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Volume 5, Issue 34 24 August 2009 About the Signpost
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$500,000 grant, Wikimania, Wikipedia Loves Art winners

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By Hiding, Sage Ross, and Jdforrester

Wikimedia receives $500,000 from Hewlett Foundation

On the Wikimedia Foundation blog this week, head of communications Jay Walsh announced a new unrestricted grant:

The Wikimedia Foundation has received a $500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand its work bringing free educational content to everyone on the planet. With this grant, the Hewlett Foundation acknowledges the important role Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia Foundation projects play in making educational information freely accessible.

"The enormous popularity of Wikipedia and its collaborative premise make the Wikimedia Foundation an ideal vehicle for spreading the open educational resources movement," said Barbara Chow, director of the education program at Hewlett. "We look forward to a fruitful relationship."[grant 1]

Wikimedia Foundation deputy director Erik Möller, writing on the foundation-l mailing list, said the grant was "designed to advance the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation as a whole".[grant 2]

The Associated Press reported on the grant and The Register offered an analysis of Foundation funding.

References

  1. ^ Walsh, Jay. Press releases/Hewlett Foundation grant August 2009, 21 August 2009.
  2. ^ Möller, Erik. $500, 000 operational support from Hewlett Foundation, 21 August 2009.

Wikimedians gearing up for Wikimania 2009

Wikimedians have begun reporting their first impressions—generally positive—of the city of Buenos Aires, the site of Wikimania 2009. The conference will run Wednesday through Friday (26–28 August), with registration, the Wikimania Codeathon, and a presentation by Richard Stallman kicking things off on Tuesday. Many conference attendees are active microbloggers, and there is likely to be considerable discussion of the goings-on under the hashtag "#wikimania" on Twitter and identi.ca.

Wikipedia Loves Art: Victoria & Albert Museum

The winners of the Wikipedia Loves Art event at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, UK in February this year were announced last week. The winners were:

1st: vavaval (Val_McG and dj_photo) – 142 points
2nd place: opalartseekers4 (Forever Wiser) – 88 points
3rd place: ukfgr (the wee pixie and -mrsraggle-) – 82 points
4th place: veronikab – 75 points

Briefly

SPV

Health care coverage, 3 million articles, inkblots, and more

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By BanyanTree and Sage Ross

Wikipedia praised for U.S. health care reform coverage

The issue of reforming the American health care system has been the central issue in American politics in recent weeks, and many media critics have observed that the mainstream media have done a poor job informing the public about the nature of the reform proposals that the U.S. Congress is considering. In particular, critics allege that the media have emphasized conflict over fact and allowed public debate to be derailed by distorted ideas (such as the concept of "death panels"). But Megan Garber of the Columbia Journalism Review sees a bright spot in public health care reform discourse: Wikipedia.

In "Health Care and Wikipedia", Garber identifies the article Health care reform in the United States as the antidote to the false balance of recent news coverage. According to Garber, "Wikipedia provides, essentially, what traditional news outlets, both in print and online, have been trying—with varying degrees of success—to create: a thorough, comprehensive, and vitriol-free examination of the health care conversation." In addition to the main health care reform article, she notes the extensive range of related articles that neatly summarize the key political debates and the relevant background information (many of which are collected in the {{Health care reform in the United States}} template).

Explaining why Wikipedia has outperformed the mainstream media on the health care reform issue, Garber writes that:

because Wikipedia is crowdsourced, it has no implicit mandate, ethical or economical, toward ‘balance’ and ‘objectivity.’ It thus has no vested interest in the kind of he said/she said approach that has, to this point, so sorely compromised the mainstream media’s health care narrative.

