Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-08-23

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23 August 2010

News and notes
Pending changes poll, Public policy classes, Payment schemes debate, and more

In the news
Zionist editing courses, newspaper denies editing candidate, net neutrality

WikiProject report
WikiProject Cryptozoology

Features and admins
The best of the week

Arbitration report
Proposed decision of climate change case posted

Technology report
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

2010-08-23

Pending changes poll, Public policy classes, Payment schemes debate, and more

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By Resident Mario and Tilman Bayer

Straw poll begins after end of "pending changes" trial

Public policy initiative announces participating classes

The Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative has announced the names of the universities participating in its pilot program to bring Wikipedia editing into public policy classes. The initiative is a project aiming to include Wikipedia editing in the college classroom environment (see earlier Signpost article: Introducing the Public Policy Initiative). Five US universities are included in the trial:

Georgetown University – Dr. Rochelle Davis is incorporating Wikipedia editing into two of her courses, "Introduction to the Study of the Arab World" and "Theorizing Culture and Politics."
George Washington University – four professors will participate in the Public Policy Initiative by including editing in their courses.
Harvard University – Nicco Mele is placing editing in his fall graduate course, "Media, Politics and Power in the Digital Age."
Indiana University – lecturer Dr. Barry Rubin's graduate course "Seminar in Urban Economic Development" will involve the initiative.
Syracuse University – Carol Dwyer will be teaching the "Policy Research & Publications" course within the initiative.

The "Wikipedia Ambassador" logo

As part of the program, Campus Ambassadors have been selected to facilitate the courses (see earlier Signpost coverage). The initiative is still recruiting more Online Ambassadors, which are being coordinated by Sage Ross.

In related news, students at the University of Michigan have formed the first Wikipedia student club in the US (as mentioned in last week's Signpost). Started by Cheryl Moy, a chemistry major, the club has already reached 25 members, according to a post on the Foundation's blog. Although it is the first Wikipedia club in the US, it is not the first Wikipedia club ever created; a McGill University club was formed last year in Canada, and students at James Madison University in Virginia are in the process of forming their own group as well. Several free culture groups already exist in various universities.

German Wikipedia debates payment schemes

The German Wikipedia recently discussed ideas for using the "social payment" system Flattr to enable readers to donate to Wikipedia authors, or to Wikimedia.

Flattr is a start-up co-founded earlier this year by Peter Sunde (known for his involvement with filesharing site The Pirate Bay). Web surfers can open an account and load it with a fixed monthly amount, which is distributed at the end of each month among those of the participating sites where the surfer has chosen to reward pages by clicking on the embedded Flattr buttons. So far, it is most widespread in Germany, where it is used by many high-profile blogs and on the web sites of two daily newspapers – one of them, die tageszeitung, earned €1420 via Flattr in July. Since this month, Flattr is also being used by Wikileaks. Similar micro-donation systems include Kachingle.

In April, a simple MediaWiki extension was written that allows the embedding of Flattr buttons on sites running MediaWiki. It does not appear to be in use on any Wikimedia Foundation wiki. However, instead of the one-click donation via the embedded button, it is also possible to donate on a corresponding page on the Flattr site, which can be linked using a normal weblink.

On Wikimedia Commons, such Flattr links have already appeared on image description pages, inviting a donation to the photographer of the image. Two of them were added in June [1][2] by AlexanderKlink (after he had asked on the Village pump whether the community would find this acceptable and had received no objections). He told The Signpost that the more popular of the two photos had received 9 Flattr clicks in June, corresponding to €2 in earnings, and 3 clicks in July resulting in €0.50. However, he noted that a large proportion of the clicks appeared to have come from the Flattr site itself (which displays a list of flattr-able web pages), rather than from the Flattr link on Commons.

