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Volume 4, Issue 11 13 March 2008 About the Signpost
(← Prev) 2008 archives (Next →)
From the editor
Accusations of financial impropriety receive more coverage Best of WikiWorld: "Five-second rule"
News and notes: New bureaucrat, Wikimania bids narrowed, milestones Wikipedia in the News
Dispatches: Vintage image restoration WikiProject Report: Professional wrestling
Tutorial: Summary of policies Features and admins
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News The Report on Lengthy Litigation
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SPV

From the editor

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By Ral315

Apologies for the delay in publishing this issue; I've been coming back from a brief flu bug, and wasn't able to seriously start writing until late Wednesday. We'll plan on getting back on schedule for next week's issue.

Thanks for reading the Signpost.

— Ral315


SPV

Accusations of financial impropriety receive more coverage

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By Ral315


Editor's note: The Wikipedia Signpost is an independent, community newspaper, and is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation. The contents of this page are that of their authors alone, and may not reflect the opinion of the Wikimedia Foundation.

While coverage of a relationship between Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales and Canadian political columnist Rachel Marsden, and financial allegations made by former Foundation employee Danny Wool (see archived story) continued over the last week, an allegation made by currently-banned user Jeff Merkey was also reported by various press sources. Merkey alleged that Wales offered to edit his article favorably in return for a US$5,000 per year donation to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation that Wales has strongly denied.

Merkey announced on Sunday on the foundation-l mailing list that he had been in contact with the Associated Press, regarding interactions with Wales. He claimed that Wales had offered "special protection" to the article "Jeff Merkey" in exchange for a $5,000/year donation to the Wikimedia Foundation:

I am notifying the foundation I was approached on Friday by the Associated Press regarding statements attributed to me which are in some way, perceived to be related to Mr. Wales private affairs which seem to have gotten a great deal of press coverage. ... Since I am obligated to protect my own good name, I feel compelled to address various allegations in order to distance myself from this controversy involving Mr. Wales so the facts are not spun into something they are not. As such, I issued the following statement to the associated press in response to their inquiries regarding my involvement with Mr. Wales and his business dealings. This statement was sent on Friday, March 7, 2008.

"According to Merkey, in 2006, Wales agreed that in exchange for a substantial donation and other financial support of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wales would use his influence to make Merkey's article adhere to Wikipedia's stated policies with regard to internet libel "as a courtesy" and place Merkey under his "special protection" as an editor. Merkey later withdrew his financial support of the Wikipedia project after reviewing evidence of diversion and mismanagement of the charities funds by Wales and the Wikimedia Board of Trustees and was immediately banned from the Wikipedia site by the Arbitration Committee for frivolous and unsubstantiated claims after he terminated the payments of $5,000.00 per year to the Wikimedia Foundation."[1]

Wales responded, in separate messages to the list:

I encourage anyone who is tempted to believe this story to consider the source.[2]

Of course I would never offer, nor accept any offer, whereby a donation would buy someone special editorial treatment in the encyclopedia. I do routinely assist people with WP:BLP issues, and I do courtesies for many people. Donations have no bearing on that at all. NPOV is non-negotiable.[3]

The story was first covered by the Sydney Morning Herald, in a March 11 article. The article presents Merkey's claims of paid proxy editing, and Wales' denial. It does, however, say that "Wales placed [the article] under his "special protection". Protected entries can only be edited by Wikipedia administrators." This claim is inaccurate; the article was placed under semi-protection, allowing most registered users to edit the page. All revisions of the article were deleted, however, leaving editors to rebuild the article from a blank slate.