3 millionth article

The creation of English Wikipedia's three millionth article, on Norwegian actress Beate Eriksen, prompted worldwide coverage.[itn 1][itn 2] The Telegraph took the opportunity to list the top 50 articles by web traffic of 2008 and 2009.[itn 3]

The Guardian coverage included repeating the findings of the PARC study that "it is harder for new users to make inroads with the site's powerful group of administrators."[itn 4] The Christian Science Monitor blog repeats an older Guardian assertion that the decline in the rate of article creation is the result of a deletionist-inclusionist battle calling Wikipedia "the upstart social experiment that trusts the online mob to steward world knowledge."[itn 5] Tech sites Softpedia and ReadWriteWeb are less doomsday in their coverage, with ReadWriteWeb noting, "the fact that the number of new articles added is declining may not have to do with the site losing its appeal but with the fact that there is simply less to write about." Softpedia declares, "The studies by PARC are some of the best scientific analysis of Wikipedia's community ever done, but it has led to some rather sensationalist conclusions by media outlets," under a section header entitled "Get it Straight: Wikipedia isn't Dying."[itn 6][itn 7]

Indian Wiki-Academy

The Hindu covered a Wiki-Academy held at St. Aloysius College in Mangalore, India, describing it as a "one-day workshop [that] will focus on the use of Indian languages in Wikipedia, editing and its application in academics."[itn 8] A question at the Wiki-Academy about Mangalore, Victoria in Australia, led to reporting on disambiguation on Wikipedia. The Hindu reported that the organizers of the meeting, N. S. Prashanth (User:Prashanthns) and Hariprasad Nadig (User:HPN) stated that "The profit one gets by being content editor on Wikipedia ... is 'satisfaction.'"[itn 9]

Doctors argue about meaning of inkblots

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan is investigating ER physician James Heilman (User:Jmh649) after complaints from two psychologists about his adding images of the inkblots used in the Rorschach test. One complaint states that Heilman's actions "shows disrespect to his professional colleagues in psychology and disparages them in the eyes of the public." Heilman said he had no intention of backing down, saying of his critics, "They are trying to close the doors to scientific discourse. They don’t want anybody other than themselves involved in a discussion about what they do."[itn 10]

In brief

  • Noam Cohen of The New York Times reports on flagged revisions, which is expected to be rolled out on English Wikipedia soon for use on biographies of living people. (See the technology report for news on configuration testing.)
  • CNET reviews Wikipedia Diver, a web history tracker that creates a graphical representation of wandering through Wikipedia pages.[itn 11]
  • Lifehacker reports on the ability to download and print articles as PDFs from options in the left column of the site.[itn 12]
  • The Herald Democrat reports the vandalism on the page Sherman, Texas, United States, getting comments from a local official ("considering how outrageous and crude some of these changes are, I don't think people would take them seriously") and Wikimedia Foundation spokesperson Jay Walsh.[itn 13]

References

  1. ^ "English Wikipedia hosts three millionth article". AFP. 17 August 2009.
  2. ^ For a range of international coverage see:
  3. ^ "The 50 most-viewed Wikipedia articles in 2009 and 2008". The Telegraph. 17 August 2009.
  4. ^ Bobbie Johnson (17 August 2009). "English Wikipedia hits three million articles". The Guardian.
  5. ^ Chris Gaylord (17 August 2009). "Wikipedia blows past 3 million English articles". The Christian Science Monitor.
  6. ^ Lucian Parfeni (17 August 2009). "Wikipedia Hits 3 Million English Articles". Softpedia.
  7. ^ Steven Walling (17 August 2009). "Wikipedia Passes the 3 Million Article Mark". ReadWriteWeb.
  8. ^ "You can edit content on Wikipedia in your own language". The Hindu. 21 August 2009.
  9. ^ "Tale of another Mangalore on Wikipedia". The Hindu. 22 August 2009.
  10. ^ Noam Cohen (23 August 2009). "Complaint Over Doctor Who Posted Inkblot Test". The New York Times.
  11. ^ "Wikipedia Diver tracks your Web exploration". CNET. 21 August 2009.
  12. ^ "Generate PDFs and Multi-Article Books from Wikipedia". Lifehacker. 18 August 2009.
  13. ^ Jonathan Cannon (19 August 2009). "Inaccuracies abound on city of Sherman's Wikipedia entry". The Herald Democrat.