On August 1, Mathias Schindler (a project manager at Wikimedia Deutschland) published some "unsorted observations" (in German) on his private blog, musing the idea of having a Flattr button in every Wikipedia article. He listed several issues that would arise, among them:

Privacy: The standard Flattr button is loaded dynamically from Flattr's own servers, which would presumably violate the Foundation's privacy policy (the surfer's IP would be transmitted to an outside entity, which would be in a position to track the surfer's Wikipedia reading behavior). However, there is the possibility of using a static button or a link as in the examples on Commons.
Collaboration: Assuming that the money would go to Wikipedians, instead of the WMF: How should the Flattr donations for an article with many different contributors be distributed?
Cannibalization: The average donation per Flattr click is far smaller than the average donation via the "Donate to Wikipedia" link, so (in the case where the WMF would be the recipient of Flattr donations) the overall revenue might actually be reduced.
Commission size: Currently, Flattr imposes a 10% fee on donations, which might be seen as too high.

A straw poll started on the German Wikipedia on August 16 to evaluate support for two proposals, both of which tried to avoid the "collaboration" issue:

Enabling Flattr buttons on user pages, such that surfers could decide to reward a particular author
Enabling Flattr buttons in articles, for donations to the WMF

After one week, a large majority has voted against both proposals.

In 2008 and 2009, the German Wikipedia saw prolonged debates about the possible use of a different system for a financial remuneration of authors. In 2007, the German collecting society VG Wort had set up a system called "METIS" to pay royalties to authors of web pages. The money – an estimated €15 million in 2008 – comes from fees imposed on the sale of CD and DVD burners in Germany. The rationale for including web pages is that, according to consumer surveys, around half of the copyrighted texts that are copied using these devices have been downloaded from the Internet. To be eligible, the web page has to be registered with METIS and usually needs to carry a web bug from their server (the payments are based on page impressions). METIS had indicated that the system might include the German Wikipedia, too; its free license notwithstanding (apparently it is assumed that enough copies would not satisfy the terms of the GFDL/CC-BY-SA 3.0. The latter's "legal code" contains clauses about "non-waivable" and "waivable" compulsory license schemes). The German Wikimedia chapter was in contact with METIS, but stated that some legal issues required evaluation and a commmunity decision would be needed after that. Several German Wikipedians advocated using METIS, but others objected, often on the grounds that a fair distribution between authors and non-authors – such as those doing administrative work or software development – would be difficult.

Briefly

The Wikimedia Foundation has announced three new job openings:
- The Chapter Development Direction is responsible for coordinating foundation interactions with regional chapters worldwide.
- The Senior Research Analyst – Strategy is responsible for the maintenance and development of tools for "cross-departmental research collaboration and coordination".
- The Senior Research Analyst – Global Development will be in charge of encouraging the growth of Wikimedia on a global scale, especially in countries where it is less developed.
The proceedings for last month's WikiSym conference are now downloadable without charge from the conference wiki, after having been published earlier on the (paywalled) ACM portal. There was some concern among participants because ACM had refused to allow contributions to be released under a free license (in addition to the cost-free download option). The contribution of User:guillom was not included in the proceedings because he felt that his research should be reusable by the Wikimedia community.
Several new WMF projects have been created: the Korean Wikinews, Macedonian Wikimedia, and Frasch Wikipedia are all live.
Wikimedia Nederland have published their chapter report for May–July 2010. The report announces "Wiki loves Bieb", a library translation program, "Wiki loves Monuments", a photo scavenger hunt, the release of another 6000 images on Commons from the Tropenmuseum, a second General Assembly in June, the filing of a grant request with the Wikimedia Foundation, a new design for the chapter website, and participation in a fundraising summit organized by Wikimedia UK in Bristol.
A study on Controversial Content in Wikimedia projects by Robert Harris, a consultant hired by the Foundation, is ongoing, with recommendations to the Board of Trustees due in October (see also earlier Signpost coverage: Board resolution on offensive content). Following earlier questions to the community that focused on potentially objectionable images, Harris has now invited feedback on a second set of questions that extend the discussion to other content areas such as text. The first question asks whether existing policies and guidelines such as NPOV and Verifiability need to be supplemented by additional ones to help in dealing with controversial content.

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2010-08-23

Zionist editing courses, newspaper denies editing candidate, net neutrality

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By Forty two, Tilman Bayer and Ncmvocalist

Wikipedia editing courses launched by zionist groups

The Guardian reports that two Israeli groups, the Yesha Council of the settlers movement and another right-wing group, Israel Sheli ("My Israel"), have set up courses in "Zionist editing" for Wikipedia. It quoted one of the participants:

“

We learned what not to do: don't jump into deep waters immediately, don't be argumentative, realise that there is a semi-democratic community out there, realise how not to get yourself banned.