The claim was subsequently the subject of stories by other press sources:

The matter was also covered by tech website Slashdot, dubbing the matter "DonorGate". Wikimedia spokesperson Jay Walsh responded to the Slashdot article with an official statement from the Foundation:

"Current allegations relating to Jimmy Wales soliciting donations for the Wikimedia Foundation in order to protect or edit Wikipedia articles are completely false. The Wikimedia Foundation has never accepted nor solicited donations in order to protect or make edits to a Wikipedia article — nor has Jimmy Wales. This is a practice the Wikimedia Foundation would never condone."[4]

Merkey has often been the source of controversy; his Wolf Mountain Group (now Timpanogas Research Group) was the subject of a lawsuit from Merkey's former employer, Novell, alleging confusion over the name of the group, and misappropriation of trade secrets. Merkey is also controversial within the open source community. In 2004, Merkey offered $50,000 for a copy of the Linux kernel that was not licensed under the GNU General Public License, an offer that many, including software freedom activist Richard Stallman, criticized. In 2005, Merkey filed a lawsuit against Slashdot, open source advocate Bruce Perens, and 200 John Does. The suit, alleging harassment by the defendants, was dropped in August 2005, with a subsequent motion to reopen the case against one defendant, Al Petrofsky.

On Wikipedia, Merkey has also been controversial. Under the account name Gadugi, he was indefinitely blocked in October 2005 by Fvw, with the block summary "Personal attacks, legal threats, harassment, disruption, ..." He was blocked while editing under the account Waya sahoni, as a reincarnation of Gadugi, but was allowed to come back in May 2007 under the account Jeffrey Vernon Merkey. After a July 2007 arbitration case, Merkey and two users who had harassed Merkey, Pfagerburg and Kebron, were all banned for one year.

Marsden/Wool coverage

While initial coverage focused on Wales' involvement with Rachel Marsden, very little of the coverage over the past week has focused on the relationship. It did, however, receive a mention from United Press International, and was mentioned on American newsmagazine Inside Edition.[5] The New York Post also covered the story, with a new claim:

...[Marsden] blamed Wales for growing "extremely paranoid" about their relationship becoming public, to the point where he "threatened me with things like jail or deportation" if she revealed details about them. "I was pretty terrified," she told The Post.[6]

This claim has not been mentioned by any other news sources, however. Meanwhile, Australian breakfast television program Weekend Sunrise gave less-than-flattering coverage to Marsden.

Over the last week, Wool's allegations that Wales had improperly used Foundation funds have received mentions in various sources, including:

References

  1. ^ Merkey, Jeffrey Vernon. Thread:Statement to the Associated Press, foundation-l mailing list, March 9, 2008, 14:31:20 UTC.
  2. ^ Wales, Jimmy. Thread: Statement to the Associated Press, foundation-l mailing list, March 9, 2008, 22:17:40 UTC.
  3. ^ Wales, Jimmy. Thread: Statement to the Associated Press, foundation-l mailing list, March 9, 2008, 22:44:16 UTC.
  4. ^ KDawson. "DonorGate" Is Latest Scandal To Hit Wikipedia, March 12, 2008.
  5. ^ Dumped on Wikipedia, Inside Edition. March 7, 2008.
  6. ^ Sheehy, Kate. Wild and Wiki Breakup, New York Post. March 4, 2008.



SPV

Best of WikiWorld: "Five-second rule"

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By Greg Williams
This WikiWorld rerun is from May 28, 2007.

This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Five-second rule". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.


SPV

News and notes

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By Ral315, Durova, and Dihydrogen Monoxide

One user promoted to bureaucrat

After eleven users applied for bureaucratship (see archived story), only one RfB, that of The Rambling Man, passed successfully (the nomination closed with 133 users supporting and just 4 opposing).

Riana's RfB was unsuccessful; it closed at 85.9%, within what some considered a bureaucrat's discretionary range, though others argued that the roughly 90% standard should remain in place for this round of RfBs, until community consensus could be achieved on the proper cutoff. After a bureaucrat chat, bureaucrats remained split on the RfB, with three users (WJBscribe, Andrevan, and Warofdreams) supporting Riana's promotion, and four (Rdsmith4, UninvitedCompany, Kingturtle, and Deskana) who would not support promotion. As such, WJBscribe closed the RfB as unsuccessful, with the bureaucrats unable to determine whether consensus existed.

A proposal to lower the bar for RfBs is being voted on; most commenting on the proposal have supported lowering the bar, although whether the discussion will result in any changes once completed is unknown.

