Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-09-28/SPV
 |
|---|
|
| ||
| Volume 5, Issue 39 | 28 September 2009 | About the Signpost |
|
| ||
| (← Prev) | 2009 archives | (Next →) |
|
| ||
|
| |
| Home | Archives | Newsroom | Tip Line | Shortcut : WP:POST/A |
|
| |
White Barbarian
I'm ten. Every week for French class we are required to select a book from the class library. I already can't stand the classics, so I reach for a gamebook. The searing glare from my teacher confirms that just because I'm allowed to take the book does not mean I can. I take it anyway.
I'm twelve. The RPG moral panic has reached France. We are expected to spend our weekends constructively, with wholesome activities appropriate for our pre-teen stage of development, not being autistically locked in fantasies. I'm starting a Stormbringer campaign with friends.
I'm fourteen. A colleague of my father spots me as I'm idly tapping keys on a demo synthesizer at the local department store. He takes his time to explain how this is worthless; such instruments warrant nothing but contempt and true music requires no amplifiers. I suddenly develop an interest for electronic music.
I'm fifteen. My French teacher would like to see us write reading reports. All subjects and genres are allowed but science fiction is specifically and categorically not. Good timing: I just happen to have a copy of Foundation on the corner of my desk.
I'm sixteen. My physics teacher makes a big fuss out of not teaching us how to use a calculator. He sums it up in a big rant mixing the decadent loss of mental arithmetic, innumerate youth and how physics ought to stand on its own without numbers anyway. He is completely helpless at forcing the sliderule on us and watches, disillusioned, as we punch out 100% accurate results. I can't bother to care and program an artillery game on my Casio.
I'm seventeen. I'm chatting with a few classmates when the teacher suddenly sneers with that condescending grin signaling the knowledge of Good from Evil: "So, talking about video games again?"
I'm twenty, and I committed the mistake of studying something not evidently connected to my actual interests. In this graduate school, the most popular club is the music club, overrun with Nirvana wannabes busy attempting to play Smells Like Teen Spirit on the axe. Annoyed by this seriousness, I spend my time listening to stuff that's anything but serious. I quickly discover that even amongst subcultures people keenly understand the difference between Good and Evil.
I'm twenty-two. The Japanese are little ants working tirelessly to destroy the Occident with sex and violence. I monopolise my friend's Laserdisc readers and actively accelerate my country's descent into ruin by exposing myself to Japanese animation.
I'm twenty-three. An aforementioned friend notices an Autechre CD of mine and can hardly hide his lack of respect for these mind-numbing rhythms that hardly warrant the term "music". I omit mentioning my love of youthful Japanese female singers in an attempt not to compromise our friendship.
I'm twenty-eight. I discover on Wikipedia that tons of people share my unusual knowledge. Some try to convince me that the method is flawed and you can't treat all topics as equal. By nature incapable of listening to such arguments, I ignore the bores. So does everybody else, anyway. The bores get annoyed at this fact and proceed to announce they are Right and everybody else is Wrong. I'm not sure I get that logic.
I am a barbarian. A well-educated barbarian, mind you, who has read and listened to all the right things, but a barbarian nonetheless. Left to my own devices I will always develop completely nonstandard interests, and experience taught me that, no matter what, people expect me to acknowledge what I like to be intrinsically inferior. Thanks to Wikipedia, I know that the world is full of people like me. I can't tell you about the rest of the universe, but to those here that expect me to give way again, I say this: go take a stroll in another encyclopedia.
Wikipedia's Rome wasn't invaded by barbarians. It was built by them. Oftentimes I go for a walk on the city's Forum and hear an orator trying to rally the crowd to his cause and explaining that the barbarians are at the city's doors. I'm still laughing.
Reader comments
LocalisationUpdate has gone live
The English Wikipedia is fortunate in that all the MediaWiki software is written in English. The other 259+ Wikipedias have to have their user interface translated in order to understand what the software asks from their readers and editors. This localisation effort is largely done at translatewiki.net. Practically every day the translatewiki.net staff commit the localisations of the software to SVN and these localisations became available when the MediaWiki software was updated. Such updates are not scheduled, but there were months when translators had to wait before seeing the benefit of their labour.
After several false starts, Brion has activated the LocalisationUpdate extension on the Wikimedia projects. This extension will reduce the time people have to wait considerably. It is unlikely that it will exceed three days. As a consequence it is now much more attractive to localise messages.
One of the beneficiaries of the new software is the Usability Initiative. The "Beta feedback" indicated that many people on the "other" Wikipedias tried the software but reverted back to the standard interface. Research showed that this was mainly due to a lack of localisation. When the delivery of messages is happening on a daily basis, it becomes much easier to learn if the problems are due to problems with the software or problems with the localisation.
