Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2008-08-25
WikiWorld: "George P. Burdell"
- This comic originally appeared on September 3, 2007.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "George P. Burdell". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
Paul August resigns from Arbitration Committee
Arbitrator Paul August resigned from the Arbitration Committee on Thursday, August 21. His term was scheduled to end in December 2009. Paul has indicated that he will continue to edit Wikipedia, however: "One final self-quote: For me, contributing to Wikipedia is a noble act. Knowledge is power. We can all feel justifiably proud that the words we are helping to write, will help to empower untold millions of people, all over the world. This is why I contribute to this project, and why I will continue to do so -- my dedication to this noble endeavor remains undiminished. I'm very much looking forward to the pleasures of being a simple editor again, to once more experience the joy and satisfaction of writing the encyclopedia."
Briefly
- The English Wikipedia has reached 2,500,000 articles. Allegedly, the 2.5 millionth article was Joe Connor.
- The English Wiktionary now has more entries than the French Wiktionary (with both near 900,000). The French Wiktionary had previously been the largest Wiktionary since it passed the English version in November 2007.
- The Slovak Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
- The Malay Wikipedia has reached 30,000 articles.
- The Lithuanian Wiktionary has reached 90,000 entries.
- The Lithuanian Wikipedia has reached 60,000 articles.
- The Georgian Wiktionary has reached 100 entries.
In the news
This edition of "In the news" covers stories from July and August.
WikiScanner more powerful
Virgil Griffith's WikiScanner tool is being revamped and expanded into a suite of tools he dubs WikiWatcher. Griffith is being assisted by three students through Caltech's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships program.
Griffith announced the planned updates to his project in mid-July and has been rolling out new features intermittently, with more expected in the coming weeks. The biggest change is that WikiScanner 2.0 will be able to automatically identify some potential conflict-of-interest edits: any edit by organization's IP to that organization's article or to any article that links to that article is flagged, as well as any article on a trademark controlled by the organization (based on the trademark database of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office). Neither this feature nor that of an expected update of the database (which is current only through August 2007) is yet live.
Griffith has also trawled the Wikipedia database for every instance of a "signed" IP comment being replaced with a username (as happens, for example, when a user make a comment while logged out, then removes their IP and replaces it with their name). He dubs this feature the Poor Man's Checkuser, which covers 17,000 IPs and 13,000 usernames. These include, according to the Wired coverage, "most of the Wikipedia administrators".
Griffith has also assembled a Potential Sockpuppetry page listing all the matches between IP-linked usernames and organizations.
Griffith, who is a graduate student at California Institute of Technology, has combined WikiScanner with a detailed list matching IP addresses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to specific sites on the MIT campus to create Beaver Scope, an attempt to stir up trouble at MIT, which is considered Caltech's rival school.
Two other tools yet to go live are WikiGanda, which is "designed to uncover edit wars between two factions", and Vote Early Vote Often, a tool for detecting "voting fraud" during requests for adminship (and possibly other processes).
Google Knol
Google's long-anticipated Knol project, which was widely expected to be Google's attempt at creating a "Wikipedia-killer", went live on July 23. Although the flurry of media coverage examined Knol in terms of a potential competitor to Wikipedia, observers within the latter community have pointed out that several major differences between the two projects make direct competition unlikely.
Andrew Lih put the case succinctly:
Have you heard of Associated Content, Squidoo, Helium or WikiHow? No? If you haven't, you shouldn't be writing about Google Knol. These are exactly the working models that Google Knol is up against, not Wikipedia's.
To see exactly why Wikipedia is such a bad comparison, consider the main aspects of Google Knol 1 2:
- Goal: "first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read".
- Articles are controlled by a single author, who has to use a real name.
- Collaboration is at the discretion of the lead author; that is, "moderated collaboration".
- Opinions are allowed and encouraged in articles, and there can be competing articles about the same subject.
- Knol may include ads at the discretion of the author, profits of which are shared.
- Licensing of content is varied: It can be CC-BY, CC-BY noncommercial, or traditional copyright
- "Google will not serve as an editor in any way."
- "So what subjects can I write on? (Almost) anything you like. You pick the subject and write it the way you see fit."
As a result, most of the content that has emerged so far resembles the "practical" content sites as listed above:
How-to guides, health and medical advice, consumer and buyers guides, business and career pointers. These are exactly the things Wikipedia has insisted it does not want to include.
