information.
There is still a question as to whether a lawsuit has actually been filed. No proof has been submitted showing that such a lawsuit, or any legal action, has been taken. No public comment has been made by the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia board members regarding the issue.
- Addendum
The Wikimedia Foundation is facing a privacy lawsuit in Germany. The German courts have ordered that the German Wikipedia must remove all forms of the hacker's complete civil name, and have issued an injunction that ordered the German chapter to cease redirecting www.wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org. Wikimedia Deutschland complied but its lawyers announced that they will appeal the decision, saying that Tron's civil name was public knowledge for a long time. Further information can be found here.
References
- ^ Sevriens, Dennis, The postmortale personality right: Controversy over Tron alias Boris F (in German). Accessed January 16, 2006.
- ^ Sullivan, Bob, High-stakes hacking, Euro-style. Accessed January 16, 2006.
- ^ Hudson, David, Out of Chaos Comes Order. Accessed January 16, 2006.
Wikipedia registered as a trademark
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a trademark registration for the term "Wikipedia" to the Wikimedia Foundation last week, bringing to a conclusion an application process that has taken over a year.
According to the USPTO's trademark database, Wikipedia was officially registered as a trademark on Tuesday, 10 January. The description of the class of goods and services for which the registration was issued reads, "Providing information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet". The Wikipedia trademark also has an international registration through the Madrid Protocol.
The application, filed with the help of attorney and Wikipedia editor Alex756, was originally received by the USPTO in September 2004. Although this may seem like a lengthy delay, in reality the process for reviewing trademark applications is quite drawn out, and a time frame like this is fairly typical.
The Wikimedia Foundation has also applied for other trademarks including "Wikinews" as well as "MediaWiki" for the underlying software. These marks will be published in the USPTO's Official Gazette on 7 February.
One advantage of trademark registration is the ability to use the federal registration symbol '®' as opposed to use of '™' or no designation after the mark. This gives notice that a trademark or servicemark is protected under federal law. Wikipedia may now be written Wikipedia® when used as a trademark.
Nine stewards elected
The steward elections concluded this week, with nine of the sixteen candidates meeting the requirements, which included a minimum of eighty percent support and at least thirty support votes. All nine were later granted approval by the Board. The nine new stewards are Jean-Christophe Chazalette, Ausir, Romihaitza, Walter, Paginazero, Jon Harald Søby, Suisui, Rdsmith4, and Ascánder. One current steward, Arno Lagrange, was also demoted after he failed to garner the required amount of support.
In addition, Raul654 withdrew from the race prior to its closure after he faced opposition from users citing that he had little or no interlanguage experience. "While I don't agree with [the users who voted oppose], I can appreciate where they are coming from," he said. "So, I'm withdrawing my candidacy, with no hard feelings."
The full results of the elections:
| Username | Total votes | For | Neutral | Against | Support percent | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jean-Christophe Chazalette | 81 | 77 | 1 | 3 | 96% |
| 2 | Ausir | 72 | 71 | 1 | 0 | 100% |
| 3 | Romihaitza | 45 | 42 | 2 | 1 | 98% |
| 4 | Arno Lagrange | 36 | 10 | 9 | 17 | 37% |
| 5 | Walter | 83 | 82 | 1 | 0 | 100% |
| 6 | Traroth | 26 | 9 | 10 | 7 | 56% |
| 7 | Klemen Kocjancic | 16 | 3 | 4 | 9 | 25% |
| 8 | Paginazero | 65 | 54 | 5 | 6 | 90% |
| 9 | Jredmond | 19 | 5 | 3 | 11 | 31% |
| (10) | 24 | 11 | 6 | 6 | withdrawn | |
| (11) | 72 | 54 | 3 | 15 | withdrawn | |
| 12 | Jon Harald Søby | 58 | 56 | 2 | 0 | 100% |
| 13 | Suisui | 78 | 77 | 1 | 0 | 100% |
| 14 | Rdsmith4 | 48 | 44 | 3 | 1 | 98% |
| 15 | Ascánder | 49 | 47 | 2 | 0 | 100% |
| 16 | Linuxbeak | 6 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0% |
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
This week, the Arbitration Committee elections continued, with voting running until Sunday, 22 January. As of press time, 13 of the 68 candidates had dropped out, leaving 55 candidates in contention. However, of those 55, only 22 have greater than 50 percent support. Aranda56, Blankfaze, Dogbreathcanada, Emt147, Jtkiefer, Kelly Martin, Mikkalai, NSLE, Redwolf24, Svartalf, Terrenceong1992, Tony Sidaway, and Z.Spy all withdrew; most of them had considerable amounts of opposition.