Statistics indicate a relation between the quality of the localisation and the number of articles. When it is easier and more effective to localise the MediaWiki software at translatewiki.net, we expect that the quality and quantity of the localisations will improve. This in turn will stimulate our readers to become editors and with improved usability because of localisation and functionality we expect an effect on articles in all our projects.
Reader comments
Sue Gardner answers questions from community
_FULL.jpg)
On Friday, 25 September, Wikimedia Foundation director Sue Gardner hosted an office hours discussion on IRC. The staff office hours follow on the success of the strategy planning office hours, with the goal of having staff office hours on a regular basis. Also present were Cary Bass, who helped moderate the IRC session, along with strategy planning staff Eugene Eric Kim and Philippe Beaudette, chief developer Brion Vibber, and deputy director Erik Möller.
Strategy initiative, growth of projects, and chapters
Gardner answered questions about the strategy planning process and the call for participation, which is drawing a large number of applications from both Wikipedia editors and non-editors. She says it is a challenge to bring in new voices ("e.g., those who don't know wiki syntax"), and to make things "comfortable and workable for existing wiki users" while also "making it inviting for new people who have expertise and perspectives we need."
On the importance of growing traffic in Wikimedia's smallest projects, Gardner is interested in focusing effort on "the projects that have the greatest potential", which she defines as those such as Hindi, Chinese, and Arabic language projects that have "very large available readership (speakers of the language, internet-connected, literate) and where we are currently performing poorly." She recognizes that it's "easier said than done", but it's very important and something that "people will wrestle with during the strategy project".
Gardner also talked about chapters during the discussion, and suggested it might be helpful if the Foundation tried to actively stimulate chapters development in countries where there are no chapters. She would like there to be "hundreds of chapters everywhere around the world. I wish they would develop faster. I would be happy to try to support that."
Departure of Jennifer Riggs, grant funding, and involving volunteers
On the recent departure of Jennifer Riggs, Gardner does not think that will have any effect on fundraising, including both general donations and grant funding. The Foundation has not had difficulty pursuing funding from other foundations (e.g. Ford Foundation), but the challenge and limiting factor lies with the Wikimedia Foundation, which with its small staff, has only so much internal capacity to execute grant projects. Gardner is also interested in having the Foundation experiment with new ways of executing grants, including finding ways "of empowering community members to execute" projects.
Regarding involving volunteers in grant projects, Gardner outlined several ways the Foundation is working on this. The Foundation can write letters of support for people applying for research grants. When the Foundation itself gets grants, it seeks to involve volunteers in the execution of the grants, as has happened with the Wikimedia Usability Initiative. With the Mozilla grant for US$100,000, funding was channeled to volunteer developers to work on Theora support. There also is the chapters grantmaking process that resulted in 21 grants to chapters. And, Gardner is beginning to investigate and talk to foundations (external funding organizations) about the possibility of "creating pools of money that could be dispensed to volunteers through a volunteer-driven process ... but it's tricky and it will take time for foundations to really think it through, but it is something we are talking about."
When asked about the ideal method of encouraging volunteer participation, Gardner mentioned the WikiPods effort that Frank Schulenburg is helping to organize, which are designed to involve local teams dedicated to advocacy, promotion, and enrichment of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. Gardner also expressed concern about having the Wikimedia Foundation invite new people into the projects, and have the community then be unwelcoming of the new contributors.
Notes
- The next IRC office hours session, featuring Rand Montoya, the Head of Community Giving, will take place on Thursday, October 1 at 16:00 UTC in the #wikimedia-office channel.
- IRC log – 25 September with Sue Gardner
Reader comments
Vibber resigns, Staff office hours, Flagged Revs, new research and more
Brion Vibber resigns
On Monday, Brion Vibber announced that he was stepping down from his longtime position as the Wikimedia Foundation's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to join StatusNet, an open-source microblogging platform which most notably runs Identi.ca.
The announcement was made in a post on the Wikimedia Techblog and in a post by Evan Prodromou, the founder of StatusNet. According to the Techblog announcement, Vibber has no intention of leaving the MediaWiki development community, and will continue to work one day a week in the Wikimedia office until the end of the year.
Wikimedia continues its search for a new CTO, the position which Vibber held since being hired full-time four years ago, and which he had previously announced he intended to resign. In the meantime, WMF deputy director Erik Möller will be the point of contact for technical management issues.