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Discussion Reports and Miscellaneous Articulations

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By Hiding

The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.

Television schedules

Full disclosure: Your writer has participated in this debate

The debate regarding television schedules mentioned last week has continued, expanding to encompass a deletion debate. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of United States network television schedules, opened on 13 August, was closed as no consensus on 22 August, with participants directed back to the main request for comment. During the course of this week, the discussion led User:Gavin.collins to amend the policy page to read that articles on such schedules "may be acceptable if there is verifiable evidence they are notable".

User:Masem reverted this addition as no consensus was "demonstrated on talk page before making change (also, cannot promote WP:N to policy )"

Within the debate itself, User:Abductive attempted to tally opinion. However this action proved contentious, User:Pytom noting that

I'm in support of removing per-station program guides, while keeping network-level guides. I _think_ that's the same position as, for example, DGG... but you listed us with two different positions.

Eventually User:Firsfron re-formatted the counts, hoping to better capture people's opinion. The debate continued, with fresh participants voicing disparate opinions. User:Edison felt that:

Numerous reliable abd [sic] independent sources cover the network block schedules, such as books listed above as well as 'The complete directory to prime-timenetwork [sic] tv shows 1946-present,' by Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, Ballantine Books, 1979. Additionally I have seen TV columnists in major newspapers discuss the networks scheduling choices for many seasons in the past

while User:BryanG wasn't swayed by arguments in favour of retaining such content:

I'm now convinced these standalone schedules are too much out of context to be useful, and that scheduling issues are better off discussed articles [sic] about the individual series and notable programming blocks.

As the discussion turned to arguments over the encyclopedic quality of the articles, User:DGG commented that

'encyclopedia' is a word that has multiple meanings, and it can be used for lists, including lists that include everything indiscriminately. There are works called encyclopedias, for example, listing every major available at each US college, but we would not consider this suitable for individual articles on each ... Any rule in Wikipedia can be used to give irrational results if used without common sense. Given the diversity of people here, the best guide to common sense is compromise solutions: National network schedules, for example, not those of individual stations.

Dates and numbers

At Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) User:Greg L proposed the locking down of the manual of style, with only an authorised gate-keeper allowed to amend the pages according to consensus formed through discussion on the talk pages:

Too often, editors come to MOSNUM to change things in order to lend legitimacy to their particular way of doing things in articles they’re working. However, this is often done with an insufficient understanding of the ramifications. This results in edit wars and instability on MOSNUM.

User:Laser brain was quick to point out that this approach was

counter to the Wikipedia spirit. I'd rather people exercise self-control and abide by consensus by choice than be systematically forced to.

Heard it on the grapevine?

User:Cyclopia initiated a discussion regarding the applicability of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material (WP:GRAPEVINE) "to non-article namespaces (Talk pages mostly)". User:ArnoldReinhold reasoned that

We are not an open discussion forum and we set our rules as to what is acceptable at some distance from the maximum we might be able to get away with.

Cyclopia proposed a compromise

of having a 'quarantine room' -i.e. a non-googlable talk subpage accessible only to trusted editors -and involved parties, such as people bringing the controversial statements first- to discuss the thing at will, reporting then the outcome of the discussion in the public talk page.

However, when User:Protonk pointed out that:

Discussions about how to improve articles or which sources to use or which sources to trust or what can and can't be included in an article are expressly allowed to go on in talk pages,

Cyclopia conceded that they

didn't read carefully that paragraph [and they were therefore] happy to know that the talk page policy is sensible after all.

Polling

A round up of polls spotted by your writer in the last seven days or so, bearing in mind of course that voting is evil. You can suggest a poll for inclusion, preferably including details as to how the poll will be closed and implemented, either on the tip line or by directly editing the next issue.