”

According to Israel National News, the goal of the course is to educate and enable an army of editors on Wikipedia and to provide them with professional skills at writing and editing in a manner which defends and promotes Israel's image. Ma'an News Agency reports that the 'Best Zionist Editor' would be awarded with a free hot-air balloon ride. According to AhlulBayt, the Iranian news agency, "Around 50 right-wingers, including media professionals who live in Israeli settlements, are participating in the course, which aims to teach not only how to manipulate the open structure and style of wikipedia to push their far-right political agenda, but also how to do so undetected, in order to get into the administration of the site."

Haaretz reports that the first workshop (held on August 17 in Jerusalem) had around 50 participants, "nearly all of them religious and many from settlements". The newspaper remarked that "For years now, Wikipedia has been a fierce battleground between the Israeli right and left". The scope of the workshop, according to the organizers, included both the Hebrew and the English Wikipedia. On the Foundation-l mailing list, Asaf Bartov from Wikimedia Israel said that "some Hebrew Wikipedians have ... approached that group in order to explain the principles of Wikipedia to them ... as usual, the WP community is vigilant, and has means to counter such initiatives. We hope to win at least a few motivated editors, despite the unpleasant political overtones."

In 2008, the Wikipedia-related activities of the US-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) had attracted attention (see Signpost' coverage: Pro-Israeli group's lobbying gets press, arbitration case).

Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd denies editing mayoral candidate's biography

According to a report by Toronto Sun, an anonymous user has traced an edit to Wikipedia's article about Rob Ford, a Toronto mayoral candidate, to Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd. The report states that this unnamed user "was reading through some of the Wikipedia entries on the candidates" when he noticed that a link to a satire site was listed as “Rob Ford’s Personal Blog”. The user then removed it on August 4, but it was reinstated on the following day before it was removed again. The initial "edit in question" was made on July 16. Toronto Star Newspapers Ltd has denied the allegation and has stated they are "trying to track [the edit] down", but this "might be impossible" since the IP is shared by its other publications, including the Sing Tao and Metro newspapers.

Wikipedia as a poster child for net neutrality

During the recent debates about network neutrality, which were triggered earlier this month by an agreement reached between Google and Verizon, several commenters used Wikipedia as an example of a site that would be or could have been affected by a non-neutral Internet. A Discover blog post introduced the topic of the controversy as follows: "An open internet means all bits are treated the same: internet service providers process every internet content provider’s information at the same speed–YouTube or Hulu, Wikipedia or Britannica". In a comment for The New York Times' "Room for Debate", Tim Wu named Wikipedia as an example of "many of the best Internet sites [that] are non-commercial or don't really make commercial sense [and] will get slower and harder to use, while commercial sites like starbucks.com or walmart.com will load faster". His concern over Wikipedia's future was also highlighted on the blog of Reason, where it was noted that Wu "originally coined the term Net neutrality". However, Reason did not "see much evidence that Wikipedia or other non-commercial sites would become harder to use". Gigi Sohn from Public Knowledge indicated that net neutrality might have been a necessary condition for Wikipedia's success in the past: "the public wants the FCC to be able to protect an open Internet that will ensure that the next Google, the next Facebook, the next Twitter and the next Wikipedia can succeed."

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2010-08-23

WikiProject Cryptozoology

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By Mabeenot

WikiProject news

News in brief

WikiProject Fact and Reference Check is seeking comments about a possible reference evaluation system
The Guild of Copy Editors is hosting another copy editing drive, scheduled to start September 1. Sign up to help reduce the backlog, win some barnstars, and meet some nice people along the way
WikiProject Unreferenced BLP Rescue is looking for new members to help reduce the number of unreferenced biographies of living persons
Operation "Majestic Titan" is looking for editors interested in working in a collegial environment to help write articles and/or review FACs related to all of the battleships and battlecruisers ever built
The Motto of the Day community is discussing some important changes to the MOTD

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

Thylacines photographed in 1902. Today, they are believed to be extinct, although there are occasional unconfirmed sightings.