Vibber has been a part of Wikimedia from the beginning, and has been a crucial part of Wikipedia's and MediaWiki's history. He became the lead developer for MediaWiki circa 2002, and has subsequently managed and scaled the software and Wikipedia's technical operations as the site has grown. He was the first full-time employee hired by the Foundation.
In 2004, Jimmy Wales named 1 June "Brion Vibber Day".
Office hours with Sue Gardner
On Friday, 25 September, Wikimedia Foundation director Sue Gardner hosted an office hours discussion on IRC. Gardner reflected on the Wikimedia strategy planning process, thus far. She also expressed views on the Foundation's priorities for supporting growth of projects, and responded to questions about the recent departure of Chief Program Officer Jennifer Riggs. Gardner also discussed in length about grant funding and involving volunteers in grant projects.
Following on the success of the strategy planning office hours, the Foundation aims to host IRC office hours on a regular basis. The next office hours, scheduled for Thursday, 1 October, will feature Rand Montoya, the Foundation's Head of Community Giving. Log.
Update on Flagged Revisions
In the office hours chat on 25 September, chief developer Brion Vibber gave an update on the status of Flagged Revs for English Wikipedia:
"We've got the previously specced test config running now on http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/ for people to poke at," and we might see it live "in the next few weeks. I'd also like us to get ready to roll out the ability to apply FlaggedRevs on a page-by-page basis on en.wikipedia (e.g. as an alternative to semi-protection)... this is dependent on it actually working of course. We've also been waiting for a long time on someone to pull together a clear post-mortem of FlaggedRevs' affect on de.wikipedia community, which I'm not sure we've seen yet. Would be nice to see... Anyway we're wrapping up a bunch of other updates now which will free us up to pay more attention to the FlaggedRevs config."
Around 00:00 UTC 28 September, Brion Vibber turned on flagged protection on the test site.
Changes in editor population?
An overview of new research into Wikipedian Demographics was posted by Ed Chi, of the PARC Augmented Social Cognition group (see previous story).
New editing tool
Aaron Halfaker of Grouplens Research at the University of Minnesota has posted about their newly-released tool HAPPI, which highlights syntax based on the history of the article. The tool modifies the editing pane user interface if you have the tool installed. According to the project page, "HAPPI highlights words while you edit them to show you how those words have persisted through the revision history of an article." The tool's javascript can be acquired from the project page.
Briefly
- A student from Helsinki has created "WikipediaVision", a live visualization of anonymous edits to Wikipedia by location. The site combines Wikipedia's Recent Changes feed with Google Maps.
- The Wikimedia Board of Trustees has approved Wikimedia Macedonia and Wikimedia Finland as new chapters.
- The WMF Chief Technical Officer job has been posted (see previous story)
- Sue Gardner has posted the Foundation's Report to the Board for July 2009.
- The IRC group contacts three-month report has been posted.
- Wikizine #118 has been posted.
Milestones
- The Navajo Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
- The Malay Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
- The Catalan Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles with Solsona's Carnaval article.
This week in history
- 2005: Wikimedia hires a second full-time employee
- 2006: Erik Moller is elected to the Board of Trustees
- 2007: the Siberian Wikipedia is closed.
Reader comments
Stunting of growth, Polanski protected and more
Wikipedia's growth stunted, Time reports
A story published this week in Time entitled "Is Wikipedia a Victim of its Own Success" profiles the work of Ed Chi (see story this issue; previous in the news report) and the slowing growth of the English Wikipedia. The report offers "a benign explanation for Wikipedia's slackening pace: the site has simply hit the natural limit of knowledge expansion." Describing the majority of the work left to do completing the encyclopedia as "esoteric", Time asserts the reason for Wikipedia attracting 'fewer participants [is] because the only editing jobs left are "janitorial"'. Chi is quoted as arguing that the growing number of rules and the need to understand these to make edits stick is discouraging to new editors: "People begin to wonder, 'Why should I contribute anymore?'" The report concludes:
Wikipedia's troubles suggest the limits of Web 2.0—that when an idealized community gets too big, it starts becoming dysfunctional. Just like every other human organization.
Several other news outlets picked up the story, including NPR's "Talk of the Nation".
The Telegraph reports on the page protection of Roman Polanski article
In the Daily Telegraph's "Roman Polanski's Wikipedia page frozen after 'edit war' over child sex charges", the newspaper covers the recent protection of the article after an edit war. Opening the story by noting that Wikipedia "styles itself as the encyclopedia anyone can edit", the report explained why the article had been protected: 'an "edit war" broke out between contributors after news of the director's detention in Switzerland emerged on Sunday morning.' The report also made a brief mention of other events on Wikipedia this year, namely the banning of members of the Church of Scientology "from editing articles about their church".
