Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-04-19
Berlin WikiConference, Brooklyn Museum & Google.org collaborations, review backlog removed, 1 billion edits
Wikimedia Conference ends, Foundation to expand into India and Brazil
From 14 to 18 April, the Wikimedia Conference 2010 (WMCON) was held in Berlin, Germany. It consisted of a Developers' Workshop (14–16 April), a Chapters meeting (16–18 April) and a Board of Trustees' meeting (17–18 April).
At the conference, Sue Gardner presented plans for an international expansion of the Wikimedia Foundation. According to a 16 April article (in German) by Heise News, the Foundation plans to open offices in India and Brazil early next year, followed by a third one in an Arab country.
The many presentations at the Developers' Workshop (preliminary schedule) included several about usability topics, and one about the first results of the flagged revisions study commissioned by Wikimedia Germany (see last week's Signpost coverage).
The air travel disruption after the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption had a major impact on conference attendees. On Sunday, Wikimedia Deutschland called for volunteers among local Wikipedians to support about 20 international guests stranded in Berlin after the end of the conference. In an effort to apply the customary problem-solving process of MediaWiki development to the geophysical situation, Bug 23223 was created.
Brooklyn Museum uploads to Wikimedia Commons
On 12 April, the Brooklyn Museum in New York City announced that it will be "Cross-posting the Collection to Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive". In a test run, BrooklynMuseumBot has already uploaded images of nine public domain paintings. More than 9000 other images are queued for upload on Commons, whereas on the Internet Archive, the museum is not just uploading all its "no known copyright" images, but also those licensed under a non-commercial Creative Commons license (which is not accepted on Commons).
Shelley Bernstein, the museum's Chief of Technology, said that the institution intends to benefit from the collaboration by importing metadata that has been added or changed on the wiki back to the collection. She recalled some of the difficulties that were encountered in last year's Wikipedia Loves Art project ("This was a project that simply didn’t scale").
Wikiprojects and Google.org to collaborate in translation project
The Molecular and Cellular Biology and the Medicine Wikiprojects have announced an article translation project with the charitable foundation Google.org. This project aims to address the lack of accessible medical information in languages used in the developing world, by translating articles from the English Wikipedia and transferring them to smaller Wikipedias, such as the Swahili Wikipedia.
In its initial stages, the project will aim to improve a core set of articles on important medical information and neglected diseases, using article reviews provided by professional medical writers. Later, once a set of interested editors have been recruited in the English Wikipedia, Google.org will try to recruit native speakers who can use translation software developed by Google to transfer the English articles. This effort will follow the lead set by Google's recent Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge, which aimed to expand the Swahili Wikipedia in a collaboration with three African universities (see Signpost coverage).
Good article nominations backlog elimination drive successful
Following the conclusion of the GA Sweeps in March 2010, the April 2010 GAN backlog elimination drive has accomplished its goal to reduce the number of outstanding GA nominations to below 200 – 12 days before the scheduled end of the drive. As of 00:00 19 April 2010, 512 good article nominations have been reviewed since the beginning of the drive, with 379 of them passed, 67 failed, and 68 placed on hold according to the list of completed GANs by the participants. By comparison, 330 GANs were reviewed in the previous GAN backlog elimination drive in February–March 2009. Some other statistics:
- The drive started with 463 outstanding GA nominations; it is currently down to 146.
- The WP:GAN page was at 110KB in size on 1 April. That page has almost been cut in half at 60KB.
- At the beginning of the drive (see this GAN report from 31 March), the longest waiting times for a GA nomination were about 13 weeks. The longest waiting times are currently two weeks ([1]).
- 60 Wikipedians have volunteered in this current drive and have reviewed at least one good article nomination – almost twice as many as in the previous drive in Spring 2009.
Briefly
- As part of the Malayalam Wikipedia Meetup 2010, the Malayalam Wikipedia has released 500 selected articles on a CD-ROM. This is the first time in India that a Wikipedia in a local language has released its articles for offline usage.
- On Friday, 16 April 2010 the Wikimedia projects passed a total of 1 billion edits, as measured by the edit counter. There was some disagreement about the exact time of day, as the counter does not include the ca. 300,000 edits on MediaWiki.org.
