Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-03-09/From the archives
Five, ten, and fifteen years ago
Five years ago: March 2018
Buried in an "in brief", we learn of the end of Wikipedia Zero. This project tried to get mobile phone companies in developing countries to allow browsing Wikipedia for free; however, issues with net neutrality and copyright violations finally killed it off. (Meanwhile, ten years ago we have a report of it winning an activism award.) Speaking of killing things off, a report of The Signpost's imminent demise was the lead article this month. ... So I guess I'm writing for an undead publication. Cool.
ACTRIAL was probably the thing with the greatest impact. It limited the ability to make a new article to autoconfirmed users. Arguably the start of the long road to the slightly more bureaucratic, but arguably more robust articles for creation project.
Ten years ago: March 2013
Ten years ago, The Signpost merged with Wikizine. Apparently there were plans for Wikizine sections to be run every month. As such things do, this happened exactly once then never again.
That same month, an effort – one of many over the years – to close Wikinews. Honestly, the biggest surprise was when I checked and saw English Wikinews was still moderately active, if an article every couple days counts as active. The big story, though, was two members of the Arbitration Committee resigning in quick succession.
Just two months into his second term as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, Coren resigned from the Committee with a blistering attack on his fellow arbitrators. In a strongly worded statement posted both on his talk page and the arbitration noticeboard, he claimed that ArbCom has become politicised to the extent that "it can no longer do the job it was ostensibly elected for". Coren accused arbitrators of "filibustering and tactical maneuvers to gain the upper hand" and of "bickering about the 'image' of the committee with little or no concern for the project's fate". "Trying our damn best to do the Right Thing", he charged, "has been obsoleted in favour of trying to get reelected."
[...]
The Signpost asked Coren to explain where he saw a conflict between caring about the image of the Committee and doing the best for the project.
“ If you attempt to decide according to whether people will whine and yell, all you are doing is giving the loudest voices the power to veto what the committee does "to preserve the image of the committee". The good of the project, on the other hand, doesn't rely on what is currently said about the committee. Things like applying the rules fairly, or fixing a long term problem, should not be affected by "who will complain", and "but that would cause drama". When you start having arbitrators start breaking rules (internal and otherwise) in order to find something, /anything/ to use as a pretext to avoid acting because it will make people dislike them, then the problem becomes serious. ” Hersfold, who resigned from ArbCom the week before, echoed Coren's criticisms in general terms: "Unfortunately, I was hoping [that Coren would] be one of the ones to lead the charge against such politicization ... I noticed a steadily increasing emphasis from several arbitrators on avoiding actions that would look bad for the Committee's image or otherwise cause undue amounts of drama". When we invited him to be more specific, Hersfold told the Signpost, "I have no further comment."
Meanwhile, Wikipediocracy outed an editor, causing a firestorm. This kind of thing is why we don't quote Wikipediocracy in The Signpost.
Fifteen years ago: March 2008
"Music fans prefer Wikipedia to MySpace" is one of those headlines that can only come from 2008. However, 15 years ago was also in the middle of Wikipedia's early era, when major things were happening. This was when we gained Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-03/Hidden Categories (and then had to decide what to do with them); hit 10 million articles; and we reported on the launch of perhaps the most successful of the academic Wikipedia-like projects, Encyclopedia of Life, an attempt to document every species of life on Earth. That last one technically happened right at the end of February, but we reported on it in early March, and I didn't include it in the last one of these, so ...
The big, big improvement was probably single user login (also known as Wikimedia Unified Login) which let you log in here, and also be logged in on Commons and French Wikipedia and wherever else you wanted. This was a slow process: There were cases where there were already multiple users with the same name, or where it wasn't clear that two users were the same person. Or, in my case, I wanted to edit on Wikipedia pseudonymously while getting real-name credit on Commons, a state I maintained for years by refusing to accept the connection. However, not all things lasted quite so well: we also reported (in the same article as single-user login) on an assessment tool for articles. One could set code to list it as a featured article or an A-class article or any of a lot of other choices. It sounds awesome, until you think about it and realise that it's doing the job we now do with simple talk page templates.