The report contacted the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, erroneously describing the independent organization as being part of the body which oversees Wikipedia. The chairman of the UK chapter, Mike Peel, outlined the way Flagged Revisions will help in such cases once it is enabled:
Flagged protection would let people continue to edit this article, but their changes would not be made visible to all until they had been checked by another editor.
For more details on Flagged Revisions, see the Signpost article from the 31 August issue.
Briefly
- Radio Sweden reports "Wikipedia Falsified from Parliament Computers". The story discusses a Swedish television channel TV8 report which focussed on the origin of edits to Wikipedia. Tracking the IP addresses, the programme concluded that "55 edits" had been made "by either members of parliament or their staff ... during working hours".
- In Saturday's edition of The Guardian, an interview with Peter Reid saw the former Sunderland and Manchester City manager describe a claim in his article as "bollocks", clarifying that contrary to the article (statement since removed) he never registered to become a football agent during his time out of work.
- MSNBC offers up its "15 biggest Wikipedia blunders"
Reader comments
Discussion Reports and Miscellaneous Articulations
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.
Revise that deletion!
A discussion has been initiated by user:fl regarding Wikipedia:Revision deletion. Revision deletion is described in the proposal as "a software feature that allows individual entries in a page history or log to be removed from public view. RevisionDelete can hide the text of a revision, the username that made the edit or action, or the edit or log summary." fl believes such a process is needed in part because:
of some limitations built into MediaWiki, pages with more than 5000 revisions cannot be deleted by administrators. Because full page deletion is required to hide one revision, pages with many revisions cannot have their revisions hidden by administrators with the delete/undelete method. The Catch-22 here is that the pages with the most revisions are the pages most likely to require revision deletion, and currently administrators cannot hide revisions on the biggest pages. Pages such as Jesus, World War II and Barack Obama cannot have their revisions deleted.
User:MZMcBride disagreed with the proposal, stating that it was:
fundamentally a bad idea to allow admins to delete revisions like this. I think the current user rights surrounding data suppression should be granularized (bug 19199), giving admins the ability to see deleted content, but not delete it. While it's certainly true that admins can currently use hacks to "selectively delete" revisions from a page history, that is not an excuse to encourage the behavior. Admins cannot be trusted with this ability, period.
However other editors on Wikipedia were more supportive, with User:David Gerard unequivocally desiring its implementation: "May I just say, as an admin who's had to do the delete-all/restore-all-but-one dance to remove a single problematic revision from public view that's nevertheless not oversightable ... HELL YES. PLEASE." User:Stifle felt that implementing the proposal shouldn't be an issue given that administrators "can already do it, just awkwardly, so this isn't giving admins any new powers (except on articles that are too big to delete, I suppose)."
Just what is so popular about culture anyhow?
At the village pump, User:Mfield asked for thoughts on whether 'every "in popular culture" listing [should] require a mention in a secondary source to establish the notability of the reference to the subject'.User:MBelgrano argued against the idea, noting that "Notability is not about the content of articles, only about topics deserving or not a specific article for them. If Barry White or Buzz Aldrin appear in a Simpsons episode, that can be verified even if no secondary source mentions the whole thing." However this point was contested by User:DreamGuy: "If every article included everything with any possible connection to that topic that could be verified we'd have nothing but long lists of indiscriminate information, which is explicitly prohibited by WP:NOT." User:Delicious carbuncle seemed to believe the ship had sailed on this issue a long time ago, saying "Wikipedia is what it is and no matter how annoying you -- and I -- find the needless insertion of pop culture trivia, it really is part of the project and I suspect that any attempt to exclude it will fail miserably". User:Postdlf threw an example into the mix:
Nothing I've seen so far can top this as a contender for most useless pop culture reference ever added to an article.
Postdlf went on to say "the problem is with how Wikipedia covers pop culture topics, not with the mere fact that Wikipedia covers pop culture. Articles that merely regurgitate bits of pop culture and list it without any synthesis, without any reference to how secondary sources have addressed it, are not about it in any meaningful way and fail to cohere as articles". User:Martynas Patasius offered the suggestion that the policy on giving undue weight would likely "apply in this case".
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.
- There appears to be an outbreak of polling on a proposal to extend scope of WP:RfD to incorporate disambiguation pages & remove dab pages from the purview of WP:PROD at the village pump. Whether polling is actually occurring or the formatting of discussion is simply giving your writer a false impression is unclear at this point.
- Although User:Mjroots is looking for a consensus on a proposal that {{PROD}} and {{AfD}} are "not placed on an article within 48 hours of the creation of the article", most respondents look to have organised themselves into a poll.