As of press time, there were six candidates with greater than 80 percent support (listed in percentage of support, from greatest to least): Mindspillage, Filiocht, Charles Matthews, SimonP, Morven, and Dmcdevit. Both Mindspillage and Filiocht had greater than 90 percent support. In addition, eight candidates had less than 80 percent support but greater than 70 percent support.
Real-time results of the vote (assuming server lag is negligible) are available at http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/arbcom (see related story), and updates every hour (not dependent on server lag) are available at User:Mathbot/Results.
Also this week, Kelly Martin resigned from the Arbitration Committee after withdrawing from the elections, citing personal reasons. "I withdrew from the race because it was pointless to continue," she stated. "I resigned from ArbCom for solely personal reasons related to the amount of free time I have for the moment due to obligations at work." Martin was appointed to the Arbitration Committee by Jimbo Wales in October of 2005 along with Mindspillage and had been facing controversy over the past week relating to userboxes. However, after several users commented that they thought the controversy had caused Martin to resign, she dismissed those claims by saying, "Interpreting [my resignation] as attempts to 'restore tranquility' is misplaced."
Wikipedia celebrates fifth anniversary
The English Wikipedia now has 920 thousand articles (not including redirects), over 340 million words, and 720 thousand registered users, along with nearly 800 administrators. Globally, Wikipedia now has over three million distinct articles in over 200 languages.
Wikipedia entered the top 20 of Alexa rankings this year, and also increased the number of servers by 129, bringing the total number of servers up to 171, located primarily in Tampa. Other server clusters are in Amsterdam, Paris, and Seoul.
The site celebrated with a notice on the main page, Community Portal, site notice (along with a continued appeal for donations), and the top of the recent changes page.
News and notes
Requests for CheckUser created
This week, former Arbitrator (see related story) and current CheckUser Kelly Martin created Wikipedia:Requests for CheckUser, a page where Wikipedians can request that a CheckUser be performed on other users. CheckUser privilege, which reveals which IPs a user is using and any other usernames being used by that user, is currently granted to only seven Wikipedians, all of them current or former Arbitrators. The page was created because of the large number of requests that were scattered in several different pages, including the Administrators' Noticeboard, the Administrators' Noticeboard of Incidents, and the user talk pages of the seven CheckUser members. However, because of the nature of the requests, restricted by the Wikimedia Foundation's privacy policy, requests "will not be performed unless the individual(s) in question are engaged in significant (e.g. pattern) vandalism or there is reason to believe that sockpuppets are being used to evade a block, ban, or 3RR, or to otherwise violate policy (such as to vote multiple times in a poll or to otherwise appear to represent a wider opinion in discussion than one actually does)."
In addition, this week Hall Monitor requested CheckUser priviledges for Curps. Though the request, which was initially placed on requests for adminship, received limited support at first, several users objected on the grounds that Wikimedia Foundation policy states that only the Board or Arbitration Committee can grant the rights. Curps never accepted the nomination, instead asking that his nomination instead be used to begin discussion. "I think CheckUser is a little too sensitive an issue to be decided by RfAdmin-style nomination and voting, so I don't really support this process," he commented. "I thank Hall Monitor for his initiative and confidence in me, and any discussion below may be useful for gathering opinions on the topic of Checkuser."