- The UX (formerly Usability) team reported on some user feedback from the 5 April switch to the new "Vector" skin on Wikimedia Commons, and invited testing of a still experimental template folding feature.
- Sue Gardner announced that Philippe Beaudette (currently Facilitator for the Strategic Planning initiative) will become the Wikimedia Foundation's "Head of Reader Relations", a newly created position intended as an "advocate for readers inside the projects and within the staff", involving OTRS and other areas.
This week in history
- 2005: Wikimedia Foundation granted tax exemption
- 2007: Historian detained after his Wikipedia article is vandalized
- 2008: Student arrested after making threats on Wikipedia article
- 2009: PARC researchers study Wikipedia's content coverage by topic
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Study of featured article quality, Facebook integrates Wikipedia pages, and more
Study finds inconsistent quality in featured articles
This month's issue of the research journal First Monday contains an article entitled Evaluating quality control of Wikipedia's feature articles by David Lindsey (a student at Georgetown University and one of the two authors of the OnWikipedia blog mentioned previously in the Signpost). Based on the assessments of 22 featured articles by subject experts, the author concluded: "In expert evaluations, nearly one–third of the featured articles assessed were found to fail Wikipedia’s own featured article criteria."
In a discussion about the paper Shimgray analyzed the score that articles received in the evaluation versus the time that had passed since their FA promotion, and speculated that the low scores might be due to a decay in quality in "unmaintained" articles (rather than problems in the review process). Lindsey replied that drawing solid conclusions about this from the study was "absolutely impossible" because of the small sample size.
Facebook integrates Wikipedia content
In a 19 April blog posting, social networking site Facebook announced the launch of what it calls "Community Pages":
- "Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. [....] Community Pages are still in beta, but our long-term goal is to make them the best collection of shared knowledge on a topic. We're starting by showing Wikipedia information, but we're also looking for people who are passionate about any of these topics to sign up to contribute to the Page."
The example depicted in the announcement shows the lede of Wikipedia's cooking article. On each Community Page, a "Wikipedia" tab links to the full text of the Wikipedia article (if it exists).
On the Foundation-l mailing list, the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Business Development, Kul Wadhwa, announced the development to Wikipedians, adding:
- "Our hope is that many Facebook users (if they are not already) will also be inclined to join the large community of Wikipedia contributors. Facebook will follow the free licenses (CC-BY-SA) and help us find more ways people can share knowledge. Furthermore, we will be looking at other ways that both parties can cooperate in the future."
Replying to concerns that Facebook would draw potential editors away from Wikipedia, Wadhwa said that "we did give this a lot of thought. Facebook wanted to do this anyway (and they could take the content as long as they follow the license(s)) but we thought that, in the end, it would be better if we work with them on this to influence them to do it in a positive [way]."
Facebook has already initiated over 6.5 million of these pages, according to TechCrunch, which observed that the new feature seems to be Facebook's reaction to the problem that the "Pages" feature, introduced last year for brands and celebrities to present information about themselves, was increasingly used by Facebook members to create unofficial pages, also about other topics like baseball or yoga. TechCrunch also noted that adding content to Community Pages is not yet possible.
To CNET ("Facebookipedia?"), Facebook appears to be "actively treading into a territory that few companies have explored other than Wikipedia and Google", in "one of the boldest steps that the social-networking site has taken toward, well, consuming your life".
Craigslist founder does customer service for Wikipedia
In a blog post for the San Francisco Chronicle, Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist and a member of the Wikimedia advisory board, says he will be spending some time addressing complaints about biographies of living people. He writes:
I've volunteered to help out with short term problems, as part of my normal daily customer service work. (That is, it's part of what I feel is my personal public service mission. This is on my own initiative, not strictly as part of my role on the advisory board.) If you see a bio that's been attacked, please let me know, and normally I'll find a way to get it fixed, have already done so in the case of a sitting US Senator.
Briefly
- The 11 April Bangalore meetup was covered by the two largest Indian daily newspapers, The Hindu (And now, Wikipedia India's new face) and The Times of India (Wikipedia cries for desi content), both focusing on new Wikimedia Foundation Board member Bishakha Datta. A video recording of the event (90 minutes, low quality) is available online.