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.
Bullshido.net has been nominated for deletion just over one-and-a-half hours after the second debate regarding the article had been closed as no consensus. User:Black Kite closed the second debate as a simple "No Consensus", although after a request from User:Cunard the closing rationale was tweaked to add "however, following a request, I have no problem with a re-nomination here, as I was very close to deleting this for lack of reliable sources." Although User:Theserialcomma sought a procedural close, stating "you can't renominate an AFD one day after the previous one is closed because you didn't like the results", User:S Marshall pointed out that "Black Kite's closing statement ... makes it clear that this AfD is an exception to the normal rule because Cunard has explicit permission to renominate at once". Debate centres on the amount of coverage the site has received in reliable sources. Cunard provided an analysis of the sourcing in the article and believes that "the passing mentions from reliable sources do not provide enough context to justify a stub." However User:Hobit believes in this instance that Wikipedia:Ignore all rules may apply, given that since "the mainstream media cites the site as the main source ... [t]he site is clearly notable in the normal sense of the word."
Articles
- Is the Exploding tree article a hoax, original research or notable topic?
- The article Communist genocide has been re-nominated for deletion as the nominator, User:Simonm223 believes there has been "no improvement in article since [the] closure of [the] last AfD". During the debate the article has been moved to Mass killings under Communist regimes
- The deletion debate regarding Exploding animal was closed by User:ThaddeusB as speedy keep for being "a disruptive nomination"
- The article on Clea Rose is nominated for a fifth time since its creation in September of 2005. User:Jennavecia believes it does not meet standards for coverage of news events
- Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry Benjamin's Syndrome saw the relevant article deleted and redirected to Transsexualism#Alternative terminology after a robust debate. The article was nominated for lacking notability, and most participants agreed, with neurobiologist User:Basket of Puppies finding "nothing on pubmed which describes a specific condition by this name"
- The Shona Holmes article is facing its third deletion debate. The debate is based upon the applicability of our policy on being notable for one event
- Similarly, the article on Miriam Sakewitz is listed for deletion over concerns that it too may not meet policy on living people. Debate currently stands at 159 kilobytes, with 98 editors making 358 edits between them.[1]
- The article on Joachim Cronman has been relisted for deletion following a deletion review. The debate is split over whether the deeds of the subject are eminent enough to qualify for notability. The verifiability of the information has not been questioned in this debate
- The deletion debate regarding Singles Collection (Britney Spears album) remains open despite twenty-four people expressing it should be kept against three voicing a deleting opinion
Other
- Is {{Subdivisions of Malaysia}} redundant to {{Infobox settlement}}? See debate
- Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Jack Merridew/Blood and Roses (second nomination) sees the contentious issue of whether copyrighted text can be quoted in user space under a fair use rationale debated again. (See Signpost 2009-08-24 and Signpost 2009-09-14)
- User:Good Olfactory has listed a number of categories for renaming. The categories are in the form Scots of fooian descent. Good Olfactory proposes "changing "Scots" to "Scottish people" in order to standardize"
- Is Category:Anti-gay propaganda violating the neutral point of view policy and the policy against original research?
- Category:Batman characters was previously deleted in June 2007. Has consensus changed, or should it be deleted based on that previous debate?
- Does Category:Half-blind people cause issues when categorising biographies of living people?
- Should Category:Constituent countries of the United Kingdom be renamed to Category:Countries of the United Kingdom?
Briefly
- The notability guidelines for aviation accidents and incidents, WP:AIRCRASH, have been significantly reworked over the past few months. Comments are requested on the talk page
- A lengthy discussion to resolve a dispute regarding a March 2009 merger of Leeds and City of Leeds has reached a consensus to undo the merge. The discussion which led to the merge may have been tainted by possible meat-puppetry. Posts were made to an outside forum encouraging people to edit that article in a proscribed way. Work has begun on the splitting of the articles
- Discussion over whether to allow a bot to perform some speedy deletions is initiated at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#possible botting of speedy deletes
Requests for comment
Thirty-one Requests for comment have been made in the week of 21–27 September:
- Talk:Carly Fiorina 27 September 2009
- Talk:Donald Friend 27 September 2009
- Talk:Persian Empire 27 September 2009
- Wikipedia talk:Local Embassy 27 September 2009
- Wikipedia talk:Revision deletion 26 September 2009
- Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pokémon 26 September 2009
- Talk:William Shakespeare 26 September 2009
- Talk:Parents Television Council 26 September 2009
- Talk:Awesome Android 25 September 2009
- Talk:Augustine of Hippo 24 September 2009
- Talk:Kevin Coughlin 24 September 2009
- Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics 24 September 2009
- Talk:Galveston Bay Area 24 September 2009
- Talk:Romulus and Remus 24 September 2009
- Talk:Yue Chinese 24 September 2009
- Talk:New religious movement 24 September 2009
- Talk:Squash 24 September 2009
- Talk:Eating utensil etiquette 24 September 2009
- Talk:National Caucus of Labor Committees 23 September 2009
- Talk:Gibbs paradox 23 September 2009
- Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names) 23 September 2009
- Talk:Lewinsky scandal 23 September 2009
- Talk:Nudity 22 September 2009
- Talk:Acupuncture 22 September 2009
- Talk:Greg Fitzsimmons 22 September 2009
- Talk:George W. Bush 21 September 2009
- Talk:Big Three (automobile manufacturers) 21 September 2009
- Talk:List of countries by GDP (nominal) 21 September 2009
- Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Megistias 21 September 2009
Reader comments
WikiProject National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places WikiProject was founded in October 2006 by Ebyabe in order to improve articles corresponding to listings on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. In the three years since then, the project has been quite successful, writing 36 featured articles and 86 good articles out of a total pool of more than 24,000 articles.