As the New York Times noted, the best place to go for more on the Knol project is Wikipedia's Knol article. For a range of opinions on Wikipedia and its weaknesses, Knol is a good place to look (although some of the most stridently anti-Wikipedia knols appear to have been removed). But for a fair and balanced treatment of what sets Knol apart from Wikipedia, The Onion is the best source.
Medpedia
A wiki-based expert-only medical encyclopedia called Medpedia (official site) will launch at the end of 2008. Supported by several major medical schools, it will use the Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL) for its articles, meaning that Wikipedia will be free to incorporate Medpedia content. According to early coverage, the NIH, CDC, FDA, and other government organizations may also contribute to the project.
McCain speech allegedly plagiarized from Wikipedia
John McCain gave a speech on August 11, soon after the outbreak of the 2008 South Ossetia war, on the politics and history of the Georgian–Ossetian conflict. On a tip from a Wikipedia editor, Taegan Goddard of CQPolitics.com blogged about possible plagiarism from this revision of the Georgia (country) article, and highlighting three passages of similarity between the speech and the article. The story spread from there, mostly among blogs and other new media, and was mentioned on The Onion and The Colbert Report. This report became a minor controversy for the McCain camp, which denied the allegations.
Wikinews Wikinews investigates claim McCain plagiarized speech from Wikipedia investigated the claim further.
As Wikipedian SEWilco points out, the site state.gov uses similar phrasing for some of the allegedly plagiarized passages.
Briefly
- Aussie politicians edit Wikipedia entries – A number of edits from IPs assigned to Australia's Department of Parliamentary Services were discovered, many of which removed criticism in the entries of Members of Parliament.
- How good a job has Wikipedia done with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ... – The Washington Post asked an expert to evaluate the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad article, which received a mixed but somewhat positive review.
- An Education in the Dangers of Online Research – Two students were expelled from a summer program for plagiarizing from Wikipedia.
- That's Yesterday's News, Residents Tell Wiki – Residents of Hunts Point in New York City took exception to out-of-date info in the neighborhood's Wikipedia article.
- Urban Myths: What Wikipedia Gets Wrong About NYC – Opinion columnist Steve Cuozzo panned Wikipedia's New York City coverage, pointing to mistakes in a number of articles.
- Targeting Search Engine Rankings – Wikipedia was found to place highly in the search results for many valuable merchandising-related keywords.
- Story links trial – BBC News launched a trial in which key terms link to content on Wikipedia and other sites in overlaid windows. See this article, for example.
- Wikipedia erhält Quadriga – Wikipedia won a share of the Quadriga award. The prize carries a value of 25,000 €. Jimbo Wales will receive the award on behalf of the German Wikimedia Chapter.
- Google Twins: I want to be number one – Journalist Brianna Goldberg described the frustration of having the userpage User:Brianna Goldberg (a different person) appear before her article in search results.
- An Interview with Wikipedia Founder (and Crimson Tide Fan) Jimbo Wales – Jimbo discussed sports and Wikipedia.
Dispatches: Interview with Mav
Longtime Wikipedian Mav is one of the English Wikipedia's most prolific writers; according to the List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations (WBFAN), Mav is currently the 11th ranked editor in terms of overall successful nominations of Featured articles (FA), and among the top seven when disregarding inactive editors and FAs that have been defeatured at Former featured articles; according to a 2007 study by the University of Minnesota, Mav was at the time the top contributor in terms of how many times words he added to articles were viewed by Wikipedia users (see also this Signpost story). Mav has also been a major force restoring older FAs to current standards at Featured article review (FAR). In August 2008, David Fuchs interviewed Mav about his contributions to the project for The Signpost, slightly paraphrased for readability.
The Signpost Mav, you've been a Wikipedia editor since 2002; what initially drew you to the project in general, and to featured article creation in particular?
- I recently graduated from university and was already in a nostalgic mood. So I Googled the name of a individual I studied in my Medieval literature class during my last term named Giovanni Boccaccio. One of the items listed on the second or third result page was at an oddly-named website I vaguely remember visiting before called wikipedia.com. The entry was a horrible stub that had obvious errors. I immediately looked for a contact link or feedback page to complain. But then I saw something I couldn't believe; a link that said in bold, edit this page right now! That message couldn't be intended for me; somebody must have accidentally allowed public editing of the website, I thought. But I was also intrigued. So I clicked the link, made my change without a log-in and was astounded that my edit became live right then! I quickly became a wiki addict, spending up to 12 hours a day editing through the summer of 2002. There were fewer than 20,000 articles when I started and very few of those would be considered better than start class today. Sadly, the software we used back then, UseMod, did not save every revision of an article so my first edit, as an IP, has been lost.
