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19 October 2009

 

2009-10-19

WikiReader, Meetup in Pakistan, Audit committee elections, and more

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By S Q, Pretzels, and Phoebe

WikiReader launched

Openmoko launched a small, handheld reader with an offline version of the entire English Wikipedia, the WikiReader. The reader is retailing for $99, and runs on batteries, with a monochrome touch screen. The content has no pictures, and can be filtered for use by kids. Openmoko plans to offer twice-yearly content updates for download. The WikiReader software is open source.

The WikiReader official site lists details of the device. The launch was picked up by several media outlets and blogs, with the Wikimedia Foundation blog also posting details of the reader.

Wikimeetup Karachi

The first meetup in Karachi, Pakistan was held on October 18, 2009, hosted by Saqib Qayyum. Six editors of the English and Urdu Wikipedias attended, including Jamal Abdullah Usman, a Pakistani journalist/columnist. Attendees discussed topics including publicity and development of the Urdu language Wikipedia, WikiProject Pakistan, the possibility of a Pakistan chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation, and even a quiz for attendees (see agenda). The meetup lasted three hours.

Audit subcommittee elections

One of Fg2's newly featured pictures

The process to appoint three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee is underway. If you are interested, please see the election page for the qualifications and application process. Applications will be accepted until October 22, and voting will begin on October 30.

Fg2 memorial

Two of recently deceased Wikipedian Fg2's pictures have been promoted to Featured Picture status. Hall of Dreams and Morning glory were nominated by User:Kaldari to celebrate the massive contribution the Japanese educator made both to the encyclopedia and to Commons. A third image, Tazawako, was nominated by User:Shoemaker's Holiday but was not promoted.

Briefly

Milestones

This week in history

2009-10-19

Sanger controversy reignited, Limbaugh libeled, and more

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By Draeco, Tilman Bayer and Sage Ross

Calacanis and Sanger cry foul

The longstanding debate over Larry Sanger's role in the foundation of Wikipedia (covered in Signpost issues April 13, 2009, May 11, 2009, August 7, 2006 and April 2, 2007) was reignited recently when Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and Sanger alleged that Jimbo Wales has downplayed Sanger's role on Wikipedia for financial motives, according to this report.

The controversy began with Calacanis stating in an interview on the Internet Evolution web radio (section starts around 19:42) that Wales was "a fraud" who erroneously claimed to be the creator of Wikipedia in order to attract funding for Wikia:

[Wales] just got a bunch of people to give him a bunch of money thinking, 'Oh, this is the guy who created Wikipedia.' Well guess what? He didn't create Wikipedia. Larry Sanger did.

Calacanis' outburst prompted an IE reporter to contact Sanger for comments. Sanger was Wikipedia's first employee from 2001 to 2002, during which time he proposed using the wiki software to advance Wales' encyclopedia concept. Sanger has decried his omission before; he was called co-founder as recently as 2004, but afterwards forgotten, sometimes with the help of Wales' own edits as reported by a Workbench blogger and later the New York Times. Sanger believes the motivations are financial:[1]

In 2004, at just the time when he was leaving out any mention of me in discussing the history of Wikipedia, he was starting Wikia...That's also when the star of Wikipedia really began to rise and started to enter into public consciousness. Jimmy Wales had a real financial motive to portray himself as the brains behind Wikipedia.

When solicited for a response, Wales stated that "I think very highly of Larry Sanger, and think that it is unfortunate that this silly debate has tended to overshadow his work." He saved his ire for Calacanis, calling him "a showman" trying to "generate easy publicity for himself."

Calacanis and Wales had had a much-publicized earlier fallout in 2006 after Wales rejected a proposal by Calacanis to introduce advertising on Wikipedia, see Signpost issue October 30, 2006. The recent comment about Sanger was made in a similar context: Asked by the interviewer why he expected his human search engine project Mahalo.com to succeed despite Wales' failure with his similar project Wikia Search, Calacanis retorted that "there is a big misconception that Jimmy Wales is some huge genius", arguing that he lacked business acumen:

[To make Wikipedia a non-profit] was the worst business decision in the history of business. Not since the Indians sold Manhattan has somebody made a stupider move in the history of business. Literally. The 11 or 12 dollars that the Indians got for Manhattan was a better deal than what Jimmy Wales did. Jimmy Wales would be a billionaire right now. Wikipedia would be worth 25 to 50 billion dollars and Jimmy Wales would own 80, 90 percent of it. He'd be in the top 50 richest people on the planet ...