At the Village Pump, polling has been spotted on a proposal that would see any large-scale semi-automated or fully automated article creation task require affirmation from the community through the Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval process. Polling appears to have formed naturally during a community discussion initiated by User:Gavin.collins on 17 August, although it is unclear how or when it is to close.

A research group at University of Washington would like the opinions of Wikipedians on different images they have designed to quickly communicate the pattern of someone's various activities on Wikipedia. If you are willing to help the research group out by taking the survey, you will need to visit their site. Full details can be found at User:Commprac01.

Deletion round-up

Your writer has trawled the deletion debates opened and closed in the last week and presents these debates for your edification. Either they generated larger than average response, centred on policy in an illuminating way, or otherwise just jumped out as of interest. Feel free to suggest interesting deletion debates for future editions here.

Michael Jackson's "A Place With No Name"

The second deletion debate regarding the unreleased Michael Jackson song "A Place With No Name" was closed as "Content has been Merged" by non-admin User:Unionhawk on 20 August after a request made there by nominator User:Pokerdance. User:PokerDance made the request on the basis that the content had been merged to Michael Jackson#Posthumous releases, and that a

nominator changing their vote to something other than delete was automatic grounds for a speedy keep or close.

This prompted the article's creator User:JDelo93 to argue on Unionhawk's talk page that User:Pokerdance had

used the fact that the content was merged as an excuse to get rid of the article, however, the content was only merged because he did it himself, without reaching consensus from others involved in the debate.

Although Unionhawk initially declined the request to overturn the debate, after some minutes thought they agreed to relist the article in a third deletion debate. "A Place With No Name" has now been the subject of three deletion debates in as many weeks.

Merging during afd discussions

Taking a cue from the "A Place With No Name" deletion debates, we move on to a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion over whether a merge should be performed while an article is nominated for deletion. User:Flatscan opened the debate by noting that

WP:Guide to deletion#You may edit the article during the discussion advises against merging content from an article at AfD, suggesting that editor wait until the AfD is closed. Since Guide to deletion has low activity, I'm starting a discussion here to see if current consensus affirms this guidance."

User:NickPenguin chipped in his thoughts on the matter:

This leads me to believe that in such cases, nomination for deletion should never have occured [sic], and is indeed a waste of resources. If content is suitable for merging, I think keeping valuable content superseeds [sic] the deletion process, and would make things run smoother.

However User:Protonk thought this avenue unsuitable for the current debate:

In practice almost every fiction afd has a likely merge target (the parent work) and options other than deletion are often entertained. Whether that is right or wrong isn't really the issue.

User:Mazca offered a case-by-case solution:

Early merges should be encouraged, but only where consensus is sufficiently clear that an early closure would normally be warranted.

User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses

On 8 August User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz nominated User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses for speedy deletion as a copyright infringement, given the text was a lengthy quotation from a copyrighted work in userspace with no fair use justification. Although User:Erik9 declined the speedy, Erik9 also regarded the matter as worthy of debate at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion:

I initiated this MFD discussion, based on my judgment, as an editor uninvolved in any preceding conflicts with Jack Merridew, that this massive use of non-free text in non-encyclopedic userspace is inconsistent with both the letter and and the intent of our non-free content policy, which seeks to minimize non-free content, especially when not used for any encyclopedic purposes.

The arguments to keep revolved around the contradictions between Wikipedia policies and United States law, as well as the intentions of Wikipedia policy. User:Philosopher noted that:

[o]ur fair use/copyright policies were generally created to prevent serious textual copyright violations and to create a more-strict-than-legally-required interpretation for media. Additionally, we are generally more permissive within userspace than we are elsewhere, remembering the above restrictions.

After robust discussion, User:Harej initially closed the debate regarding User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses as delete on 15 August:

The spirit of the policy is that Wikipedia is on some mission to produce free content, and that we should infringe other people's copyrights only when it's really necessary, i.e., in articles. Considering that during the development of Wikipedia's fair use policies, images were the primary concern for copyright infringement, most of the focus was on images and fair use. This was carried over when developed as a Foundation policy. In other words, I consider the lack of mention of text-fair-use to be an oversight rather than a deliberate exclusion.