Wikimania 2009 bids narrowed to two

On 9 March, the Wikimania 2009 bids from Brisbane and Karlsruhe were eliminated by the jury, leaving just two bids open: Buenos Aires and Toronto. The final decision will be made sometime on or after Thursday, 13 March.

Love or Duty

After being featured and de-featured in February, Image:Love or dutyb.jpg, an 1871 chromolithograph by Gabriele Castagnola, has been re-featured. A suggestion by Spikebrennan for a Valentine's Day featured picture led Durova to locate the image at the Library of Congress archives, restoring it as Image:Love or dutya.jpg, where it passed featured picture candidacy on a unanimous vote; however, some users complained that the vote violated usual procedure. In order to feature the picture on the Main Page on Valentine's Day, the vote ran for just over two days, while most nominations run for about seven days. After being featured on the main page, these procedural issues led to a nomination for delisting, which resulted in the image's de-featuring. Afterward, the image was renominated as Image:Love or dutyb.jpg, where it passed on a second unanimous vote. This is believed to be the first time that a featured picture has been nominated, promoted, highlighted on the main page, delisted, and repromoted in less than 30 days.

Briefly


SPV

In the news

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By Enochlau

Wikipedia and raising money

Wikipedia's tin-cup approach wears thin - With Wikipedia attracting about 300 million page views each day, it has been estimated that the Wikimedia Foundation could attract up to hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising, while all this time, it has been relying on small donations from the public and the occasional large donor. Ideas that could raise money include selling t-shirts and Wikipedia board games. However, actually selling advertising would cause an uproar amongst some editors who would not like to see the commercialisation of Wikipedia. There is conflict between the desire for growth and the desire to avoid conflicts that would arise from serving advertisements.

Other mentions

Other recent mentions in the online press include:


SPV

Dispatches: Vintage image restoration

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By Durova
Mulberry Street, New York City, 1900

Let's face it: not everyone is a wordsmith. Editors who think visually instead of verbally can contribute featured content too. It isn't necessary to be a talented photographer or even to own a camera, because a portion of Wikipedia's featured pictures are historic images that individual editors have uploaded or restored.

A few of the images already hosted at Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are neglected gems, and other quality archives such as the Library of Congress host feature-worthy public domain material. It takes a working understanding of copyright law to search for images offsite and proficiency in at least one type of image processing software to do restorations. Fortunately, good free software programs are available and plenty of restorable images are already waiting for attention.

At its best, image restoration is like cleaning a window onto the past. It's a way to improve the encyclopedia where few editor conflicts happen. Just fire up the image software, start some music or maybe open a chat, and relax. If you're patient enough and careful enough, the window you open may bring history to life on Wikipedia's main page.

The page that describes Wikipedia's featured picture criteria is essential reading for editors who want to contribute featured pictures. This overview focuses on the aspects that are of special interest for vintage image work. Editors who are making their first efforts will find Wikipedia:Picture peer review a good place to seek feedback.

High technical standard

Featured picture criteria allow flexibility for historic images, but in practice that's often less flexibility than an enthusiastic newcomer would like. The file itself needs to be a quality scan without halftoning or JPEG artifacting. Reviewers will accept moderate compromises in quality if the nominator provides good reasons why no better replacement is available.

  • Example 1 is a 1904 landscape by Edward S. Curtis and a stunning photograph by any standard. Vintage landscapes or architectural photographs need to be of top quality unless a historic element prevents a contemporary photographer from recreating the scene on state-of-the-art equipment.
  • Example 2 is an architectural image that could not be replaced with a later photograph. This passed featured picture candidacy even though it looks tilted, because the problem is caused by a distortion inherent to early camera lenses. The building underwent new construction before the lens technology improved.
  • Example 3 is a photograph from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Its inherent importance outweighs minor flaws such as the turned face of the woman at left.

High resolution

Featured picture criteria ask for a minimum of 1,000 pixels on at least one side. Although historic images are allowed as exceptions, nearly all vintage pictures actually are this size or larger.

  • Example 4 is one of Wikipedia's smallest featured pictures at 800 × 769 pixels. It is also one of the earliest vintage images to have been promoted (it ran on the main page in 2004) and would probably have a hard time passing if nominated today.
  • Example 5 is more of a typical size for featured material at 2,962 × 2,048 pixels.