Today, we've asked two members of the project (Ebyabe and Elkman) to answer a few questions about their experiences there:
1. Why do you participate in the NRHP WikiProject?
- Elkman: Properties on the National Register of Historic Places are there because they're a distinctive physical record of history, either at a local or a national level. It's one thing to read the history of the rise of the flour milling industry in Minneapolis, or to read a little bit about railroad tycoon James J. Hill, but visiting the Washburn A Mill (now the Mill City Museum) gives you something palpable that you can visit. Visiting the James J. Hill House brings to life just how rich James J. Hill was, and how he could afford practically anything for his home.
- Yet there are historic places that aren't museums and aren't obvious tourist destinations. Most of the people who drive past the Peavey-Haglin Experimental Concrete Grain Elevator in St. Louis Park, Minnesota just see a big tower with a sign on the side saying, "Nordic Ware: America's Finest Kitchen Ware." They don't know that it was the first reinforced concrete cylindrical grain elevator in the United States. I think just about every property on the National Register has an interesting story that can be told about it. (I'm also happy to note that there's finally a sign along a local bike trail that tells the story of the Peavey-Haglin Experimental Concrete Grain Elevator.)
2. How did the idea of a project based on the National Register of Historic Places come about?
- Elkman: WikiProject National Register of Historic Places came together in October 2006 as an offshoot of Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected areas. Ebyabe had been creating a lot of articles on National Register properties in Florida, and it became apparent that classifying NRHP properties as protected areas was incorrect. MONGO proposed the idea to Ebyabe. Meanwhile, after I had worked with MONGO to get Glacier National Park (U.S.) to Featured Article status, and after I had created several stub articles on buildings and structures in the park, the properties on the National Register piqued my interest. The project took off fairly quickly since there was a core group of editors interested in historic places.
- Ebyabe: Elkman explained this very well. If it helps, I found the conversation that actually led me to starting the thing. It's here.
3. What aspects of the project do you consider to be particularly successful? Has the project developed any unusual innovations, or uniquely adopted any common approaches?
- Elkman: I made life easier for myself (and many other people) by downloading a copy of the National Register database and writing some PHP scripts to query it. The National Register query tools on the nps.gov site are inconvenient to use, and there were already other sites that were downloading the National Register database and presenting the data. I wrote some query tools that would list the properties in a county or a city, and then another script that would put together the infobox that appears at the beginning of NRHP articles. That makes life easier, although in my opinion, you can't have an article that's just a mechanically-generated infobox. There should be some prose that explains why the property is listed and that tells the story.
- Ebyabe: All of them? No, seriously, I think we've done well on all fronts. We have over 100 members, and keep adding more. We get a good amount of DYKs. We've massively cleaned up the state/region lists of NRHPs and NHLs. Over 99% of project related articles are assessed. Our interaction with other projects, and even official external bodies (governmental, for example). Overall, it's people contributing in their areas of interest relating to the project, organizing and creating. Elkman's too modest, btw. His contributions have enabled project members to create articles, and especially lists, so much more easily.
4. What experiences have you had with the WikiProjects whose scopes overlap with yours? Are they useful collaborators, or do you feel that they have little to offer you? Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects? In particular, how closely do you collaborate with the various other projects covering places in the United States?
