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2 August 2010

 

2010-08-02

Canadian political edits, Swedish royal wedding, Italian "right of reply" bill, Chapter reports

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By Wackywace and Tilman Bayer

Controversial edits from Canadian ministry

The Helmet-Mounted Display System developed for the F-35 Lightning II, an aircraft whose article has reportedly been edited against policy from government computers

The Toronto-based National Post has claimed that it has evidence that Defence Department computers in Ottawa are being used to "vandalize information on a Wikipedia site critical of the Conservative government's decision to spend billions on a new stealth fighter." This comes less than three weeks after The Signpost reported allegations in the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph that Members of Parliament were removing evidence of scandals they had been involved in from their Wikipedia articles.

The National Post reported that nine attempts were made to alter Wikipedia's article on the Joint Strike Fighter (Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II), "including the removal of any information that was critical of the Harper government's plan to spend at least $16 billion on the new fighter aircraft. Defence Department computers were also used to insert insults, aimed at Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, into the Wikipedia Joint Strike Fighter page. Ignatieff has questioned the proposed purchase."

It also reported that Wikipedia "traced the alterations to three computers owned by Defence Research and Development Canada's Ottawa offices." It was reported that a "spokesman for Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) said the attempts to alter the Wikipedia page were not part of a concerted effort to stifle debate on the proposed JSF purchase but inappropriate use of government computers by, as yet, an unidentified individual or individuals." Martin Champoux, DRDC's manager of public affairs, "said reminders will be sent to employees about government regulations regarding personal computer use."

An examination by The Signpost confirmed that an IP removed content, claiming in the edit summary that the information removed was "irrelevent [sic] and political and is inconsistent with entries for other countries that all have similar politics associated to the purchase". The edit was reverted, and the IP told to gain consensus on the article's talk page. The same IP then removed content multiple times (here, here, here, here, here). Then the same IP appeared to change tactic, introducing biased content (here) and attacking opposition Liberal Party Leader Michael Ignatieff (here). The article was then semi-protected.

The IP address is registered to Canadian Department of National Defence, and has now been blocked "for a short time".


The royal couple

Wikimedians accredited as photographers at royal wedding

On June 19, the wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling drew half a million visitors to Stockholm, Sweden. Among the roughly 2,300 accredited media representatives covering the events were two Wikimedians, whose accreditation had been obtained with help from the Swedish and German Wikimedia chapters. One of them, User:Prolineserver, last week described his experience in a blog post (in German) for Wikimedia Deutschland. Apart from the royal family, the events presented opportunities for portraying the guests of honor, who numbered more than a thousand. Some of these guests still await identification on the photographs now at Commons. Apart from the two accredited Wikimedians, other users took pictures; according to Wikimedia Sverige[1] "at least 10 persons have uploaded 277 photos and videos to Commons". The GLAMorous tool shows that many photos from the wedding are already in use on several Wikipedias, and received a significant number of page views in June alone.


Proposed Italian "right of reply" law seen as threat to Wikipedia

In a recent press release (English version), Wikimedia Italia voiced strong concerns about a bill that was being discussed before the Italian Chamber of Deputies, having already been approved by the Senate. According to the Italian chapter, the bill would extend a stringent right of reply to all websites, imposing restrictions they believe "will damage the Italian participation to the Internet and especially Wikipedia".

As noted a few days later by Wikimedia Italia, the vote on the bill appears to have been postponed until September.

Wikimedia chapter reports

Last month, three English-language chapter reports were released, in which Wikimedia chapters across the globe describe their recent activities.

Wikimedia Germany's "Zedler-Medaille"

Wikimedians at the Italian chapter started their "Wikimedia News" bulletin with an editorial describing the results of a survey on what readers think of Wikimedia Italia. The organization will soon open its own office in Rome, thanks to an "agreement between the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Rome, the Libraries of the City of Rome and the association Liber Liber". Apart from "video editing, e-book digitizing/layout and audio editing for the creation of audiobooks", the location will be used "to host civil service volunteers and interns, to organize courses and cultural events, in collaboration with the adjacent library "Vaccheria Nardi", which has large rooms with multimedia stations, area conferences, and of course reading rooms (the structure as a whole has three buildings)".

Wikimedia Sverige (Wikimedia Sweden) announced in their June 2010 report that they have sponsored a photohunt in the middle of Sweden (Bergslagssafari). Thus far, this has resulted in the uploading of pictures to Commons and media attention. Planning has begun for a similar event in the south of Sweden in September.