Free license

Wikipedia features only pictures that are public domain, or that have been given GFDL or another suitable copyleft license. Fair-use copyrighted material is not eligible.

Editors who upload vintage images have to become familiar with the quirks of copyright duration. Material should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons whenever possible because Commons serves all Wikimedia Foundation projects, including all foreign-language editions of Wikipedia. Occasionally a difference in hosting policy makes it necessary to upload to the English-language Wikipedia instead of Commons.

  • Example 6 French railroad advertisement, 1921
    Example 6 French railroad advertisement, 1921
  • Example 6 is unusual because it is a featured image on Wikipedia that cannot be hosted at Commons. It was published in France by an artist who lived until 1968, so is public domain in the United States but copyrighted in France. Wikipedia observes United States copyright law where most images published before 1923 are in the public domain, but Commons also observes the copyright of the country of publication. French law keeps material under copyright for the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years.

Avoids inappropriate digital manipulation

Encyclopedic restorations are a conservative undertaking. Several practices are specifically acceptable:

  • Cropping
  • Perspective correction
  • Sharpening/blurring
  • Color/exposure correction

Reviewers tolerate other modest changes as long as the work recreates the original photograph. Radical filters or composition changes are not viewed favorably. It's good practice to upload an original version of every image and to include restoration notes.


  • Example 7 San Francisco, 1851, before restoration
    Example 7 San Francisco, 1851, before restoration
  • Example 8 After restoration
    Example 8 After restoration
  • Examples 7 and 8 are before and after examples of an intensive image restoration. The original was slightly tilted and faded, and had numerous problems with dust, scratches and chemical decomposition. The restoration took three days to correct those problems at high resolution and denoise the sky. Most restorations require less work than this.

Tips

On average, about 1 in 1,000 archival images has the potential to become a featured picture. So I maintain an open workshop at User:Durova/Landmark images, where editors are welcome to pick up images for restoration, or to drop off extra needles from whichever haystacks they've been searching.

The technical side of restoration is mostly a matter of working slowly and up close. I start at 300% addressing simple problems, and then go in as much as 700–800% for challenging areas such as human faces. The results are worth the effort.

Hone restoration skills in one or two areas, familiarizing yourself with the technical background for each medium, and try new things as your interests and confidence grow. Some editors work with paintings. Others specialize in engravings, etchings, and lithographs. An interest in nineteenth century photography can lead to arcane knowledge about daguerrotypes, colloidon glass emulsions, salt paper calotypes, and photochrom prints. As much as possible, combine technical research with historical and cultural background to make your restoration choices as accurate as possible.

It can help to collaborate with an editing partner to review work in progress and share suggestions, and then to conominate the image together. If several similar images excite you, concentrate on your favorite one first and space out the nominations.

Free image manipulation software

Further reading


SPV

WikiProject Report: Professional wrestling

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By Rudget

This week, we interviewed three members from the Professional Wrestling WikiProject - (iMatthew, Nikki311 and TJ Spyke). After enjoying a year of promotions (whether they be to FA/FL status or to GA), the project had grown significantly to become one of the most acclaimed.

History

Started in March 2005 by Gwalla (talk · contribs), the project has been going for nearly three years, celebrating its anniversary in just under two weeks now, on the 21st. It started with relatively few editors but now has over 350 participants. In that time they have established themselves to be one of the highest achieving projects on Wikipedia, with a featured topic, 25+ featured articles & lists, 30+ good articles and nearing 250 B-class articles. According to the project mainpage, the aims for it achieve are as follows:

  • To create and edit featured article quality professional wrestling articles on Wikipedia, with the intent of making Wikipedia an accurate and valued reference for pro wrestling information.
  • To keep articles encyclopedic in nature.
  • To establish a uniform style for wrestler biographies, wrestling events and wrestling promotions.

Additionally, the project has a large number of departments, including: Collaboration of the Week, an Assessment centre and a Style guide to model pages on.