- Elkman: We collaborated with Wikipedia:WikiProject Architecture to create and/or substantially expand a list of buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright. And, as I mentioned earlier, the NRHP project began as an offshoot of Wikipedia:WikiProject Protected Areas because there was some confusion between what was regarded as a protected area and what was simply listed on the National Register without being truly protected. Otherwise, I don't think we've done any major collaborations with other projects. Naturally, a lot of our articles overlap with other projects that deal with certain structures, like Wikipedia:WikiProject Bridges, Wikipedia:WikiProject Lighthouses, Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains, and others, as well as the state projects. Our interaction with those projects has been mostly positive, since it's easy to go over to the other projects and ask questions and get information to fill in the articles.
- Ebyabe: I think overall we've worked pretty well with the other WikiProjects. As Elkman said, our project by it's very nature overlaps with lots of others. I know we've gotten members due to work we've done on articles where such overlap occurs. That's one of the things I really like about our project. I think it's a lot of what Wikipedia's all about; collaborating with others. I don't know how closely we work with other projects, though, per se. It's more casual, which I like. I think it's really neat that there are even offshoots on the German and French wikis. I know we did something so our infobox can be integrated into that of other projects, or vice versa, but I don't remember the details.
5. What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles it shepherds, developing over the next year? The next five years?
- Ebyabe: Have an article for every listing on the NRHP, and a good picture on WikiCommons to go with it. Mind you, considering there's around 20,000 done on Wikipedia, and over 80,000 listings on the Register itself (with more added every week), that's gonna take a while. :) Having them all be good articles would be nice too. But again, that'll be a while, since over 60% of the current ones are stubs. That rather defines what we'll be doing for many years to come. There will be initiatives to organize and cleanup articles and lists and such, but basically, de-redlinking everything is what it comes down to.
6. Is the idea of a project oriented around a register of historic landmarks worthwhile? Do you think it could be successfully applied to other countries?
- Ebyabe: Well, the federal government thought it was a good idea to create the National Register of Historic Places program in 1966, and it's still going strong. So a project relating to that seems like a good idea to me. I mentioned earlier that there are contributors on the German and French wikis doing articles about NRHP sites. There's also Wikipedia:WikiProject World Heritage Sites. So I think it's already being applied outside the US.
Reader comments
Approved this week
Administrators
Four editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: The ed17 (nom), Bob the Wikipedian (nom), OlEnglish (nom) and Mjroots (nom).
Featured pages
Fourteen articles were promoted to featured status this week: Cartman Gets an Anal Probe (nom), Leopold Report (nom), The Dark Side of the Moon (nom), Henry Wells (general) (nom), Crown Fountain (nom), Alice Ayres (nom), Hermann Detzner (nom), SMS Hindenburg (nom), ToeJam & Earl (nom), Buildings of Jesus College, Oxford (nom), Badnjak (nom), Sam Loxton with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948 (nom), Adelaide Anne Procter (nom) and Ghosts I–IV (nom).
Seven lists were promoted to featured status this week: Lang Lang discography (nom), List of counties in New Jersey (nom), Lily Allen discography (nom), Grade I listed buildings in Bath and North East Somerset (nom), League Championship Series Most Valuable Player Award (nom), Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award (nom) and Atlantic Coast Conference Men's Basketball Player of the Year (nom).
One topic was promoted to featured status this week: Virginia Tech Hokies bowl games (nom).
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: Cyclone Orson, Ross Sea party, Italian War of 1542–1546, The World Ends with You, Boy Scouts of America membership controversies, Yukon Quest and Imagination.
Former featured pages
Two articles were delisted this week: The KLF (nom) and Parapsychology (nom).
One list was delisted this week: List of micronations (nom).
No topics were delisted this week.
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Magpie flower, Snell's law, Knight, Hoddle Grid, Calediona, New York, Charon from the Divine Comedy and Gabions.
Twelve featured sounds were promoted this week:
|
| Pietro Frosini - New York Blues | (nom) |
| [[:File:|Qaumi Tarana Instrumental]] | (nom) |
|
| Vittorio Monti – Csárdás | (nom) |
Giuseppe Cambini - Trois Quintetti Concertans
No. 1 in Bb major
|
| I. Allegro maestoso |
|
| II. Larghetto cantabile |
|
| III. Rondo Allegretto grazioso |
No. 2 in D minor
|
| I. Allegro espressivo |
|
| II. Larghetto sostenuto ma con moto |
|
| III. Presto ma non tanto |
No. 3 in F major
|
| I. Allegro maestoso |
|
| II. Larghetto sostenuto |
|
| III. Rondo Allegro con brio |
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Nine pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
View from Mount Ellinor
.jpg){kind=link}
Reader comments
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee did not open or close any cases this week, leaving five cases open.