Wikimedia Deutschland's monthly Chapter Report for June 2010 mentioned preparations for a new phase of its school project, which educates pupils about the proper use of Wikipedia. The report described the Chapter's support for digitization projects on Wikisource, and mentioned discussions about its "community budget" and various political activities. Preparations for the Wikipedia academy, which will be held in November 2010, are taking shape. The main context of this year's event is the Year of Science 2010 "Future of Energy". At the event, the "Zedler-Medaille" (Zedler Medal) for a high-quality encyclopedia article in German will be awarded for the fourth time. This is a collaboration of Wikimedia Deutschland with an academic publisher and a scholarly society.

Briefly

  • On Meta, discussion has been ongoing about a proposal to set up a global "Dispute resolution committee" (formerly proposed as "Global Arbitration Committee"). The discussion is focusing on how to choose the members of this new body.
  • Erik Zachte, the Foundation's Data Analyst, has presented Wikistats reports on article revert trends on his blog.
  • Jimmy Wales is to give a keynote address to the World Capital Markets Symposium 2010, September 27–28, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, described as "an initiative by the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC)". According to a press release (published on ABN Newswire) he "will join policy-makers and financial industry experts in sharing their thoughts at the symposium, with the theme 'Transforming capital markets: leadership, change and governance'" and "share his vision, perspectives and insights by drawing from lessons of Wikipedia and on the democratization of information and knowledge and how to use or impart them responsibly especially in the fast-evolving financial and capital markets".
  • Staff at Wikia have described some of the processes involved in the company's current drive to improve the user experience on its site. One result from user behavior analysis was that "Search, Random Page, and Recent Changes are the most frequently clicked links across all [of Wikia's] 130,000 wikis". (Some of Wikia's past efforts to make MediaWiki more usable have also informed Wikimedia's developers, such as this).

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2010-08-02

Gardner and Sanger on why people edit Wikipedia, Fancy and frugal reading devices, Medical article assessed

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By Wackywace, Tarheel95, extransit and Tilman Bayer

Sue Gardner: "I want more women, more older people, more people from Africa!"

Sue Gardner (at Wikimania 2010)

The Globe and Mail recently interviewed Sue Gardner, the Foundation's executive director, in the Wikimedia office. In the piece, Wikipedians do it for love. Really. Gardner is described as "both old-fashioned and radical, a mega-voltage do-gooder, rebellious in her idealism and provocative in her optimism." Gardner says she "grew up in a public service family, we wanted to make the world a better place, and we were a good Canadian earnest family. I wanted to make good quality information available to people so they could make good decisions about their lives. At the time, the way to do that was through traditional journalistic methods.”

The report says that "Wikipedia, according to Ms. Gardner, is altruistic, its mission (one of “radical openness, radical freedom and radical convergence”) being to serve up objective information, aggregated and synthesized by volunteers in a non-commercial, credentials-neutral environment: You’re as likely to read a text written by a high-school student as one by a PhD."

"I love that at any time, when I'm asleep in California, there’s a Wikipedian somewhere fixing a typo or polishing an article", Gardner said. "Wikipedia is like the National Parks Service. The Internet is a vast space and it will only continue to grow, but in the vastness you still need space for parks or public libraries.... Wikipedians do it for love, for mission-type reasons. They don't want to be paid. They want to be praised." She described a stereotypical editor as someone who "always felt a little bit alone. They're the ones who always carry around knapsacks full of reference books. They were the ones picked last for teams and were the smartest kids in the class. Those are our people!"

Gardner concluded by saying that to achieve the vision of Wikipedia as "the sum of all the world's knowledge ... I want more women, more older people, more people from Africa!" She said that “we Wikipedians are good talkers! We love to chat. And proselytize,... We just care. A lot!"

Sue Gardner also recently started her own blog. The first two posts describe her thoughts about the Foundation's new revenue strategy (focusing on small donations instead of major donors and large grants), and about the Foundation as a workplace and the characteristics she is looking for in new hires.