The Okapi is a former cryptid now recognized by zoologists.

An interpretation of the Mongolian Death Worm by Belgian painter Pieter Dirkx.

This week, we took a look at WikiProject Cryptozoology, a project that specializes in improving articles about mysterious or legendary creatures whose existence is often regarded as highly unlikely. Cryptids covered by WikiProject Cryptozoology range from the well-known Bigfoot and Yeti to the more obscure Kongamato of Africa and Yowie of Australia. The project was started as WikiProject Cryptids in June 2006 and has grown to include 555 articles, including a featured article about the believed-to-be-extinct Thylacine. The project struggled through a period of semi-activity before being revitalized earlier this year.

We interviewed Simon Burchell, Kendroche (Where is WikiResearch?), AstroHurricane001 (AH1), and Gniniv. Both Simon Burchell and Gniniv joined the project in its bleakest hours and sought to jump start the project. To Simon Burchell, the project "was obviously very neglected, and the Black dog (ghost) article in particular was largely unreferenced." Kendroche joined the project because of "an interest in cryptids from a young age." Likewise, AstroHurricane001 came to the project out of an interest in strange creatures, stating "I had recently read about cryptids prior to joining the project, and decided I wanted to contribute to the project's scope and coverage of cryptozoological creatures, whether they actually exist or not."

What is your favorite legendary creature? What kind of cryptids do you tend to focus on the most?

Simon Burchell: My favourite creature is the Black Dog, having written a booklet on the subject (Phantom Black Dogs in Latin America), which involved a lot of research on the subject. However, I'm rather partial to anything which is disturbingly weird, such as Mothman, Owlman etc.

Kendroche: My favourite individual would probable be the Beast of Gévaudan. I tend to stay away from the human-like cryptids, focussing more on those that may have been(/be) remnant species or undiscovered, rare creatures.

AH1: My favourite cryptid would be the Mokele-mbembe, as it is supposedly a surviving dinosaur and the most well-known example of such. I have contributed to articles on humanoid cryptids, but the only surviving articles I created on them are the Nuk-luk and the Steller's Sea Ape. Other articles like the devil monkey were redirected and assumed to be original research. I also created list of reported lake monsters, an incomplete list of lake monsters around the world, but most of my additions were removed and I had only completed a small fraction of the list from the main reference I had. I'll note, however, that at least one previously identified "lake monster" has been confirmed—the Hoan Kiem Turtle.

Gniniv: My favorite Cryptid is the Sasquatch also known as Bigfoot, seeing as I live in the Pacific Northwest.

What are some of the difficulties associated with reviving a project like WikiProject Cryptozoology?

Simon Burchell: General lack of interest, being the only person working on a particular project can get a bit frustrating.

Gniniv: Cryptozoology is generally shoved aside amongst mainstream zoologists, so getting the word out on its existence can be a challenge.

Kendroche: I have found in the past that 'dead' projects often have one or two individuals around who monitor the articles and will fight against any major edits to what they consider to be their work.

AH1: I have my own experience with starting a new project (WikiProject Dinotopia), which became inactive as I never found the time to contribute to it. If a stale project can achieve wider interest among the general Wikipedian public, then people can get the project going again.

What articles are you currently trying to promote to FA or GA status?

Gniniv: I am trying to improve our subject article Cryptozoology to GA status.

Kendroche: For the moment I'm concentrating on referencing, resourcing and removal of dead links (especially those caused by the recent purge of autobiographies).

Since your project focuses on mysterious or rarely spotted creatures, is it difficult to find reliable sources for articles? Does the project have to deal with a lot of fringe theories?

Simon Burchell: The quality of the sources varies considerably but there is an enormous amount of material available. A subject does not have to be scientific in order to be verifiable. Cryptozoology often overlaps with mythology and folklore, and studies are available. There are a lot of fairly reliable books out there on out-of-place big cats, black dogs, lake monsters, sea serpents etc. If these books reliably provide their sources, there's no reason not to use it. The fact that the creature may not physically exist (like the black dog, for example) doesn't mean that a meaningful article cannot be produced on it. Take a look at the Fairy article for example, which is a nice, reliably sourced article.