- Vanity Fair examined the version history of the article about teenage singer Justin Bieber ("Wikipedia Editors and Justin Bieber Fans Battle for Control of Justin Bieber Wikipedia Page")
- U.S. newspaper St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on recent hoax edits in the article about Grubville, Missouri, involving a nonexistent school and other false information.
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WikiProject Environment
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| Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk. |
This week, we decided to highlight the efforts of WikiProject Environment in celebration of Earth Day this Thursday in the United States, Arbor Day next Sunday in Germany, and Greenery Day at the beginning of May in Japan. WikiProject Environment was created by Alan Liefting in October 2005 and has grown to include over 100 members and nearly 3,500 articles, files, and other pages. The project boasts 14 featured articles, 2 A-class articles, and 39 good articles. Lists of environmental topics, definitions, and pages needing attention are maintained by the project. WikiProject Environment also serves as a parent for WikiProject Protected areas and WikiProject Superfunds. Alan Liefting and OhanaUnited shared the project with us.
What motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Environment? What aspects of the environment do you prefer to focus on?
- Alan Liefting: I have a very strong interest in the environment and have recently completed a university degree in environmental management. Given my level of interest is was a logical step to set up WikiProject Environment. I prefer to focus on environmental issues.
- OhanaUnited: Just like Alan, I'm also in the environmental science field. In addition to environmental issues, I also contribute to various socially and politically-related environmental issues such as environmental justice as well as biographies on environmentalists.
WikiProject Environment is home to 14 featured articles, 2 A-class articles, and 39 good articles. Which of these articles are you most proud of being involved with? Overall, what have been some of the project's greatest achievements?
- Alan Liefting: I am quite pleased with improving the list of environmental issues article which in 2007 was a poorly structured incomplete list. It is now something more representative of the topic.
- OhanaUnited: It is always nice to teach scholars and show [new editors] how to contribute. One of the things I'm most proud of while working with scholars is improving the article on sustainability. It was a Start-class prior to being expanded by a scholar in August 2008 but since then it is now a B-class. Besides that, every year on the week when Earth Hour approaches, you will see a lot of IP contributors working (not vandalizing) on the article. That gives me a good feeling because it shows how people do genuinely care for the environment.
Have any of the project's major initiatives ended unsuccessfully? What lessons have you learned from them?
- Alan Liefting: I set up the WikiProject Environment Climate change task force after seeing huge amounts of discussion at Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy. The hacked emails created international news so it was quite notable and it also started a long and ongoing talkfest on the article talk page. I wanted to point out to the social metapedians that there was plenty of other work than needed to be done rather than quibbling over one particular article. Sadly, the task force has not really come to much - or at least not as much as I had hoped for.
- OhanaUnited: I would say it is the Environmental Record task force. I started this task force in June 2007. The goal of this task force was to "make sure that the environmental records of policymakers, corporations, and organizations are accurately and consistently represented throughout the encyclopedia." There was a lot of activity between June 2007 and May 2008 and over 30 people participated in this task force. Unfortunately, the activity suddenly stopped in the third week of May 2008 (which nobody knew why that happened) and the task force didn't recover since then. It might be time to restart this task force as there might be newer data on how corporations and organizations did since we stopped in 2008.
Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?
- Alan Liefting: No, even though it should have close ties with WikiProject Science.
- OhanaUnited: Other than absorbing WikiProject Energy Development and WikiProject Climate Change into our project, there's nothing else that comes into my mind.
With Earth Day just around the corner, what articles would you recommend to Wikipedians who would like to learn about environmental issues? Are there any articles that need immediate attention in preparation for Earth Day?
- OhanaUnited: The best way to learn more is to find a long article like climate change (note and pay attention to the points and the strength presented by both sides), sustainability, eutrophication, or any that suits your interest. Don't be afraid to click the links in these articles and wander off because this is a very effective way to learn about new issues.
Aside from improving articles mentioned in the answers to the previous question, what are WikiProject Environment's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?
- OhanaUnited: There are many environmental issues that have not been covered by Wikipedia. A good place to start is by researching what major environmental issues in your area. It could be fish die-off in spring, noise pollution, urban sprawl, invasive species causing loss of biodiversity, alternative energy, and the list goes on and on. Alternatively, you can go to this section in our project page to see what articles needs to be cleaned up or expanded.