  1. What does the WikiProject do?
    Nikki311: Our project is focused on maintaining and improving all wrestling-related articles on Wikipedia. Most of our work is focused on reverting vandalism, as most active wrestlers are targets of daily IP and new-user vandalism. We also focus on improving articles to Good and Featured levels.
  2. How is the project organized? Are there any coordinators for example?
    TJ Spyke: The members vote on a weekly article which our members will focus on to improve as much as possible. Anybody is free to expand articles; when it comes to expanding pay-per-view articles though, we usually have one person volunteer to start the expansion and have the rest of the project come in afterward. This helps make sure the article is written in the same style. Since wrestling in general tends to looked down on, there is an unofficial rule against other project members from voting in FA nominations in order to avoid any claims of vote stacking. When there is big news (like a major wrestler dying or getting fired) it's posted on the project talkpage and usually added to the watchlists of several editors in order to keep an eye on them. There are no specific coordinators, other than The Chronic as he originally ran the project newsletter.
  3. What are the advantages of having the project's newsletter?
    iMatthew:The project's newsletter is a very important part of the project. The newsletter is the best way to keep members of the project informed of everything going on in the project. In the newsletter, there are different sections. Recent Articles for Deletion notify users of the AfD's and allow them to get involved. Article statistics keeps the project members informed of the progress of our stub article expansion, as well as our progress in gaining Good and Featured articles. Project news lists current GA, FA, and FL nominations, as well as results from recently closed nominations. It also lists any other news relating to our WikiProject. The Collaboration of the Week is the article that project members will focus on for a week to help improve the article's quality. Member interviews allows project members to get to know some of our active members better. Member news contains the project's calendar for the month, as well as the updated tally of project members and active project members. Current events informs members of the "current events" going on in the professional wrestling world today.
  4. Where does the project progress go from here?
    iMatthew: Right now, our focus is on improving stub articles, and the pay-per-view expansion. At the start of the stub article expansion, the stubs were 24.06% of our articles. Currently, the stubs are less than 19% of our articles. We have a large group of active members that contribute to the stub article expansion. The stub expansion has expanded over 100 articles from stubs to Start and B-Class.Our other main focus is the pay-per-view expansion. The expansion started in October 2007. In total, we have expanded over 75 pay-per-view articles. Out of those, one is a Featured article and eight are Good articles. Overall, our progress from here should get nothing but better. We are constantly gaining more and more Good articles, which shows the project's progress.
  5. Do you think there may be any weaknesses to the project, if any?
    Nikki311: As with any project, we do have weaknesses. Although we are fortunate to have so many active members, more members equals more opinions, so sometimes it is harder to reach a consensus. Also, finding reliable sources is sometimes difficult, as wrestlers under contract with World Wrestling Entertainment aren't supposed to reveal too much backstage information. Lastly, as previously mentioned, we deal with high levels of vandalism, reverting which sometimes takes editors away from improving articles.
  6. What do you think about the project, and has it strengthened your relations to the community?
    TJ Spyke: The project has improved a lot over the last year, with some really talented editors (like NiciVampireHeart) and having three members become admins (Lid, Nikki311, and LAX) has really helped in fighting vandalism and stopping socks even faster. These have made the project and Wikipedia in general more enjoyable, they also make me feel more comfortable knowing that if I can't access the Internet, I won't have to worry about vandalism lasting long (except for some of the more obscure articles that I don't think anyone else has on their watchlist).
  7. How could somebody who isn't a member of the project become involved?
    Nikki311: We'd love anybody who is interested in improving wrestling-related articles to join our project. All one has to do is add {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Professional wrestling/Userbox}} to your user page, introduce yourself on our talk page, and begin editing! If a new member has questions, there are several members, myself included, who would love to help him/her out.