However, after discussion, archived at User talk:Harej/Archive09#Your close, Harej overturned that decision:

because I feel like it I re-opened that discussion. In fact, I am listing it for another week.

At the end of that week, on 23 August, Harej again closed the debate, this time as having reached No Consensus:

there is no consensus over whether this violates the fair use rules or if it doesn't, whether 'user space leeway' applies to infringing copyright or not.

Erik9 contested the close, opening a deletion review with the rationale that:

Per Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators, 'Consensus is not determined by counting heads, but by looking at strength of argument, and underlying policy (if any). Arguments that contradict policy, are based on opinion rather than fact, or are logically fallacious, are frequently discounted.' This MFD discussion was incorrectly closed as "no consensus", despite the fact that it was clearly established that User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses violates Wikimedia Foundation policy regarding non-free content.

Although a number of participants felt the deletion review was rehashing arguments made at the deletion debate, User:Unitanode noting that:

DRV is not AFD part 2

User:S Marshall pointed out that the debate had missed a fundamental point:

To the extent that the said material contributes to building an encyclopaedia, it could be phrased differently. In other words, the use of copyrighted text in that instance is not necessary and I do not think it is justified either. So I would like to overturn the consensus itself and delete the offending material.

The debate regarding this material continues, with User:Lar expressing the view that:

[t]he next step here is to run an RfC to ask the community to clarify policy in this area.

Articles

Categories

Files, templates, redirects and stubs

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Requests for comment

21 Requests for comment have been made in the week 18–23 August:



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Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Maunus (nom) and Jake Wartenberg (nom).

Fourteen articles were promoted to featured status this week: Big Star (band) (nom), Lisa the Vegetarian (nom), Synthetic diamond (nom), Operation Charnwood (nom), Ancient Egyptian literature (nom), To Autumn (nom), Keith Johnson (cricket administrator) (nom), Convoy GP55 (nom), James Newland (nom), John Lerew (nom), Samlesbury witches (nom), Hurricane Bob (1985) (nom), Fungus (nom) and James Nesbitt (nom).

Four lists were promoted to featured status this week: Order of battle at the Battle of San Domingo (nom), National Film Registry (nom), List of 250cc Motorcycle World Champions (nom) and List of new churches by John Douglas (nom).

One topic was promoted to featured status this week: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (nom).

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: Emperor Penguin, Harry Murray, Gangtok, Zinc, Noël Coward, Candide and Edward Wright.

Eleven articles were delisted this week: Pneumonia (nom), Voter turnout (nom), Sikhism (nom), BBC television drama (nom), Black Seminoles (nom), Whitstable (nom), Blitzkrieg (nom), Microsoft Data Access Components (nom), Triumph of the Will (nom), History of Arizona (nom) and Music of Nigeria (nom).

No lists were delisted this week.

No topics were delisted this week.

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Bird-and-flower painting, Grampians National Park, Phobos, Stereogram, Protesters in Dar es Salaam, Redeye cicada and Keble college.

No featured sounds were promoted this week.

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Twenty-four pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.



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SPV

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By Kirill Lokshin

The Arbitration Committee did not close any cases this week, and opened two new cases, leaving four cases open.

Requests for arbitration

A request for arbitration concerning administrative actions on the Bosnian Wikipedia, filed by Sephirotix, is being declined by the Committee due to a lack of jurisdiction.

Open cases

The Noloop case was opened this week. The case involves mutual allegations of disruptive conduct by several parties, and is expected to address the conduct of all the editors involved. A draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Carcharoth, is expected by 6 September.

The Lapsed Pacifist 2 case was also opened this week. The filing editor, Steve Crossin, alleges that Lapsed Pacifist has engaged in advocacy, original research, and edit warring, as well as various other improprieties, over a wide range of articles. Lapsed Pacifist has so far refused to enter a statement or respond to the allegations.