Kendroche: It is not so much the lack of referenceable material, there's lots of that. The problem is that a lot of this material is often criticised and challenged for being written from the author's POV and may be the only reliable material out there. Also, the rules of Wiki demands facts, not always possible when you're dealing with largely fictional material.

AH1: Most scientists consider cryptozoology to be a pseudoscience, so it is difficult to find scholarly material, although there is plenty of literature on cryptids written by "experts" on the subject such as Loren Coleman. If all the cryptid articles were written so that the skeptical views were mainstream, and any views supporting the existence of such cryptids were considered "fringe", then we'd have a problem with balance. Most of these cryptids are based on the evidence from a few reports, and the veracity of those reports are difficult to verify. Most people would just consider all of those reports unreliable and dismiss the whole phenomenon altogether, but the problem in that case is that we have reports by multiple, reputable individuals. Wikipedia's policy is mostly to avoid promoting fringe theories, but we can report on them. As long as we have verifiable sources, articles on cryptids can be written in reasonable quality.

Gniniv: We struggle with gaining acceptance with the zoological community within Wikipedia, and finding reliable sources to base articles off of is a constant (but rewarding) challenge.

How can a new member help today?

Gniniv: Join the project! Contribute with reliable and factual information, and try to get your buddies onboard. First-hand experiences and sightings are really needed...

Kendroche: Removing dead links is a good start. It always annoys me to see a big red glaring name or quote in an article I'm reading and try to either change them to a reference, external link or remove the link altogether.

AH1: Finding reliable sources, adding entries to lists and creating new articles on the subject. Cleaning up poorly-written articles and even nominating for deletion creatures that were never reported is a good idea. For example, I nominated Silverton Goatman for deletion a while back, as the only sources that it cited did not mention such a thing. Sometimes the status of cryptids remain unknown, or they are known to be hoaxes or misidentifications. Clarifying that in the articles also helps. As for lists, some of them get quite extensive, so inline citations for specific cryptids would improve the quality of those lists.

Simon Burchell: Get writing! There's always room to improve these articles. An essential but rather thankless task is providing inline references for unreferenced articles. Anyone interested in Cryptozoology is likely to have a few books lying around (or, more likely, stacks of books). Get them out, get writing and cite your sources!

Anything else you'd like to add?

Simon Burchell: A good place to start would be List of cryptids, which needs a lot of work and tends towards the literal. Seeing "Black Shuck" listed there as an "unconfirmed carnivorous mammal" is laughable. Many of these cryptids should be listed as paranormal or mythological beasts, and working on this list may take you to articles of interest that can be improved. Good luck!

Kendroche: Wiki needs to revise its rules on POV, OR, FR and trivia for certain projects. A lot of the material in this project comes under one of those categories and can lead to some editors removing parts of articles (that in other subjects would be the correct thing to do) which, while are breaches of these rules, are important to the subject. (This is expecially true for the trivia aspect of the articles as people accessing these articles are often interested in / looking for that trivia).

I would also ask that any editors out there who are disbelievers or have objections to certain cryptids' validity post their views on the article's or the project's discussion page before making any major edits.

Lastly, good luck to all new and existing members.

AH1: This project needs balance. If both the views open to the possible existence of some cryptids as well as the more skeptical views can be maintained in a single article while keeping balance and avoiding undue weight on either side, then the quality of more article can be improved. A lot of the articles are based on a handful of reports, so the more references the better, because the articles that have fewer or no references are the ones that are most likely to get deleted.

Gniniv: Thank you so much for this opportunity to get the word out on WikiProject Cryptozoology.

Next week, the WikiProject Report is headed off to college. Until then, stay up all night studying in the archive.

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2010-08-23

The best of the week

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By Dabomb87 and Tony1

A new eye-catching featured picture: Kelvin–Helmholtz instability can result from the turbulent mixing of two fluids of different density. It is sometimes observed in cloud formations, on the surface of gas giants such as Saturn, and when wind blows over a water surface. A mathematically generated GIF animation was converted to a video to be much more friendly to slow internet connections at virtually the same quality.

