Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-09-07/News and notes

News and notes

Commons hits 5 million files, vandalism study, and more

Wikimedia Commons reaches 5 million files

Wikipedia Commons reached five million files on 2 September with the upload of File:Kjøbenhavnsposten 28 nov 1838 side 1.jpg. The file, uploaded by Danish Wikipedian Saddhiyama, is a scan of the front page of the first issue of the newspaper Kjøbenhavnsposten, from 28 November 1838. In response to the milestone, articles on the newspaper were created in the English and French Wikipedias; Saddhiyama had created an article in Danish the day before. The new image annotation function has also been used extensively on the image to provide translations of much of the Danish text in the image, which features an article about democracy.

The UK Wikimedia chapter has issued a press release about the Commons milestone.

Study estimates 0.4% of articles, 1.3% of views have vandalism

Robert Rohde (User:Dragons flight) has created a new analysis of vandalism on English Wikipedia by analyzing reversions in article histories from a mid-June database dump. Rohde's initial results, tabulated at Wikipedia:Vandalism statistics and described in more detail in a mailing list post, indicate that over the first half of 2009 about 0.2% of all mainspace page (including redirects) were in a vandalized state at any given time, or about 0.4% of all articles (assuming that redirects are rarely vandalized).

In a followup analysis Rohde used the article traffic statistics tool to weight vandalism according to page traffic, estimating that 1.3% of page views in recent months contained vandalized content.

Library of Congress updates record based on Wikimedian restoration work

The Library of Congress record for an 1891 photograph of the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Massacre has been updated based on a discovery User:Durova made while restoring the image: the pile of blankets in the foreground covers four dead bodies (see previous Signpost coverage). Durova also reports that the image is part of an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, with the details she uncovered included in the official program (see item 76).

Briefly

Australian Wikipedian Glen Dillon died in a car crash, along with his two children. Wikipedians have been expressing condolences to Dillon's family on his user talk page.
Winners have been announced for the Netherlands Wiki Loves Art contest.
Erik Zachte reports that he has updated the Wikistats portal, which includes some new features, including a collection of visualizations.
The Wikipedia Mobile site is running a survey to get feedback on what should be improved.
There are now over 1500 featured lists.