Larry Sanger: "They've got a zillion rules—that's part of the problem"

Larry Sanger

Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales, also gave an interview recently, to Slate's Kathryn Schulz. When asked how he became interested in encyclopedias, he replied "it was pure accident. I was circulating an idea for a Web site around different Internet acquaintances and one of them happened to be Jimmy Wales. He responded by saying, 'Well, I'm trying to get this encyclopedia project going; would you be interested in coming to work on it?'.... I found that it was a fascinating problem to organize people online to create encyclopedias." Asked whether he had looked at historical precedents while doing so, Sanger said:

Sanger said there are "a lot of theories" on why people edit Wikipedia. "But I think the most important thing to say is that Wikipedia has very few practical constraints about people behaving according to normal rules of politeness and fair dealing. They've got a zillion rules, of course—that's part of the problem—but there is no easy way to rein in the bad actors."

Asked why he left Wikipedia, Sanger also reiterated his often-stated criticism that Wikipedia is hostile to experts. He continued: "I don't like the word 'control', because I myself am pretty libertarian in my outlook on these things, quite frankly. It makes me nervous to think of handing the keys over to the experts. But one thing that Wikipedia could do that would not spoil the system—except in the sense that it would cause a huge ruckus among Wikipedians—is simply create a program in which articles are reviewed or rated by experts".

Sanger criticized Wikipedia's quality, too: "Wikipedia frequently gets things wrong—or, more often, states things in a misleading or biased way." However, Sanger also acknowledged that "When it comes to just basic facts—statistics about geography or demographics, things like that—then as far I can tell, and as far as I've ever heard, those are fairly accurate. They are probably not much less reliable than any traditionally fact-checked source."

The interview touched on Citizendium (described by Slate as "a rival online encyclopedia"), where Sanger had tried to avoid what he sees as Wikipedia's errors, and whose "Approved articles" constitute such an expert review program. Asked why his predictions of "explosive growth" had not come true for Citizendium, Sanger said:

(Citizendium's sign-up process requires users to state their real name and to provide evidence to verify it; a free email address alone is insufficient.)

See also last week's Signpost coverage about the ongoing efforts to give Citizendium a sustainable structure before Sanger's long-announced stepping down as editor-in-chief: Citizendium still in transition after one year.

Wikipedia to become available as a "beautiful and efficient" iPad magazine and on third-world TV sets

CNet last week previewed "Discover", an upcoming software application for the Apple iPad (submitted to the App store on July 27), which renders Wikipedia as a magazine; users turn the pages by swiping their finger across the screen. An executive of Cooliris, the company behind the app, said "this new application takes structured data—in this case Wikipedia, as the starting point. We've then created a templatized starting page and structured data from Wikipedia to let users navigate the depths of Wikipedia in a beautiful and efficient way". The app generates magazin-covers using images from the article. It launches by displaying the Today's featured article and Picture of the day, as explained in a promotional video. The video ends with the tagline "Discover by Cooliris. The elegant and effortless way to enjoy Wikipedia".

The website padgadget.com described Wikipedia as "a tremendous tool for learning and searching for information. But, one of the biggest challenges is the breadth and depth of information provided by Wikipedia, which can sometimes make it difficult for all of us to navigate its content." The report goes on to say that the app "solves" this problem. "The elegant magazine style interface provides you with a simplified 'flow' navigation, glossy photos and the ability to dive more deeply into a new concept or information using smart search on Wikipedia."

As observed by Kurier (the Signpost's German sister publication), "edit" links, site notices and links to donate to the Wikimedia Foundation appear to be missing, as do copyright notices. Instead, according to CNet, advertisements by Cooliris will be displayed (the app will be cost-free for users). According to Jay Walsh, Wikimedia's Head of Communications, the Foundation appears to "have had no conversations with Cooliris about this app, nor about any topic."

Apps for viewing Wikipedia have long been popular on the iPhone, too. Several are available, apart from the free official app provided by the Wikimedia Foundation (see Signpost coverage about Wikipedia on iOS devices: May 2010, March 2010, October 2009, January 2009, December 2008, and February 2008). In March this year, the "Articles for iPhone" app (see Signpost coverage) sold more than 10,000 copies "within a short week", corresponding to more than $30,000 in revenue. It is also available for the iPad, and last week its developer asked users whether they would like it to have the capability to edit and compare revisions on the iPad.

In related news, Amazon recently released a new version of its Kindle app, updated for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, which enriched its ebook reading interface with the option to look up words in Wikipedia and Google, using an external browser (Wired: Kindle for iOS Brings iPad Search, Dictionary, Fast-Switching).