Limbaugh libeled

Conservative U.S. talk show host Rush Limbaugh has lashed out against false information on Wikipedia, Wikiquote, and many newscasters who have relied on them as sources. Limbaugh's online blog called numerous reporters "professional scum...responsible in many ways for the deteriorating standards and quality of journalism" because they attributed unsourced quotes to him that were taken from Wikipedia. The quotes in question were first added to Wikiquote by an IP address that blogger Trapdoc traced to a computer at the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, as reported by The American Thinker blog. The row comes in the wake of Limbaugh's failed bid to buy the St. Louis Rams professional football team.

"No reason for China to use Wikipedia"

CNN profiled the user-created Chinese language encyclopedia Hudong this week in "It's tricky for wikis and online encyclopedias in China". Hudong was started in 2005 but already has over 3 million articles; in comparison, Chinese Wikipedia launched in 2002 but has less than 10% as many articles as Hudong.

Explaining Hudong's success compared to Wikipedia and to competitor Baidu Baike, Hudong's founder Pan Haidong said "We know the market better. That is why we can get a bigger share of it." Chinese Wikipedia had also been blocked in mainland China for most of its existence, although it is no longer blocked. The article quotes Baidu chief scientist William Chang: "There's, in fact, no reason for China to use Wikipedia, a service based 'out there'. It's very natural for China to make its own products."

Briefly

2009-10-19

Discussion Reports and Miscellaneous Articulations

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By Tim Song, Pretzels, Icewedge & 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.

Who administrates the administrators?

At Wikipedia talk:Sock puppetry, User:Tony1 requested clarification regarding the sock puppet policy. Specifically, Tony1 wanted to know if an "RfA candidates should be asked as a fourth standard question whether they have used any past accounts". Tony1 also felt that the policy did "look as though all admins need to disclose (on their talk page?) their past accounts ... like, immediately."

The portions of policy Tony1 was referring to were believed by User:WereSpielChequers to be recent additions, which WereSpielChequers thought were somewhat representative of "an element of barn door closing going on in the community at present," cautioning that "there is a risk of forgetting that the reason why barns have doors is that sometimes they need to be open."

The discussion prompted User:Hiberniantears to suggest that "all admins, and admin candidates" be subject to a check user on their account. However, User:Risker believed that such a move was 'clearly "fishing" and is not appropriate use of checkuser', adding that furthermore "it's also an extremely inefficient method of trying to find alternate accounts."

Border control

At Wikipedia:Requests for comment/The Plague User:Rd232 was asking for ideas which might help with the general problem outlined in 'User:Moreschi's comments at Administrators Noticeboard about "The Plague" (of nationalism, but similar issues can apply on religion).' To start things off, Rd232 suggested that 'editors involved in conflict might be given "community service", such as transcribing documents on Wikisource.' However, User:NVO believed that "community service must be designed in a way that does not add burden on existing admin forces." User:Russavia felt that "community service could be used a carrot in some low level circumstances, but not in matters where a stick is actually warranted."

Focussing on the underlying problem, User:Ben Kidwell argued:

The effort to fight against POV often becomes completely bogged down in wikilawyering over the exact nature of reliable sources and what is synthesis or original research and what is a valid summary, or how many reverts in how many hours - because there is no other ground on which to make a stand. As a consequence, rigid and maximalist interpretation of policies becomes the only way to fight against POV biases, and this in turn acts to make editing more difficult even on topics that are not subject to nationalist flame wars. My opinion is that the current admins who enforce wikipedia policy need to be supplemented by community chosen content administrator/arbitrators with expert knowledge in the area. It's time to face the fact that in contentious topics, editors with a strongly biased POV are often much more motivated and committed than unbiased editors.

While a number of respondents agreed with the thrust of Ben Kidwell's arguments, many also agreed with User:Radeksz that "the selection process here is the trickiest part".

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.

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.

A lot of hot air about nothing?

On the 15 October User:E1foley created an article about the current event regarding a six-year-old boy and a home-made helium balloon, initially at Colorado 2009 balloon incident. Unbeknown to E1foley, another editor, User:Wuffyz, had created an article on the same current event at Falcon Heene some twenty minutes earlier. The latter article was swiftly proposed for deletion and after this was contested, nominated for deletion based on the reasoning that Wikipedia is not a news outlet. After twenty-five minutes of discussion, User:xeno closed the debate with a merge consensus, and the material was merged to the E1foley created article, now located at Colorado balloon incident, and itself by now a contested deletion candidate.