Meanwhile, Wales' relationship with conservative journalist Rachel Marsden – and editing her article at her request – was rightfully controversial. This is from the opening section of that rather long article:
A relationship between Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales and Canadian political columnist Rachel Marsden became public this week. The revelation of this relationship raised allegations of impropriety on Marsden's article, which has been the subject of OTRS requests, and an arbitration case decided in November 2006.
The relationship was first rumored on Friday by Valleywag, a self-described "tech gossip rag" that focuses on Silicon Valley news.[1] Valleywag reported that Wales had been separated from his wife since August, and had dated Marsden since "last fall". The story spread quickly, and soon reached the mainstream media, fueled by his admission of a brief relationship, and the publication of a series of chats released by Marsden, purported to have occurred between the two. One set of extracts discuss in graphic terms their personal relationship, while another purports to show Wales using his influence to have her article changed on her behalf.
Among the allegations made by Valleywag was that, according to an anonymous tip, Wales had "sent a mass email to a 'special' Wikipedia list of admins at the beginning of February, right before he was set to spend the weekend with Marsden in DC. Said he wanted her page cleaned up."[2] This allegation, backed by purported extracts from chats intended to prove the matter, was seen by many as the most severe, as it implied that Wales ordered changes to her Wikipedia biography with an ulterior motive.
Wales said that he had been in consultation with the OTRS team, a group of Wikipedians that handle e-mails from the public, including concerns from article subjects regarding potential violations of Wikipedia's Biographies of living persons policy. He said that before meeting with Marsden for the first time, "I disclosed my plans to OTRS and further disclosed that it was a personal matter. I recused myself from any further official action with respect to her biography."
The Wikipedia Signpost contacted three separate sources on the otrs-en-l mailing list. Each user confirmed that Wales sent an e-mail to the list in early February 2008; the e-mail discussed what he saw as concerns with Marsden's article, and Wales' recusal from handling the matter due to a growing friendship:
Other than a possible followup to this email with any clarifications that Rachel might have (I will show it to her later) I am going to recuse myself for at least a while from dealing with this case. As I have mentioned before, Rachel contacted me during the most recent round of major revisions to her article via Facebook. We struck up a friendly conversation about her new website ... In the past week or so we have struck up something of a personal friendship, and I offered to meet with her and give some feedback on her website design and business model.
At the end of the e-mail, he made it a point to say,
As such, at least for the time being, I may have a sufficient COI regarding this case that I should not edit the article or do anything "official" ... so please treat any emails from me about this as emails from a friend of a BLP, not as policy or anything similar to that. (And, as I say, other than posting direct clarifications after talking to Rachel, I intend to just steer clear of it completely.) This is particularly important ... [because] I want to be particularly careful not to give anyone an excuse to make up bizarre allegations.
After the e-mail was sent, two edits were made to Rachel Marsden by JzG. These edits concerned an incident involving Marsden and a Canadian counterterrorism officer with whom she was having an affair. The edits changed the timeline of the events, in line with a source, added some cited information, and removed a reference to sexually-explicit photos purported to be of the officer, along with e-mails purportedly from the officer, sent by Marsden to the National Post. The National Post had said of the latter that "the photos do not show the man's face, and the newspaper could not verify the origins of the images and accompanying letters.", commenting that she also had made claims of a long term relationship in that case, which the officer had denied.[3]
It only gets messier from there, unfortunately. It's worth reading the rest of the article.
References
- ^ Thomas, Owen. Wikipedia founder's fling with Fox News fox, Valleywag. February 29, 2008.
- ^ Thomas, Owen. How Wikipedia got Jimmy Wales laid, Valleywag. February 29, 2008.
- ^ Bell, Stewart. Ont. anti-terror officer investigated on leak allegations, National Post, December 19, 2007.
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