Somehow on the other end of the spectrum of mobile Wikipedia reading devices, Wired last week reported on a new device, projected to cost only $20, that will allow every Wikipedia article to be read without an Internet connection. Called the Humane Reader, the gadget is aimed at students in developing countries, and uses very basic technology to reduce costs: It is powered by two 8-bit microcontrollers and connects to a TV set instead of using a dedicated display. The developer, computer consultant Braddock Gaskill, told Wired that "It’s meant to be an absolute basic system that can deliver Wikipedia and e-books for educational and non-profit use." He went on to say that "once you put these in the hands of the students, they can, not just learn from it, but also hack it ... The combination of a computing platform and a encyclopedia opens up the world to them."

Medical article evaluated

Illustration from osteosarcoma, the assessed article

A "viewpoint paper" (abstract) published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) asks: "Wikipedia and osteosarcoma: a trustworthy patients' information?" The two-page article by six authors from the Medical University of Graz, Austria is a response to a paper published last year in the same journal, Seeking Health Information Online: Does Wikipedia Matter? (coauthored by Wikipedian TimVickers), which had found that "[b]ased on its search engine ranking and page view statistics, the English Wikipedia is a prominent source of online health information".

The recent paper described the results of a comparison of the English Wikipedia's article on osteosarcoma, a kind of bone cancer, (in its version as of 3 April 2009) with "the patient version and the health professional version of the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) website as 'official' reference websites". Each of the three texts was graded according to 20 questions, on a 0–3 scale. Three examples where Wikipedia scored zero were "Should radiotherapy normally be applied?", "Name three histological subtypes", "Do you find web-links to study centers (EURAMOS)?". The answers "were discussed with a member of the German board for guidelines in musculoskeletal tumor surgery (AL) and, furthermore, verified with authoritative resources and international guidelines." Wikipedia received 33 of 60 possible points, the NCI's patient version 40 points, and its professional version 50 points. However, only the difference between Wikipedia and the professional version was found to be statistically significant. As an example of Wikipedia's shortcomings, the authors specified that "important information on clinical studies or possible study centers (European and American Osteosarcoma Study Group (EURAMOS)) was missing." On the other hand, they noted that:

all three reviewers preferred Wikipedia when asked for the ease of use to find patient-related information and an explanation of the page’s oversight.

Despite the earlier remark about statistical significance, the paper concluded that:

the quality of osteosarcoma-related information found in the English Wikipedia is good but inferior to the patient information provided by the NCI.... [N]on-peer-reviewed commonly used websites offering health information, such as Wikipedia, should include links to more definitive sources such as those maintained by the NCI and professional international organizations on healthcare treatments. Furthermore, frequent checks should make sure such external links are to the highest quality and to the best-maintained aggregate sites on a given healthcare topic.

Both the conclusion about information quality and the remark about ease of use are somewhat different from the results of another recent study that had also compared cancer information on Wikipedia with that provided online by the NCI, based on a slightly larger sample size – ten different cancer types (see Signpost coverage: Wikipedia's cancer coverage is reliable and thorough, but not very readable).

Book about adventure games is based on Wikipedia, enriched with interviews

In an article last week (Wikipedia tapped for history of adventure games), GamerCrave reported that author Philipp Lenssen has "cobbled together a 500-page book on the history of graphic adventure games ... and thanks to the unpaid volunteer editors at Wikipedia, you can rest assured that the information within is for the most part pretty close to being accurate. Don’t worry, Lenssen’s not totally ripping off the free labor. First he went through all the text, editing portions that could use more book-like language."

But for readers who think Lenssen is making a quick buck, the website goes on to report that he is "giving 50 percent of the revenues to the Wikimedia foundation, and making a free, editable version available for free download, in accordance with Wikipedia’s rules." On Amazon, the book is currently listed for $29, with "Authors of Wikipedia" named as the author. Lenssen himself explains that his original idea had been to "merely compile an encyclopedia from Wikipedia, a book for perhaps a small but dedicated group of fans", but then the project took a life of of its own:

"What I did was edit the Wikipedia articles through heavy or light rewriting, depending on what I figured the article would need to look good in book form. I then went to find additional information from other sources where I felt having more could be fun, and I added screenshots. And then I conducted interviews with many people who were involved in producing the classic graphic adventures."