Shortly after the opening of the case, the Committee enacted a temporary injunction which prohibits Lapsed Pacifist from editing articles related to the Corrib gas project for the duration of the case. Evidence and workshop proposals have been submitted by a number of editors, but no arbitrators have commented on the material at this time. A draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Wizardman, is expected by 1 September.

The 194x144x90x118 case has entered its second week of deliberations. The filing editor, Erik9, alleges that 194x144x90x118 has engaged in a variety of disruptive conduct, despite an RFC on the matter. 194x144x90x118 has so far refused to respond to the allegations. Evidence has been presented by several editors, but no substantial drafting of proposals has taken place. A draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Wizardman, is expected by 24 August.

The Abd-William M. Connolley case has entered its sixth week of deliberations and its first week of formal voting. The case was filed by Abd, who alleged that William M. Connolley had improperly banned him from the cold fusion article; William M. Connolley denied these allegations, and stated that Abd's conduct had been inappropriate.

The proposed decision, prepared by arbitrator Stephen Bain, would place the cold fusion article under discretionary sanctions, remove William M. Connolley's administrator status, place Abd under mentorship, and issue several admonishments and reminders. An alternative proposal, presented by arbitrator FloNight, would only remove William M. Connolley's administrator status for three months, but impose several restrictions on his use of administrative tools following their restoration. Voting on most remedy proposals is split, with only the imposition of discretionary sanctions and two of the proposed admonishments passing at this time.

Clarifications, amendments, and motions

The Committee has enacted a motion in response to Greg L's request to amend the Date delinking decision. The motion reduces the various editing restrictions related to style and editing guidelines imposed by the decision to apply only to topics specifically related to the linking or delinking of dates.

Arbitrator Risker has proposed a motion to rescind the six-month ban levied against Locke Cole as part of the Date delinking decision; the motion provides for a reinstatement of the ban should Locke Cole be blocked for edit-warring.

A request filed by Olaf Stephanos that the six-month topic ban imposed on him by the Falun Gong decision be rescinded has received a negative response from the Committee, with six arbitrators stating that no change to the sanction is necessary.

The Committee has rejected as frivolous a fifth clarification request concerning the Ryulong decision filed by Mythdon.

The motion proposed by arbitrator Carcharoth in response to a request for clarification regarding the Obama articles decision filed by Wikidemon remains open for voting. The motion would extend ChildofMidnight's topic ban to include related discussions in all namespaces. The motion currently stands at five arbitrators supporting and one recused, with seven votes necessary for adoption.

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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250 and Sage Ross

In a pre-Wikimania technology blog update Brion Vibber relayed a number of technologies news items, the most significant of which include test wikis for Flagged Revisions and Reader Feedback and the release of a Wikipedia iPhone app. He also lays out an ambitious list of projects to work on during the Wikimania Codeathon this week.

Test configurations for Reader Feedback and Flagged Revisions

Two wikis are being populated with featured articles in order to test configurations of the Flagged Revisions and Reader Feedback extensions, in preparation for enabling the extensions on English Wikipedia:

A number of other Wikimedia projects already use Flagged Revisions, including the German and Polish Wikipedias and English Wikinews and Wikibooks. Reader Feedback is being used to generate quantitative feedback on individual proposals on the Strategic Planning wiki.

Wikipedia iPhone app

The first version of the official Wikipedia iPhone app was released this week. Although the app currently does little more than the mobile version of the site itself, it is open source and is expected to become more powerful in future versions.

Image Annotator enabled on Commons

The Image Annotator Javascript extension was enabled on Wikimedia Commons this week, allowing users to append notes to arbitrary regular regions within an image (examples: 1, 2). Lupo developed the extension.

Bots approved

Three bots were approved this week:

Critically, a BRFA for date-delinking was opened this week, in line with ArbCom's guidelines.

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