Administrators

The Signpost congratulates four editors on their promotion to adminship.

GorillaWarfare (nom), formerly Theunicyclegirl, who has been with us since July 2006. She is an active vandal-fighter, contributes to AfDs, and helps with the backlog of unreferenced articles.
Nev1 (nom), a prolific content contributor in areas related to Greater Manchester. This was Nev1's second successful RfA; he passed his first in 2008, but voluntarily gave up the tools in January 2010. Nev1 could have been re-promoted without going through an RfA, but believed "it would not be honest to claim an extant mandate from two years ago".
Jmh649 (nom), a Canadian emergency physician. "Doc James" (his signed name) has been active since July 2008, and a substantial contributor to important medical articles; these include obesity, gout, and streptococcal pharyngitis (commonly known as strep throat).
Fainites (nom), a Wikipedian since December 2006, has been a productive editor in the often-fraught subject of psychology. He is a primary contributor to three featured articles in the topic: reactive attachment disorder, Rudolf Wolters, and attachment theory.

Featured articles

The Silky Sifaka's "aerial disturbance" roar in response to large birds

One of six sound files in Silky Sifaka, our featured article Choice of the week

Seventeen articles were promoted to featured status:

Underground Electric Railways Company of London (nom), the holding company for the lines opened during 1906 and 1907; they survived dodgy financing and over-optimistic passenger estimates to become the dominant transport organization in London (nominated by DavidCane).
National Anthem of Russia (nom), adopted in December 2000. Alexander Alexandrov wrote the music, and Sergey Mikhalkov the lyrics (the melody had been used for the Soviet anthem) (Zscout370).
Stephens City, Virginia (nom), with a population of 1,500, was just south of the boundary between union and confederate states and was adjacent to a major free black community before the Civil War. It narrowly escaped torching by Union forces during the Civil War. (Neutralhomer)
Silky Sifaka (nom), a large, critically endangered lemur characterized by long, silky white fur. The male uses its specialized toothcomb to gouge trees before scent-marking with its chest. The article includes six sound files exemplifying this primate's extraordinarily varied auditory displays. (Simponafotsy and Visionholder, with taxonomic assistance from Ucucha). (sound file above)
Ricketts Glen State Park (nom), a state park in Pennsylvania covering 13,047 acres (53 km²), with a complex natural, economic and cultural history (Dincher and Ruhrfisch).
Bull Run River (Oregon) (nom), a tributary of the Sandy River in Oregon. It is the primary source of drinking water for the city of Portland, Oregon (Finetooth). (picture at the right)
Mount Cayley volcanic field (nom), a remote volcanic zone on the Coast of British Columbia. The name comes from Mount Cayley, the largest and most persistent volcano in the zone (Volcanoguy).
Royal National College for the Blind (nom), founded in 1871 in Hereford, UK, for blind or partially sighted students. It is the home of the first association football academy for visually impaired players, and houses the National BlindArt collection (TheRetroGuy and PaulLargo).
"Road to the Multiverse" (nom), an episode of the animated television comedy series Family Guy, in which the main characters use a remote control device to travel through a series of various parallel universes (GageSkidmore).
Whitechapel murders (nom), the ghastly murders of eleven women—mostly prostitutes—in the 19th century. Although the true killer has yet to be revealed, the murderer is widely thought to be the "notorious, but elusive, individual known as Jack the Ripper" (DrKiernan).
90377 Sedna (nom), an astronomical object, about two-thirds the size of Pluto, which currently lies about three times as far from the Sun as the outermost planet, Neptune, and takes about 12,000 years to orbit the Sun (Kheider and Serendipodous).
Mark Tonelli (nom), an Australian Olympic swimmer of the 1970s and 1980s. He successfully lobbied for the right of Australian Olympians to compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics despite the government's wish to boycott it to protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; he was stripped of the captaincy of the national team for poor behaviour (YellowMonkey).
Acra (fortress) (nom), a fortified compound in Jerusalem of the 2nd century BCE. (Astynax and Poliocretes)
Rosetta Stone (nom), an Ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele with engraved text that was vital to the understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The collaboration was part of the British Museum Project (Captmondo and Andrew Dalby). (picture at right)
Hotel Chevalier (nom), a 13-minute English-language film released in 2007 (Skomorokh).
Thomasomys ucucha (nom), "a little rodent from Ecuador with a nice name", according to nominator Ucucha.
Charles Domery (nom), another of Iridescent's "eating disorders of the French Revolutionary Wars" mini-series, in which a Polish soldier was captured by the British and subjected to a bizarre dietary experiment.