Briefly

Considering the folks at the Georgetown Cupcake just got their own Wikipedia page, they don't look excited.
  • On Tuesday, thegeorgetowndish.com, a website focusing on the Georgetown neighbourhood in Washington, D.C., noted the existence of the article Georgetown Cupcake, about a small coffee shop that is currently featured in the reality TV series DC Cupcakes. The article had been started two days earlier by Aude (a previous Signpost writer). The Dish's article began: "I guess this is how you tell you've arrived—as of this week, Georgetown Cupcake, having already nabbed its own TV spot on TLC, has its own Wikipedia page."
  • In a special investigation ("Sites Feed Personal Details To New Tracking Industry") of how Internet users are tracked by the websites they visit (through the use of HTTP Cookies, Web beacons and other software) The Wall Street Journal found that Wikipedia was the only website in the top fifty by traffic (U.S.) not to install any type of tracking file, while some websites used more than one hundred different invasive methods. Last year, the "Know Privacy" project at the UC Berkeley undertook a similar comparative study of 50 websites, and also singled out Wikipedia ("49 of the top 50 also collect some form of contact information, such as name, address, or phone number ... the only exception is Wikipedia..."). However, it did detect tracking devices (web bugs) at wikipedia.org. They were found to have been installed by local admins on the Hungarian and West Flemish Wikipedias, in violation of the Foundation's privacy policy, and removed immediately.
  • The July 29 edition of the New York Times' Tech Talk podcast (MP3) featured a 7 minute interview with Noam Cohen, a NYT editor who had been present at the recent Wikimania conference in Gdansk, Poland. Cohen described Wikipedia's current situation as "being a victim of your own success" (flagging enthusiasm by contributors although "the audience keeps going up because people more and more recognize it for being reliable"), noted that the Foundation "looks very different than the Wikipedian regular contributors", in that the latter were "overwhelmingly male", younger and "computer techie types", and mentioned the Foundation's efforts to increase diversity, the use of Google's Translation Toolkit, the collaboration with the British Museum, and (briefly) flagged revisions.
  • The Wikimedia Foundation's Chief Technical Officer, Danese Cooper, was featured as one of 15 Developer/Hacker Women to Follow on Twitter on Mashable last week.

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2010-08-02

Always Expanding: WikiProject Images and Media

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By Mabeenot


WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

This week, we took a look at the large WikiProject Images and Media, originally started in May 2008 as WikiProject Graphics. Throughout the project's history, it has absorbed the resources and scope of many other projects, the latest of which is WikiProject Photography. Both WP Photography and WP Images and Media sought to improve the quality of images on Wikipedia, although WP Photography was hampered by confusion as to what the project's scope was. Articles about photography in general were mistakenly tagged with the WikiProject Photography banner, resulting in an unwieldy collection of articles and images maintained by members who preferred to shoot photographs and critique images for featured status rather than delving into historical photographs and photography techniques.

WikiProject Images and Media also dealt with identity problems early in the project's history. While it was named WikiProject Graphics, the project struggled with the variety of different graphics on Wikipedia, resulting in the project's scope continuing to increase. WikiProject Images and Media eventually absorbed several other projects, including WikiProject Free images, WikiProject Fair use, WikiProject Moving free images to Wikimedia Commons, and WikiProject Illustration. A variety of other semi-active and inactive projects have been proposed to be merged into WikiProject Images and Media, with varying results.

WikiProject Images and Media currently covers all pages in the "File" namespace. An important part of WikiProject Images and Media's scope is reviewing images to be designated as featured pictures or valued pictures. Other tasks spearheaded by the project include suggesting better names for images, moving free media to the Commons, addressing copyright and fair-use issues, fulfilling image requests, and nominating unsuitable media for deletion.

This week we interviewed Tim Pierce, a member of WikiProject Photography who has transitioned to WikiProject Images and Media, which he believes "is a better home for me anyway." He hopes that a new WikiProject Photography will someday be born to "focus on photography technique, technology and history." Tim Pierce has fulfilled several requests for photographs, an effort we wanted to know more about:

The Little River running through Alewife Brook Reservation, shot by Tim Pierce
Tim Pierce: I like to make a list of requested photographs in locations near where I work or live, and go take pictures of those things when I can. It feels like something that I'm particularly qualified to contribute to the project; Wikipedians all over the world might be able to contribute photographs of a particular species of bird or an automobile, but only people who live nearby can easily take free photographs of buildings or cities in my area. Last year on one of the Wikipedia IRC channels, I met a woman who needed some help uploading some pictures that her father had taken years ago. It turned out that her father was an aviator who owned some of the earliest Nieuport airplanes, and was possibly the first person in the U.S. to own one. As far as I could tell, there were no photographs anywhere of some of these planes, and these pictures were beautiful -- stunning high-resolution scans of old silver nitrate exposures. It was a privilege and a rare honor to be able to help add those photos to Wikipedia. That's something that just doesn't happen every day.