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Tutorial: Summary of policies

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By The Placebo Effect

Wikipedia is a project that has wide boundaries. As such, there are many rules and policies that describe how things are done. As of right now, there are 42 policies that are enforced and used in the maintenance of Wikipedia. A brief summary of each policy, listed in bold, sorted into categories, follows. (Note: This only covers official policies, not guidelines)

Behavioral

The first few policies deal with an editor's start on Wikipedia. The Username policy limits certain names from being used, including those of celebrities (unless you can prove who you say you are), ones that imply leadership on Wikipedia, are offensive, or are similar to an established user. Usernames can be changed by going to Wikipedia:Changing username and requesting an unused username, or one that has no edits can be usurped. Editors are discouraged from having multiple accounts, often called sock puppets, and are disallowed from using them to "create the illusion of greater support for an issue, to mislead others, to artificially stir up controversy, to aid in disruption, or to circumvent a block."

After this, the Editing policy states simply that editors should work on improving pages, without regarding perfection, because it can be fixed later. However, certain types of edits are prohibited:

  • Vandalism – Any editor that repeatedly makes edits that are obviously trying to disrupt Wikipedia can be blocked or permanently banned.
  • Edit Warring – If you and other editors are consistently reverting each other's edits, stop editing, and discuss it on the talk page.
  • Breaking the Three-revert rule – You may be blocked for making 4 or more reverts to one article within a 24 hour time period.
  • Acting like you own an article – By editing Wikipedia, you allow others to edit any articles you edit or create. Asserting control over any article is prohibited.

Most of your interaction with other editors takes place on the Talk Pages. There are three main policies for governing interaction with other editors:

  • Civility – Treat others as nicely as possible. This includes not ignoring their comments and not talking down to them. This also encourages you to make sure people remain civil and remind them if they are not.
  • No legal threats – Legal threats should not be directed to people on Wikipedia or mentioned on Wikipedia.
  • No personal attacks – We are here to build an Encyclopedia, so please don't attack other people with words or in any other manner.

Two more policies fall into this subcategory of Policies:

  • Bot policy – All automated bots should be approved and must be a separate account from the owner, and not harm Wikipedia.
  • Wheel war (Admins only) – Do not repeat an administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it. Do not continue a chain of administrative reversals without discussion.

Content and style

Content and style policies talk about what type of articles are allowed in Wikipedia, and what has to be maintained in the articles.

These are Wikipedia's three core content policies. Together, they set the standard for what should be in Wikipedia's articles. They should be viewed as parts of a whole and not separate. The principles upon which these policies are based are non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus.

  • Neutral point of view – Every article must give all significant views of the topic equal weight without favoring one or the other.
  • No original research – Wikipedia does not publish original thoughts, and is not the place to establish new ideas.
  • Verifiability – Any material that might be reasonably questioned should be attributed to a reliable source.

Two policies based on content apply to two specific subsets of articles:

  • Attack pages – Any page that is made to do nothing but disparage its subject should be tagged with {{attack}} and be deleted immediately.
  • Biographies of living people – Because information posted in a person's biography can be hurtful, great care must be taken to remove any statements that do not meet the three core principles listed above.

The final two policies in this category are:

Deletion

The Deletion policies govern what articles should be deleted and what process they have to go through in order to be deleted. They allow for four methods of deletion: Articles for Deletion, two of the methods of deletion listed below and copyright violation, which can fall under speedy deletion. Deletion Review is also established under this policy, which allows for the undeletion of articles that were deleted incorrectly.

  • Speedy Deletion – If a page meets any of the criteria on the listed policy page, then tag it with the appropriate template. An admin will look at it to see whether it meets the criteria; if it does, the admin will delete it.
  • Proposed deletion – If you feel that nobody will disagree with deletion, but the situation doesn't meet the speedy deletion criteria, you can tag an article with {{subst:prod}}. If the tag isn't removed within five days, than the article can be deleted by an admin. If the tag is removed, then you have the option of proposing a deletion at Articles for Deletion.
  • Category deletion policy – Governs how categories are deleted, either through Speedy Deletion or Categories for discussion.

The other two policies governing deletion deal with actions by the Wikimedia Foundation. These policies are when the Foundation is doing something for legal reasons or because of exceptional controversy:

  • Office actions – The Wikimedia Foundation reserves the right to delete any article without community input.
  • Oversight – Edits in edit histories can be hidden from view of editors and admins.