Requests for arbitration
An arbitration request concerning the conduct of numerous editors was filed by Ottava Rima, who alleges that the editors in question have engaged in some manner of disruptive conspiracy. The request appears to have been precipitated by a set of editing restrictions that were imposed on Ottava Rima by administrator Jehochman. The Committee has not yet determined whether the case will be heard.
An arbitration request concerning the "Chan Tai San" article, filed by Xavierq, is being rejected as premature.
An arbitration request concerning the "Harry Benjamin's Syndrome" article, filed by CharlotteGoiar, is being rejected as a content dispute.
Open cases
The Eastern European mailing list case has entered its second week of deliberations. The case concerns a set of leaked mailing list archives which are alleged to show an extensive history of conspiracy among numerous editors of Eastern European topics. As part of its ongoing investigation, the Committee has temporarily removed Piotrus' administrator status, and is considering placing restrictions on various other editors for the duration of the case. Standard workshop procedures appear to have been suspended for the case, so normal drafting of proposals by the parties and other editors is not taking place; a draft decision is to be written by arbitrators Coren and Newyorkbrad, but no date for it has been announced.
The Asmahan case has also entered its second week of deliberations. The filing editor, Supreme Deliciousness, alleges that Arab Cowboy has engaged in a variety of disruptive behavior on the "Asmahan" article; Arab Cowboy denies the allegations, and claims that Supreme Deliciousness is pursuing a disruptive agenda of his own. No drafting of proposals has yet taken place; a draft decision is expected from arbitrator FayssalF, but no date for it has been announced.
The Speed of light case has entered its third week of deliberations. The case was filed by Jehochman, who cited concerns about "tendentious editing and disruption" by a large number of editors on the "speed of light" article. Unusually, arbitrator Cool Hand Luke, who is slated to draft the decision in the case, has directly asked the parties "what resolution [they] would like to see from this process, and what (if any) concessions would [they] be willing to give to achieve that end?"; the parties have provided a set of varied responses to this. Workshop proposals have been made by a number of editors, including Cool Hand Luke and fellow arbitrator Vassyana. A draft decision in the case is expected by 30 September.
The Noloop case has entered its sixth week of deliberations. The case involves mutual allegations of disruptive conduct by several parties, and is expected to address the conduct of all the editors involved. Evidence has been presented by several editors, and one of the parties, Noloop, has posted a statement that he does not intend to participate in the proceeding, but no drafting of proposals has yet taken place. A draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Carcharoth, was expected by 27 September.
The Lapsed Pacifist 2 case has also entered its sixth week of deliberations, as well as its first week of voting. 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. A temporary injunction prohibits Lapsed Pacifist from editing articles related to the Corrib gas project for the duration of the case.
The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Casliber, would place all articles related to the Corrib gas controversy and Shell to Sea under article probation, as well as imposing revert restrictions on Lapsed Pacifist and GainLine and issuing a series of admonishments and reminders. An alternative proposal by arbitrator Rlevse would ban Lapsed Pacifist from the topic area indefinitely.
Reader comments
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone 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.
Bots approved
Seven bots / bot tasks were approved in the past week:
- JCbot – To add portal boxes to article and category pages.
- CobraBot – To add OCLC# parameter to pages that use Template:Infobox Book based on ISBN in the infobox, if given.
- KingpinBot – To add WikiProject templates to the talk pages of pages, and send WikiProject newsletters and notices.
- SmackBot – To update names of arguments in infoboxes together, along with general infobox tidying.
- SmackBot – To add listas parameter to biography talk pages.
- Yobot – WikiProject Biography tagging.
- MGA73bot – To help migrate GFDL images, and move some images to Commons.
Bug fixes
- A backwards compatibility fix has been implemented for file uploading on MediaWiki, allowing uploading tools including Commonist to work once again and resolving other uploading bugs that occurred with the September 16 code update on Wikimedia projects. [2]
- The LocalisationUpdate extension had bugs that cause very high CPU usage, making it not suitable for deployment. The initial update.php run involved very heavy database queries, slowing down replication. Then, the code that checked for the last update.php run was using stale data from the slave servers. The extension has been modified to instead use a file-based storage system, and the extension is being tested before being deployed on Wikimedia sites. (bug 20774)
- The file history page has been updated to show the thumbnail column only if the file type is an image. (r56917, bug 17747)
New features
- A new permission (sendemail) has been added to MediaWiki. This is set as enabled by default, but could be used to deal with spam problems. (r56962)
Other
- Chief developer Brion Vibber has announced he is leaving his position with the Wikimedia Foundation, and will be taking a new position as chief developer of StatusNet. (See "News and notes")
Reader comments