- My edits back then were mostly to enforce markup style, naming conventions and to develop article structure best practices. But over time I started to add more and more content. My first big area of focus was with element articles. I spearheaded development of a per-article table of properties at Beryllium but once that was done my focus switched to Titanium when it came to developing layout and coverage standards. Once I was happy with that article, I simply asked the community via the newly developed Brilliant Prose (BP) nomination process if that article was "brilliant" yet. Two people agreed and Titanium became my first BP (later FA).
- I soon became a regular at Featured article candidates (FAC); both by nominating articles and by commenting on other FACs. My intention was to influence our article standards by directly producing good examples and by objecting to articles by others that I saw as bad examples. The major areas of concern I had were making sure articles had good lead sections, were not overly long-winded (I originated the summary style guideline) and making sure articles listed their references. Over time I helped establish those standards as Featured article criteria.
The Signpost Your first FAC (which passed) was Yellowstone National Park, back in 2004. How did the process of promoting the article compare to your more recent FAs?
- True – the Yellowstone article was my first FAC proper but, as noted above, Brilliant Prose also had a nomination procedure late in its existence. The BP nomination process was set-up as a simple check to stop people from adding obviously bad articles to the Brilliant Prose list. FAC, when it was first set-up, was little better. There were no explicit criteria other than a suggestion to consult the perfect article page if you were unsure if an article was good enough to be listed. So, the lack of explicit criteria combined with lower standards on comprehensiveness (we felt darn good back then whenever a Wikipedia article was longer than its traditional encyclopedia counterpart), resulted in FAs that were much, much easier to produce than FAs that pass FAC today. For example, I think I spent less than 10 hours bringing this version of Titanium to BP standard and a bit more than 10 hours to bring this version of Yellowstone National Park to FA. It now often takes me 5 times as long to bring two similarly important and extensive topics to FA quality. At one time I thought that spending 4 hours working on a single article was a huge amount of time. Now I spend at least that much time reading sources before I write anything.
The Signpost You've been a tremendous force at FAR, assisting in improving articles which would today have a hard time passing GAN, let alone FAC. What motivates you to improve these relics of an easier FA process?
- Sandy, Marskell and Joelr31 have been tremendous forces at FAR. I simply save articles that were either FACs I nominated or FAs under one of the WikiProjects I'm involved with. My motivation is pride of "ownership" (in a good, wikiway) and the fact that I see FAR as an opportunity for me to bring an article up to current standards. I'm often both dismayed and encouraged at how an article I, and others, thought was an example of the best of Wikipedia several years ago compares to our FAs now. Our standards have increased substantially. For example, one of my first FAs, Geology of Bryce Canyon National Park, would be considered C-class today (possibly a merge candidate). But somebody rightfully nominated it for FAR and I substantially expanded it and added inline citations. It is now a respectable example of a short topic FA. So I guess a related motivation is to keep my set of FA articles serving as examples of what Wikipedia articles should look like. Granted, I normally wait for others to nominate one of my articles to FAR before I upgrade them. But that's just because I'm inherently lazy. :)
The Signpost You spoke earlier of helping mold the FA criteria; why, in your opinion, have FA standards slowly drifted up over time?
- This has more to do with the general maturing of the project than anything else. At first, we concentrated on simply seeding topic areas by creating stubs. We didn't have much coverage of anything, so we weren't too picky. We tolerated, often even embraced the stub and odd incomplete addition, so anything much longer than several paragraphs had a chance of being listed as Brilliant Prose. As time went by, more and more topics got their own articles. It was then inevitable that groups interested in certain areas would increasingly switch from article creation to article expansion and improvement. That was certainly my experience with WikiProject Elements. We have also learned from each other through this time how to best write an encyclopedia article. These ideas are now well-established guidelines. Therefore, what we considered to be the best of the best has naturally become more stringent. For a time I was fearful that this trend would continue indefinitely and our standards would become absurdly strict. This hasn't happened yet and I'm becoming increasingly confident that we will eventually find the right balance.
The Signpost In an interview with the List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations (WBFAN) maintainer Rick Block, Rick spoke about how he was unsure the list had contributed to more FAs, or a motivation for more FAs. Has the list encouraged you in any way?