A listing for deletion soon followed, with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Colorado balloon incident created to again discuss the applicability of Wikipedia articles not being news reports. The debate ran for two-and-a-half days, with no real consensus emerging among the one-hundred-and-eighty-six editors who contributed to the debate, amassing four-hundred-and-ninety-nine edits between them. At this point User:Bigtimepeace closed the debate, noting that:

well over half of the !votes below ... simply do not provide any valid rationale whatsoever. Some comments are ... snarky and nothing else, some make an argument that does not at all reference Wikipedia policy or guidelines, and some simply reference ... guidelines or policies without actually tying them to an argument ... [a] lot of the discussion here relates more to personal feelings ... than our policies and guidelines for content.

Following on from that point, Bigtimepeace said it would likely "be much easier to ascertain consensus one way or another at that point when we have a bit of distance from the current cable news cycle", and in closing the debate asked that "If anyone feels inclined to take this to deletion review ... then by all means feel free to do so. But please—pretty please, with a cherry on top—think twice or thrice before doing that."

While a number of Wikipedians approached Bigtimepeace to express agreement with the early closure, User talk:Bigtimepeace#What goes up..., nearly twelve hours after the closure of the deletion debate, User:Prodego, who has been displaying a wikibreak notice for almost a full year now, opened a review at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009_October_18#Colorado balloon incident commenting that 'Claims that the close was "procedural" are incorrect, in that this closure was completely outside the procedure of AfD', believing the debate should stay open as "an active discussion about a page may lead to other improvements to the article". The DR was closed five hours later by MZMcBride as "closure resoundingly endorsed".

In terms of bytes it stands as the 6th largest AFD ever.

Falun gone?

A nomination of Persecution of Falun Gong by User:Simonm223 led to your writer doing a little digging. The article is nominated as a recreation of a merged article, given that after "extensive debate [the] content from [the] previous [version] of Persecution of Falun Gong [was] moved and merged with other content to create History of Falun Gong". Having looked at the article history of "History of Falun Gong", it appears that there is more here than meets the eye. Apparently, the original article at History of Falun Gong was seemingly merged to Falun Gong in September 2007. It's hard to be definitive because the legal requirements outlined at Performing the merger have not been followed. It's also hard to show you the page differences because the article has since been deleted, again in contravention of the Wikipedia license which requires page history of merged articles to be kept to allow proper attribution of individual authors.

The reason the first page to exist at "History of Falun Gong" was deleted on 15 October by Alexf (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) was to "make room for an uncontroversial page move", namely a move of the article Persecution of Falun Gong in the People's Republic of China. This move was undone by User:HappyInGeneral within twenty minutes, but re-performed after a further eleven by User:Ohconfucius. Digging through the history reveals a vast number of page moves for this page. In fact, the latest move is the twenty-third move of the page in just over three years (full details available here, courtesy of Ohconfucius). The deletion debate has already seen three compromises proposed in the three days it has been open, generating 61 kilobytes of text.

Articles

Categories and files

Administrative notices

A round up of the administrators' noticeboards as viewed by your writer. You can suggest a notice for inclusion, either on the tip line or by directly editing the next issue.

Briefly

Requests for comment

Thirty-one Requests for comment have been made in the week of 12-18 October:

Missed

2009-10-19

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Three editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Tcncv (nom), MLauba (nom) and The Earwig (nom).

Seven articles were promoted to featured status this week: Political history of Mysore and Coorg (1565–1760) (nom), 1982 British Army Gazelle friendly fire incident (nom), Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident (nom), Urse d'Abetot (nom), Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (nom), Nikita Zotov (nom) and Icelandic horse (nom).

No lists were promoted to featured status this week.

No topics were promoted to featured status this week.

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: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, War of the Fifth Coalition, Fight Club, The Swimming Hole, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Ruff.

Two articles were delisted this week: Introduction to evolution (nom) and "Weird Al" Yankovic (nom).

Two lists were delisted this week: James Blunt discography (nom) and List of Dream Theater band members (nom).

Four topics were delisted this week: Seasons of Bleach (nom), Seasons of Lost (nom), Seasons of The Office (nom) and Kingdom Hearts (nom).

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: the White House, Watsons Bay, New South Wales, 1890 Dam Square, Oscar Wilde, Stag beetle and Peruvian Lily.