When asked about the project's most pressing needs, Tim Pierce replied that "If you have a camera, start taking pictures! If you don't know where to start, look in Wikipedia requested photographs in places and find the state, province, county or city where you live. Those categories have a link to a page that plots all of the nearby requested photos on a Google map, so you can see at a glance where to go to take a picture that Wikipedia needs." For editors who don't have a camera, Tim Pierce says "consider going through Category:Articles which may no longer need images. These are articles that are flagged with {{reqphoto}} as needing an image, but now have one or more images on the main page. Sometimes these "images" are just logos or icons that don't really fulfill the request, but in many cases the {{reqphoto}} template is no longer needed and can be removed. There are thousands of requests in this category and we could use more people to help weed out the stale photo requests!"

Next week's Report will soar high above the clouds. Until then, stay aloft with our previous Reports in the archive.

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2010-08-02

The best of the week

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By Tony1, Wackywace, and Dabomb87
The featured picture Choice of the week is this panorama of the Uluguru Mountains in Tanzania, East Africa.

Administrators

The Signpost congratulates five editors on their promotion to adminship:

  • Thumperward (nom)—Chris Cunningham, a system administrator in Scotland—has been with us for more than four years. He has worked heavily on most of Wikipedia's core templates, including infoboxes and article message boxes, and has a strong record of involvement at the help desk and the technical village pump.
  • Favonian (nom), "a mathematician by education, a software architect by profession and an amateur historian when time allows", is fluent in both English and Danish. During more than two years of editing, Favonian has been active in anti-vandalism and new-page patrolling, with maintenance work on linking, referencing and categorisation.
  • Bsadowski1 (nom), from the American midwest, has been active since December 2008, and has specialised in tasks such as ensuring compliance in account creation and operation, patrolling new pages, and reporting vandalism. Bsadowski is also an admin and checkuser on the Simple English Wikipedia, and an admin on MetaWiki.
  • Joe Decker (nom), a graduate of the prestigious California Institute of Technology, has been a Wikipedian since 2005. He has been a significant contributor to the unreferenced BLP cleanup drive, in which he has provided referencing for more than a thousand articles created by other editors.
  • Jujutacular (nom), also known as "juju", specialises in featured content. He is an active reviewer for featured list candidates and featured picture candidates, and has produced 2 featured lists, 15 did you knows, 3 featured sounds, and 11 featured pictures.

Seventeen articles were promoted to featured status:

"Susan Blue" by the children's book illustrator Kate Greenaway (1885), engraved and printed by Edmund Evans, the subject of a new featured article
The article on the village of Little Thetford, north of London, was promoted. This 2005 tornado sucked up large quantities of dark earth from the surrounding fenland.
The treasure beneath the field: the silver "Hoxne Tigress", a broken-off handle from an unknown object in the Hoxne Hoard, unearthed by accident in Suffolk, England (picture by Mike Peel)
Babe Ruth—from 500 home run club, our featured list Choice of the week—was the first player to reach 500 home runs (1929)
Biddlestone Chapel, was built as a private chapel in a remote location in Northumberland, England, on the remains of a medieval pele tower.
A male Dendropsophus microcephalus tries to attract females by blowing up his vocal sac during a call.
The element Ruthenium. This image was shot outdoors, and the sky can be seen reflected by the mirror-like surface of the processed bar.

Choice of the week: The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Brianboulton to select what he believes is the best FA for the week. He wrote: "I was tempted to choose Edmund Evans for the beauty of its images, but in the end I decided on Montague Druitt. Unsolved mysteries, even 120-year-old ones, are endlessly fascinating, especially when told in sparse, lucid prose which is sometimes deliciously dry. I loved this line: 'Druitt, his mother and his sister Georgiana were invited to a ball in honour of Clarence at the home of Lord Wimborne on 17 December 1888, although they did not attend because by that time Montague was dead, his mother was in an asylum, and his sister was expecting her second child.' Seems like some people will do anything to avoid their social obligations."