Wikimeetups in Seattle and St. Petersburg a success
Wikimeetups in Seattle and St. Petersburg were held on 14 January. The Seattle meetup, held at the Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington, was the third Seattle meetup, after previous occasions in November 2004 and January 2005. The St. Petersburg meetup, the second in the area after a January 2005 meetup, was attended by Wikimedia Board members Jimbo Wales and Angela, as well as Wikimedia CFO Daniel Mayer.
New tools created
Interiot released several new statistics tool this week. His Contributions Tree Tool allows users to peruse their edits by namespace and by number of edits; it also has the ability to let Wikipedians search for edits to a particular page. In addition, Interiot also created an edit counter, copied after the existing Kate's Tool. However, Interiot's tool also provides a graphical representation of the number of edits per namespace per month. Finally, Interiot also programmed a page to tally the results of the ArbCom elections. Providing live results (assuming negligible server lag), the tool also provides percentages, differences between support and oppose, and also flags votes from users who may not have suffrage.
Esperanza amendments proposed
Since the Esperanza Advisory Council elections in December, many members of the Wikipedia Esperanza community have been talking about some changes to the voting system and how the group is organized. According to the present Charter, there must be a referendum to amend the rules, if a consensus cannot be reached within 21 days. The process of amending will be made much clearer after Saturday's Advisory Council meeting. Some of the changes discussed would ultimately alter the way that the Esperanza community elects its officials and leaders.
Rollback request policy considered
A proposal to allow users to apply for the rollback privilege separate from all other administrator tools is in its final stages of discussion. The proposal would "be given out liberally to Wikipedians who request it", and it warns that misuse of the tool could result in the tool's removal.
Briefly
- The Polish Wikipedia has reached 175,000 articles.
- The Azeri (Azərbaycanca) Wikipedia has reached 2,500 articles.
- The Uzbek (O'zbek) Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 1,500 articles.
- The Sicilian Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
- The Greek Wikipedia has reached 7,500 articles.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 5,000 registered users.
In the news
Wikipedia sleuthing
Wikipedia readers uncover sex offender
Young sex offender Joshua Gardner tried to pass himself off as the Duke of Cleveland in talking to students at Stillwater Area High School in Minnesota. However, edits he made to Wikipedia (as User:Earlofscooby) to bolster his claim left footprints that allowed student newspaper investigators and eventually the police to uncover his true identity. The story was reported in "Student Reporters Expose 'Royal' Sex Offender" by ABC News, and repeated in numerous other outlets.
A plagiarist dismissed
Another misdeed brought to light by Wikipedia editors (see related story) has led to the dismissal of veteran news reporter Tim Ryan from the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The story was reported in several media sources:
- "Paper fires journalist - Borrowed too much from Wikipedia" - The Inquirer
- "Wikipedia Unmasks Plagiarism But Gets No Credit" - WebProNews
- "Aloha To Hawaiian Wikipedia Plagiarist" - WebProNews
Chinese ban
The article "Chinese ban on Wikipedia prevents research, users say" ran in The Globe and Mail on January 10. "The latest blocking of the website, the third shutdown of the site in China in the past two years, has now continued for more than 10 weeks without any explanation and without any indication whether the ban is temporary or permanent," writer Geoffrey York said. "Chinese students and intellectuals are expressing outrage at Beijing's decision to prohibit access to Wikipedia, the fast-growing on-line encyclopedia that has become a basic resource for many in China."
Israel News Agency
In "www.israelnewsagency.com/wikipediagoogleisraelleyden5580110.html Wikipedia, Google, Israel And Free Speech", Joel Leyden, head of the "Israel News Agency", interpreted the nomination to delete the article he wrote on Israel News Agency as an anti-Israeli action and a suppression of free speech.