One featured sound was promoted this week:


Anchors Aweigh(nom)

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

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



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2009-10-19

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By Kirill Lokshin

The Arbitration Committee did not open any cases this week, and closed one, leaving four cases open.

Open cases

Socionics

The Socionics case has entered its second week of deliberations. The case was filed by rmcnew, who alleged that Tcaudilllg has engaged in edit-warring and personal attacks. Tcaudilllg has denied the allegations, calling them "ad hominem attacks on [his] character". No significant drafting has yet taken place; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Carcharoth, is expected by 20 October.

Asmahan

The Asmahan case has entered its fifth 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 John Vandenberg by 20 October.

Eastern European mailing list

The Eastern European mailing list case has entered its fifth week of deliberations, and its first week of voting. The case concerns a set of leaked mailing list archives which are alleged to show an extensive history of collusion among numerous editors of Eastern European topics. Standard workshop procedures have been suspended for the case, so normal drafting of proposals by the parties and other editors has not taken place.

The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Coren, would strip Piotrus of his administrator status, ban him for three months, and place him under a topic ban for one year; ban Digwuren and Martintg for three months and also place them under year-long topic bans; and issue a number of admonishments and reminders, as well as an amnesty for all participants of the mailing list not otherwise sanctioned. A secondary proposal by arbitrator Rlevse would ban Tymek for three months as well. No other arbitrators have yet commented on the proposed remedies.

Speed of light

The Speed of light case has entered its seventh week of deliberations, and its first week of voting. 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.

The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Vassyana, condemns FDT and Brews ohare for a variety of inappropriate conduct, and would place both under a number of editing restrictions and topic bans. An alternative proposal by arbitrator Coren would ban FDT for one year.

Shortly before the proposed decision was published, the Committee adopted an injunction prohibiting FDT from participating on the case's pages and requiring him to submit any comments to the Committee directly.

Closed cases

The Lapsed Pacifist 2 case was closed this week. The decision places all articles related to the Corrib gas controversy and Shell to Sea under article probation, imposes revert restrictions and a topic ban on Lapsed Pacifist, and issues a number of admonishments and reminders—as well as, unusually, a commendation for GainLine.

Amendments, clarifications, and other motions

A request to amend the Obama articles decision was filed by Jayron32, who has asked that the restrictions imposed on Grundle2600 as part of that case be expanded to cover additional forms of disruptive conduct.

A request for clarification of the Mattisse decision was filed by Moni3, who has asked that the Committee clarify the terms and execution of the mentoring plan imposed as part of that case. Extensive discussion regarding the request has taken place, but there has not yet been a definitive response from the arbitrators.

A request for clarification of the Asgardian-Tenebrae decision was filed by Hiding, who has asked that the Committee clarify the status of certain sanctions imposed on Asgardian as part of that case.

Arbitrator Vassyana has proposed a motion to amend the Date delinking decision to acknowledge that the full-date unlinking bot satisfies the requirements of a community-approved process for date delinking as stipulated in the case. Arbitrator voting is presently divided.

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2009-10-19

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Aude

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.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.

Bots approved

Three bot tasks were approved this past week:

  • LSG1-Bot (task 1) — to add interwiki links between the German and English Wikipedia projects.
  • ChzzBot (task 1) — to deliver ad-hoc messages to members of the WikiProject Zoroastrianism.
  • Robert SkyBot (task 3) — to remove links to Table of content pages on Books after they are deleted.

Bug fixes

  • Special:Contributions no longer shows diff links for new revisions. (r57727, bug 21114)
  • The "Other statistics" header is no longer displayed on Special:Statistics when that section is empty. (r57723, bug 21113)

Other news

  • The Wikimedia Usability Initiative conducted user-testing last Wednesday and Thursday, involving eight individuals in the San Francisco area. The testers tried editing with beta features (Acai and Babaco), including the new Vector skin and enhanced edit toolbar. Through the testing, the Usability team identified areas for further improvement. [2]
  • The Wikimedia Foundation has hired Guillaume Paumier to serve as the Product Manager for the Multimedia Usability Project. [3]
  • Editors were not able to save changes on Wikipedia for approximately 20 minutes on October 19. This was due to a bug with memcaching that caused srv156 to stop responding after some code was scapped. [4]
  • Tim Starling approved new svn committers, including MaxSem (to work on SQLite support), Juliano (extensions work) and Fenzik (extensions and core code). [5] [6]

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