Four featured articles were delisted:

Eight lists were promoted:

Choice of the week: We asked regular nominator and reviewer Rambo's Revenge for his pick of this week's crop: "Look through the log of promoted featured lists and you will see that sport figures frequently. However, this is not something to be bemoaned. Even as a baseball-ignorant Brit, the 500 home run club stood out to me as an exemplary list. It uses sortabilty to show how, chronologically, members of the club appear to have a pathway into the Hall of Fame. A less common theme is architectural lists; the newly promoted Historic Chapels Trust is a beautifully complete piece of content that not only gives a rounded explanation and history of the Trust but details, descriptions and, where possible, images of each constituent chapel." Pictures from both lists appear above.

One topic was promoted:

  • Kentucky gubernatorial election, 1899 (nom). This tumultuous election and its aftermath featured political party infighting, voter fraud, a Supreme Court case, and the only assassination of a state governor in U.S. history (nominated by Acdixon).

Eleven images were promoted:

  • A tramp (nom) depicted in an 1899 American poster. Adam Cuerden recropped the original for better composition, treated the colours to approach the likely original unfaded version, and made other subtle improvements. (below)
  • Dendropsophus microcephalus (nom), a male of this frog species displaying its vocal sac while calling (created by Brian.gratwicke).
  • Tasmanian Darner (nom) Photographer Noodle snacks said the dragonfly "was sitting beside Lake Will, drying its wings, [and] by taking many shots to get a sharp one I was able to get something decent thanks to the obliging subject".
  • Metallic Ringtail (nom) are found in still-water bodies lakes, swamps, and alpine bogs. Noodle snacks, the creator, carefully identified the species from The complete field guide to dragonflies of Australia; he pointed out that both "metallic lustre and ringtail" are clearly visible.
  • Common Brushtail Possum (nom) an animal native to Australia, and taken with a flash, virtually the only way to capture images of nocturnal animals (created by Noodle snacks).
  • Ruthenium bar (nom), atomic number 44 (created by Alchemist-hp) (right)
  • Uluguru Mountain Ranges (nom), a panorama showing the Uluguru Mountains in Morogoro, Tanzania (created by Muhammad Mahdi Karim). (top)
  • Ernest Borgnine (nom), the actor, showing off his new Chief Petty Officer hat at the United States Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. (created by Mark D. Faram of the U.S. Navy) (below)
  • Peacock Flounder Bothus mancus in Kona (nom), four frames showing a flounder as it changes colour to match the surroundings, and then burying itself in sand (created by Mbz1).
  • Common collared lizard (nom), taken from an angle that the nominator stated was "perfect to show off the pattern on the body, and especially on the neck, from which the lizard takes its name" (created by Dschwen).
  • Central Heterochromia (nom), showing an eye condition in which there are two colours in the same iris. The image was created by Adam Cuerden, who told reviewers that "sometimes, yourself is the best illustration ... I thought, why not?"

Choice of the week: Juliancolton was a member of the 2009 Organizing Committee for the Commons Picture of the Year Award (see Signpost coverage). We invited him to choose his number-one featured picture for the week. "In my opinion", he told us, "the Uluguru Mountain Ranges (top) panorama is among the most impressive images promoted this week. Aside from helping to fill a notorious gap in coverage of Africa on Wikipedia, it has impressive technical quality. Panoramas are difficult to successfully create, and this particular one expresses quite a bit of skill on the photographer's part."

Two featured pictures were delisted:


This image of a 1899 American poster depicting a tramp (an itinerant vagrant), is a new featured picture.
Reviewers praised this picture of veteran American actor Ernest Borgnine for its brilliant character portrayal.


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2010-08-02

Tricky and Lengthy Dispute Resolution

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By Ncmvocalist

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving two open.

Open cases

  • Climate change (Week 8): Special rules of conduct were put in place for this arbitration. The case resulted from the merging of several Arbitration requests on the same topic matter into a single case, and the failure of a related request for comment to make headway. Although the case is still technically open, the workshop phase was closed on July 19 for at least 48 hours to give a break to all participants while arbitrators think about a proposed decision. Last week, participants requested an update on when to expect a proposed decision, but no specific target date has been set. The case has made no visible on-wiki progress for the past two weeks.
  • Race and intelligence (Week 9): This case concerns accusations of incivility, disruptive editing, and tag-teaming to control the content on articles related to race and intelligence. Following a number of delays (see Signpost coverage from June 28, July 5, July 12), the case moved to the proposed decision phase. The proposed decision that was drafted by Coren has sparked several concerns among participants and non-participants (example). The case remains in the proposed decision phase, as other proposals by other arbitrators are being considered.