Anything else you'd like to add?
- Alan Liefting: There is an increasing interest in the environment by the wider community. Some issues are quite contentious, especially anthropogenic climate change, and so Wikipedia editors should cater to this interest with a wide range of verifiable, NPOV articles.
- OhanaUnited: Be aware and alert to people who push their agenda around because you'll run into them quite frequently in environmentally-related articles. During my contribution towards sustainability, a group of editors wasted nearly a year because one editor (which I won't mention his username here and we discovered that he used sockpuppets in an attempt to make it look convincing that more than one editor was on his side) added the NPOV tag on any facts he didn't agree on. We tried various venues including Wikiquette alerts, AN/I, RSN (reliable resource noticeboard) but nothing stopped his behavior. We finally had a breakthrough when we initiated an RfC. It turns out that he had also been pushing his own agenda on other areas like technology and economics. My advice to contributors that read a lot of environment-related articles is if something sounds funny in the article, check the article history and the talk page to see if someone has a hidden agenda that they are pursuing.
Next week we'll focus on a creature that lives in one of the ecosystems pictured to the right (excluding the picture taken from space, obviously). Until then, check out our previous reports in the archive.
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Approved this week
Administrators
Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Excirial (nom) and Kww (nom).
Featured pages
Eight articles were promoted to featured status this week: Big Butte Creek (nom), Hurricane Hazel (nom), First Test, 1948 Ashes series (nom), Porbeagle (nom), Japanese battleship Yamato (nom), Olivia Manning (nom), The Open Boat (nom) and Myles Standish (nom).
Eleven lists were promoted to featured status this week: IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship (nom), MusiCares Person of the Year (nom), List of National Treasures of Japan (temples) (nom), List of Sri Lankan Test cricket records (nom), 2010 Winter Olympics medal table (nom), Aurealis Award for best science fiction novel (nom), List of number-one albums of 2009 (Mexico) (nom), List of accolades received by Precious (nom), List of Nebraska Cornhuskers head football coaches (nom), List of NHL players with 50-goal seasons (nom) and List of Major League Baseball wins champions (nom).
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
One portal was promoted to featured status this week: Portal:Biological warfare (nom).
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Marsh rice rat, "Ode on Indolence", Federal Bridge Gross Weight Formula, Flag of Japan, Introduction to general relativity and Oklahoma City bombing.
Former featured pages
Four articles were delisted this week: Thou (nom), Shahbag (nom), Dalek (nom) and Texas Ranger Division (nom).
No lists were delisted this week.
No topics were delisted this week.
No portals were delisted this week.
Featured media
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: A poster for El Capitan, an operetta by John Philip Sousa, George Atzerodt, Brighton Pier and Brighton Beach, 1890s photochrom print of Dresden, Broccoli, Human steroidogenesis and Ottoman machine gun corps.
No featured sounds were promoted this week.
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Three pictures were promoted to featured status this week.
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Anatomy of an adult mosquito -
George V of Hanover, his wife Marie of Saxe-Altenburg and their children Ernest Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover, Princess Frederica of Hanover, and Princess Marie of Hanover -
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Arbitration Report
The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week and closed none, leaving four open.
Open cases
- Alastair Haines 2 (Week 1): The case was opened to address allegations of edit warring and other disruptive editing. The case is in the evidence/workshop phase.
- Gibraltar (Week 6): The case was opened to address issues of ownership and nationalist warfare on articles related to Gibraltar. The case is in the evidence/workshop phase.
- Russavia-Biophys (Week 3): The case was accepted to expedite a complicated Arbitration enforcement issue concerning Russavia and Biophys. The case is in the evidence/workshop phase.
- Transcendental Meditation movement (Week 9): The case was opened to deal with circumstances surrounding articles related to the eponymous movement, similar to the circumstances at issue in Scientology pages a year ago. The case is in the evidence/workshop phase.
Other
- The committee passed a motion to desysop Altenmann for sockpuppetry, including closing deletion discussions in which he had participated with other accounts.
- The committee issued a clarification of the rationale behind the ban of Offliner.
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