Summary articles
- "Wikipedia puts unique spin on Memphis and everything else." - Memphis Flyer, Tennessee
- "You just can’t trust everything you read on Wikipedia.org" - Times Leader, Pennsylvania
Blog mentions
- "Can Wikipedia Survive Its Own Success?" - Knowledge@Wharton
- "A Wiki Runs Through It" The Free Liberal blog
- A passage in "Sleeping Cell" at alt.muslim uses the word "Wikipedia" as common parlance: "Again, these robotic conversations remind Muslims of no other Muslims, because no one, and I assume even terrorists, talks like a walking Wikipedia."
Citations in the news
The number of citations this week has increased again after a lull in the wake of the Seigenthaler incident. Wikipedia was cited in the last week in the following publications:
- Middle East North Africa Financial Network (Jordan), on Economy of Nepal [5]
- Times Online (United Kingdom), on wiki [6]
- North County Times (California, US), on Blue Cross [7]
- Anderson Independent Mail (South Carolina, US), on Friday the 13th [8]
- New Britain Herald (Connecticut, US), on light year [9]
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin, US), on blogswarm [10] (subscription required)
- Charlotte Sun-Herald (Florida, US), on Student loan [11]
- Examiner (New Jersey, US), on John O. Bennett [12]
- Arizona Republic (Arizona, US), on frankincense [13]
- Pittsburgh Post Gazette (Pennsylvania, US), on Bill Bradley [14]
- American Thinker (Arizona, US), on Ptolemy VIII Physcon [15] ("This is according to Wikipedia, which is certainly not definitive, as we have come to learn. However, it is unlikley that the friends or enemies of Ptolemy VIII have been been altering articles there, so perhaps it approximates truth.")
Features and admins
Administrators
Administration status was given to thirteen users this week: Punkmorten (nom), Wgfinley (nom), Banno (nom), Rogerd (nom), Mathwiz2020 (nom), Sceptre (nom), Admrboltz (nom), Aecis (nom), KillerChihuahua (nom), William M. Connolley (nom), Husnock (nom), Dsmdgold (nom), and JzG (nom).
Featured content
Seven articles were promoted to featured status recently: Schabir Shaik Trial, Tooth development, Cynna Neele, Paul Kane, Dixie (song), History of saffron, and Nightwish.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: White's tree frog, University of Michigan, Holkham Hall, Game theory, War of the League of Cambrai, TGV, and Texas Ranger Division.
Two lists reached featured list status this week: List of English words containing Q not followed by U and List of Church of England dioceses.
Eight pictures reached featured picture status this week:
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Fundraising notice enabled only for anonymous users
A recent change has prompted the splitting of Mediawiki:Sitenotice onto another message, Mediawiki:Anonnotice. The latter message is viewable only by anonymous users. The goal was to help prevent the edit wars that had occurred over a personal appeal for donations made by site founder Jimmy Wales. Many users felt that the donations link was obtrusive, and believed that the message would harm future fund drives. The compromise automatically hides the message from all logged-in users. The sitenotice will still be used for fundraising drives.
Last week in servers
Server-related events, problems, and changes included:
- 11 January — Installed srv71 through srv80, ten new servers hosted at the Florida datacenter.
- 11 January — PHP upgraded to version 5.1.1 on various servers.
- 12 January — Faulty code in SVG image rendering removed.
- 15 January — English Wikiquote upload problem fixed.
- 15 January — Semi-protection enabled on the Spanish Wikipedia and the Japanese Wikinews.
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee did not close any cases this week.
Other cases
No cases were accepted this week.
Other cases involving VeryVerily (user page), editors on WebEx and Min Zhu, editors on Rajput, freestylefrappe (user page), Firebug (user page), and EffK (user page) are in the Evidence phase.
Cases involving Robert I (user page), Sortan (user page), Benjamin Gatti (user page), Gibraltarian (user page), Carl Hewitt (user page), Reddi (user page), Deeceevoice (user page), numerous editors on Neuro-linguistic programming, Johnski (user page), a series of editors on Winter Soldier, and Copperchair (user page) are in the Voting phase.
Motions to close are on the table in cases involving AndriyK (user page), Xed (user page), and voters on webcomics AFDs.