Motion

  • A motion was passed in relation to Betacommand, who is now editing as Δ: he has been permitted to perform automated tasks in relation to SPI clerking only as specified and authorised by the bot approvals group. He is not permitted to use the bot for any other purpose, unless he has received explicit permission from the bot approvals group and endorsement by the Committee.

Other

  • Applications for CheckUser and Oversight permissions have now closed. The Committee is reviewing a total of 27 different applications that were received. In two weeks, The Signpost will publish the names of applicants being actively considered for appointment.
Update: The Signpost regrets to inform readers of an inaccuracy in this week's issue - in fact, the Committee did not receive 27 different applications. When arbitrators were requested to reveal the "total number" of "CU/OS applications...ArbCom received", arbitrator KnightLago responded by saying that 27 "inquires" were received, and has since clarified that at this time, there was no intention of revealing the total number of applications received. Asked by the journalist about the reason for withholding that information, KnightLago responded that there "is no compelling basis to release the number now".

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2010-08-02

Major MediaWiki release, password security, vulnerable MediaWiki installations, and more

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By Tilman Bayer and Jarry1250

MediaWiki 1.16 released

The release of the latest version of MediaWiki (Version 1.16) was announced this week (Wikimedia Techblog); a separate, minor update (Version 1.15.5) was also released for operators unwilling or unable to upgrade fully. Both versions were billed as fixing an important "data leakage vulnerability" (wikitech-l mailing list). The milestone has little inherent significance for Wikimedians, since Wikimedia Foundation wikis run their own version of the MediaWiki software, which is usually well ahead of the official release. MediaWiki was originally developed with Wikipedia in mind but is now in use in some form or other on a number of other popular sites, including the commercial wiki host Wikia. System administrators of these other installations are encouraged to upgrade, both for security reasons and to take advantage of features introduced since the 1.15 milestone, reached more than a year ago. However, Wikimedians can be hopeful that the release is a sign of strength in the development community.

Study of web passwords includes Wikipedia

The handling of user passwords on 150 websites was analysed in a recent study. Joseph Bonneau and Sören Preibusch, researchers from the University of Cambridge who conducted the study (The password thicket: technical and market failures in human authentication on the web, see also blog post and downloadable data), called it "the first large-scale empirical analysis of password implementations deployed on the Internet". Wikipedia received a "password security score" of 4 out of 10, falling short of the optimal score with respect to several evaluation criteria: the password selection advice does not prohibit dictionary words, a minimum length (>1) is not required, the use of numbers or symbols in the password is not enforced, federated identity services are not supported (although a MediaWiki extension for OpenID exists), the user list is not protected from probing (the list is intentionally available), and TLS is normally not used to protect password submissions (the password is sent in cleartext when logging in. However, the secure server provides encrypted connections).

Asked by The Signpost for comment, Sören Preibusch said:

See also past Signpost coverage about password security on Wikipedia: Four administrator accounts desysopped after hijacking, vandalism, Administrator status restored to five accounts after emergency desysopping (about a 2007 incident which led to some changes in MediaWiki and the start of the page Wikipedia:Security), Blank passwords eliminated for security reasons (2006), Password security upgraded after Slashdot furor (2005, about an incident after which salted passwords were introduced).

95% of MediaWiki installations said to have a "serious vulnerability"

In an unrelated announcement, research published by Qualys – a private software security firm – has shown that 19 in every 20 MediaWiki installations are running software old enough to include "serious vulnerabilities", compared with fewer than 1 in 20 Wordpress installations (Wikimedia Techblog). Developer Tim Starling (one of only a handful of paid MediaWiki programmers) explained the startling figure:

In brief

Note: not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

  • Daniel Kinzler (User:Duesentrieb, a MediaWiki developer employed by Wikimedia Germany) has written a new program to work with Wikipedia's category structure (CatGraph), using the Neo4j graph database. The long-term goal is to provide category-based search (especially deep category intersection), replacing his own CatScan tool.
  • Erik Zachte, WMF data analyst, notes that the underreporting of pageview counts has been repaired for recent months (and the cause of the problem has been identified and removed) and that there now exists a new summary report for Wikimedia page views that "presents trends for nearly all projects on a single page".
  • Bug #24564 has been fixed, restoring use of "xxlimit=max" in the API, broken by recent updates.

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