- Although far from perfect, as Rick admits, WBFAN is really the only easy way to get an idea of who is likely responsible for creating quality content in the project. I'd much prefer a 'List of major authors of Featured Articles', but WBFAN is the best we have right now. It is certainly better than the increasingly useless list by number of edits. I would write FAs with or without WBFAN but it has been a slight motivation to me, if for no other reason than to solidly get back in the top 10 and stay there. :)
Features and admins
Administrators
Three users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Choess (nom), Ice Cold Beer (nom), and Moni3 (nom).
Bots
One bot or bot task was approved to begin operating this week: Nixbot (task request).
Featured pages
Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status this week: Conan (2007 video game) (nom), SummerSlam (2003) (nom), Pat Nixon (nom), Janet Jackson (nom), Panzer I (nom), Tropical Storm Barry (2001) (nom), Made in the Dark (nom), History of Bradford City A.F.C. (nom), Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes (nom), White-breasted Nuthatch (nom), Alzheimer's disease (nom), Pride and Prejudice (1995 TV serial) (nom), William de St-Calais (nom), Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany (nom), and Amateur radio in India (nom).
Ten lists were promoted to featured status last week: Timeline of the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), List of submissions to the 74th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (nom), List of UEFA Cup Winners' Cup winners (nom), List of Brotherhood episodes (nom), National Basketball Association awards (nom), Opeth discography (nom), List of Sunderland A.F.C. players (nom), List of former Football League clubs (nom), List of USAF Test Pilot School alumni (nom), and Timeline of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season (nom).
Two topics were promoted to featured status this week: Seasons of 30 Rock (nom) and Dwarf planets (nom).
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed this week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Borobudur, Madman Muntz, Poliomyelitis, Rongorongo, and Planet.
Former featured pages
Three articles were delisted this week: Eifel Aqueduct (nom), Helen Gandy (nom), and The Cantos (nom).
Three lists were delisted this week: Indian national cricket captains (nom), IWGP Tag Team Championship (nom), and List of districts of India (nom).
No topics were delisted this week.
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed this week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Caligo eurilochus, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Red-eyed Tree Frog, Beater (weaving), Northern Elephant Seals, Greater Yellowlegs, and Polish cavalry.
No sounds were featured this week.
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Twenty pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
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Seals of the U.S. states in 1876 -
Common Grass Blue (Zizina labradus) -
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Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) -
Duck and Cover video
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Sand Wasp (Bembix oculata) -
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Los Angeles Fire Department ladder truck -
German ammunition train wrecked by shell fire in World War I -
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a.jpg){kind=link}
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
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.2 (8fd6c9c), 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
- Renames made before 26 August 2007 now show correctly in the rename log. (r39840, bug 15269)
- Special:Search, when accessed via the text of a redlinked page, now no longer searches for underscores instead of spaces in the title of the redlinked page. (r40043, bug 15264)
New features
- Special:Watchlist now looks and behaves the same way as Special:Recentchanges. (r39839, bug 15157)
- See also the next section; several features were added with configuration changes this week.
Configuration changes
- The GlobalBlocking extension has been enabled on Wikimedia wikis, allowing users to be blocked simultaneously on all wikis. Global blocks can only be added or removed by stewards; however, English Wikipedia administrators can allow users to edit on the English Wikipedia despite a global block (so the user would be blocked everywhere except the English Wikipedia) via Special:GlobalBlockWhitelist. (Administrators on other projects can similarly disable global blocks on those projects.) (r39129, bug 8707)
- The old query.php API has been disabled; api.php will have to be used instead by bots and scripts. (bug 12881)
- The write API (accessible via api.php, the same as the read API) has been enabled, giving bots and scripts an interface via which to edit Wikipedia. [1] The following write actions are now possible via the API: rollback, delete, undelete, protect, block, unblock, move, edit, emailuser, watch. Anyone can use the write API, but only if they could perform the action normally; for instance, anonymous users cannot edit semiprotected pages using the API, and only administrators can delete pages that way. (bug 14210)
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.
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee did not open or close any cases this week, leaving three currently open.
Evidence phase
- C68-FM-SV: A case involving disputes between Cla68, FeloniousMonk, SlimVirgin, JzG, and others. The case has been pending for over three months, but recently-returned arbitrator Newyorkbrad has posted a set of principles on the workshop page, and is expected to write a proposed decision soon.
- Alastair Haines: A case involving Alastair Haines and other users.
- SlimVirgin-Lar: A case brought by Thatcher, asking the committee to review the use of checkuser by Lar, in the light of comments by SlimVirgin (here, inter alia), alleging that he misused the tool. Evidence is to be submitted privately to the committee by e-mail, and voting will presumably occur privately as well.