Enforcing policies

Any system that has policies has to be able to enforce them in some way. Wikipedia is no different. The first two of these deal with how you work with other editors in order to decide how things work in Wikipedia:

  • Consensus – Decisions agreed upon by community consensus should be respected and followed. Also of note: even though consensus once existed for something, that doesn't mean such a consensus will exist forever.
  • Dispute resolution – The preferred method for solving problems dealing with articles is to talk about the content, and if that doesn't work, bring in an unrelated third party to help settle the problem.

If these methods of discussing the problems don't work and edit warring continues, there are policies that come into effect, in this approximate order:

  • Protecting – Pages can be protected if parties are excessively edit warring on them or are being vandalized at a very high rate.
  • Banning – Bans are different from blocks because bans are a formal revocation of editing privileges in a certain area of Wikipedia. A ban does not disable a user from editing a page, but is instead a simple social contract.
  • Blocking – If a user is violating any policy, after they have been informed of the policy they broke, then they may be blocked from editing and have their editing privileges revoked.
  • Arbitration Committee – The Arbitration Committee has the final say in behavioral disputes. They only rule on behavior issues and not content issues (i.e. whether Waterboarding is torture, or whether TV episode articles should exist in Wikipedia).

The final two methods, below, are extensions of the Blocking policy. They help to enforce the strength of blocks, so that they aren't avoided or misused:

  • Appealing a block – If you feel that you have been blocked inappropriately, you may appeal your block by either using the {{unblock}} template, or by e-mailing the Unblock mailing list.
  • Open proxies – The use of a proxy to evade an IP block is prohibited.

Copyright Policies come from The Laws of the United States of America and the State of Florida. All the policies listed below are extensions of the previous two listed:

  • Copyright violations – Do not add anything to Wikipedia that you copied from somewhere else. if you find anything that is a Copyright violation, remove it on sight.
  • Image use policy – If you use copyrighted images in an article, mention the source on the image page and make it as usable as possible
  • Libel – All editors are responsible for making sure Wikipedia's content is not defamatory. When found, defamatory content should be deleted or removed on sight.
  • Non-free content criteria – In cases where no free counterpart can be found, non-free content may be used if it meets the set criteria listed on the policy page.
  • Reusing Wikipedia content – Information from Wikipedia can be reused if you credit all the authors, distribute it with the Text of the GNU Free Documentation License, and allow free access to it.

Global

There is only one policy that falls in this category, and it is impossible to summarize it, because it is already so succinct:

  • Ignore all Rules – If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. (Note: a tutorial discussing this policy in more detail is planned for a future issue.)

Further reading


SPV

Features and admins

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By OhanaUnited

Administrators

Five users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: TravisTX (nom), Deacon of Pndapetzim (nom), shoeofdeath (nom), Gadget850 (nom), and Zedla (nom).

One user was promoted to bureaucrat status via the Requests for Bureaucratship process this week: The Rambling Man (nom)

Bots

Five bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Kbdankbot (task request), Lockalbot (task request), Kal-El-Bot (task request), YekratsBot (task request), and KrimpBot (task request).

Nineteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Oliver Typewriter Company (nom), Reactive attachment disorder (nom), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (nom), Paleolithic-style diet (nom), Holden (nom), Flea (musician) (nom), If (magazine) (nom), Fanny Imlay (nom), Duncan Edwards (nom), Neilston (nom), Trafford (nom), Huldrych Zwingli (nom), Grover Cleveland (nom), Lessons for Children (nom), Typhoon Paka (nom), Bernard Fanning (nom), Soprano Home Movies (nom), Odyssey Number Five (nom), and Pattern Recognition (novel) (nom).

Fifteen lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Peep Show episodes (nom), East Carolina Pirates football seasons (nom), List of foreign recipients of the Knight's Cross (nom), List of Governors of Hawaii (nom), List of autonomous areas by country (nom), List of Interstate Highways in Texas (nom), Degrassi: The Next Generation (season 4) (nom), List of Tampa Bay Lightning players (nom), List of Lieutenant Governors of Wisconsin (nom), Degrassi: The Next Generation (season 3) (nom), List of 30 Rock awards and nominations (nom), List of tallest buildings in Portland, Oregon (nom), List of countries without armed forces (nom), List of unrecognized countries (nom), and List of space telescopes (nom).

Two topics were promoted to featured status last week: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (nom) and York City F.C. (nom).

Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Spain (nom) and Portal:Criminal justice (nom).

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Crusaders (rugby), The Philadelphia Inquirer, ESRB re-rating of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Pre-dreadnought battleship, Hockey Hall of Fame, Hoysala Empire and Plano Senior High School.

Two articles were delisted recently: Metal Gear Solid (nom) and Battle of Jutland (nom).

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Surfer, Prokaryote, Cappadocia, Glaucus atlanticus and Leucospermum. One featured picture was demoted: Caterpillar feeding. One featured picture was re-promoted: Love or Duty.

No sounds were featured last week.

Fourteen pictures and one video were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.


SPV

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By ais523

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.4 (a8dd895), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Fixed bugs

  • The list=search query now returns the titles of the pages returned by the search engine, rather than null strings. (r31522, bug 10908)
  • The audio on some videos with a high frame rate now plays back properly in the Cortado Java-based player. (r31527, bug 13071)
  • Redlinked MediaWiki:-space messages associated with extensions (such as MediaWiki:Imagemap unrecognised shape) now show the correct content on views and edits of the message. (r31547, bug 13019)
  • Links autogenerated by syntax such as ISBN 0123456789 now have more readable URLs. (r31562, bug 13247)
  • It's now possible to save a change to a page containing <NOINCLUDE> (in allcaps). (r31564, bug 13253)
  • __HIDDENCAT__ now only has an effect on category pages (previously it would categorise non-category pages into Category:Hidden categories). (r31393, bug 13174)
  • The error message "You do not have permission to do that" now only comes up for rollback when the user actually does not have permission to perform an action, not in other cases when the action might fail (the edit has already been rolled back by someone else, or the user is the only one who edited the page). (r31588, bug 13110)
  • An article with hidden categories but no non-hidden categories no longer displays an empty gray box at the bottom. (r31731, bug 13234)

New feature

  • A new parameter xmldoublequote is available in the API, for all results in XML format; it causes all attributes and content in the XML output to be double-escaped. (r31525, bug 11401)

Ongoing news

  • Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.


SPV

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By David Mestel

The Arbitration Committee did not open or close any cases this week, leaving five currently open.

Voting phase

  • Franco-Mongol alliance: A case involving alleged misconduct over a dispute on Franco-Mongol alliance and related articles. Newyorkbrad has proposed remedies prohibiting PHG from editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year.
  • Mantanmoreland: A case involving alleged sockpuppetry by Mantanmoreland, which he denies. In a controversial proposed decision, Newyorkbrad has made proposals, with the support of nine arbitrators, finding that a "definitive conclusion" cannot be reached, placing some articles on article probation, and placing restrictions on current and future editors to the articles. A topic ban for Mantanmoreland has the support of six arbitrators, and a direction that he edit Wikipedia from only one account, four.
  • Ehud Lesar: A case involving a dispute involving Ehud Lesar, with alleged sockpuppetry on his part and alleged harassment by Fedayee, Eupator and others. Sam Blacketer has proposed a remedy, with the support of eight arbitrators, finding that there is insufficient evidence of sockpuppetry and overturning the block.

Motion to close/dismiss

  • Highways 2: A case involving editing by NE2 on articles relating to WikiProject U.S. Roads, allegedly against consensus of other editors involved with that wikiproject. A remedy has been proposed, with the support of two arbitrators, counselling editors to consider contributing outside of disputed articles. UninvitedCompany has proposed a motion, with the support of three arbitrators, to dismiss the case as a content dispute.
  • Episodes and characters 2: A case involving alleged continuing disruption of articles concerning television series episodes and characters, following on from a prior case. An injunction has been enacted halting certain editing activities on these articles until the case is resolved. If closed, TTN would be prohibited from requesting merges, redirections or deletions of these articles, and all parties instructed to "cease engaging in editorial conflict and to work collaboratively to develop a generally accepted and applicable approach to the articles in question". The motion to close stands at 6-1.


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