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Iridescent to select his best of the week (and of course to dutifully disregard his own nomination). "I chose Silky Sifaka. To me, Wikipedia's great strength is its ability to treat relatively obscure topics with the same thoroughness it gives to the major topics. Readers can find equally good articles on major subjects elsewhere; but there's probably no other free resource which covers this particular species so thoroughly. With its combination of well-written prose neither over-technical nor dumbed-down, thoughtfully chosen images, and informative sound and video clips, this article is Wikipedia at its best." (sound-bite at the top)

Featured lists

Troy Tulowitzki, one of the Colorado Rockies' first-round draft picks

Nine lists were promoted:

1992 Winter Olympics medal table (nom), the count of medals won by participating IOCs at the 1992 Winter Olympics, held in Albertville, France. Germany won the most overall medals (26) and gold medals (10) (nominated by Courcelles and Sonia).
Kelly Rowland discography (nom). Rowland's debut album, Simply Deep, topped the UK charts, and her single "Dilemma" (with Nelly) was certified platinum three times in Australia (Lil-unique1)
List of Watford F.C. seasons (nom). Formed as Watford Rovers in 1881, Watford has won their league knockout competition twice since 1896 (WFCforLife, HornetEd and Bazj).
Hugo Award for Best Related Work (nom), an annual prize given primarily for non-fiction works related to science fiction or fantasy (PresN).
List of number-one singles from the 1980s (UK) (nom). Madonna had six of her singles top the chart in this decade—more than any other artist during that decade. (Rambo's Revenge)
List of accolades received by Up in the Air (nom). The film won 65 awards from 155 nominations, including a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay, and a BAFTA award for Best Adapted Screenplay (Dan Dassow, JuneGloom07, and Courcelles).
Timeline of the 1990–91 South Pacific cyclone season (nom) Only two tropical cyclones occurred in the South Pacific—Cyclone Joy and Cyclone Sina—both of which were retired after this season (Anhamirak and Jason Rees).
Friends of Friendless Churches (nom), a registered charity in England and Wales that campaigns for and rescues redundant historic churches threatened by demolition, decay, or inappropriate conversion. The oldest church owned by the charity is St Peter's Church, Wickham Bishops, an 11th-century private chapel for the Bishops of London, now used as an art studio (Peter I. Vardy).
List of Colorado Rockies first-round draft picks (nom). Of the 25 players selected in the first round by the Rockies, 16 have been pitchers, the most of any position; of these, 11 have been right-handed and 5 left-handed (Courcelles). (picture at the right)

Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator and reviewer Chrishomingtang, who specializes in basketball-related topics, for his choice: "I picked List of Watford F.C. seasons as my favorite. The lead flows well and clearly explains the team's history. The table looks great and every abbreviation is explained in the key section. The entire list is well-referenced and well-illustrated by relevant images."

Featured pictures

18 images were promoted:

Lambis truncata (nom), commonly known as the giant spider conch (created by Llez).
Sahelanthropus tchadensis skull cast (nom), from a member of an extinct hominid species that dates to about 7 million years ago. Reviewers praised the high encyclopedic value, and LucasBrown favored the "slight reflection from the surface the cast rests on" that gives it an "unnatural aura" (created by Archaeodontosaurus). (right)
Wedding of Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Daniel Westling (nom). Creator Prolineserver was one of two Wikimedians to earn media accreditation for the wedding (previous Signpost coverage).
Eastern Bettong (nom), a nocturnal animal native to south-eastern Australia and the eastern part of Tasmania (created by Noodle snacks).
Chaetodipterus faber (nom), with the common name Atlantic spadefish. Papa Lima Whiskey edited the image to address white balance issues (created by Matthew Hoelscher).
360° Panoramic view of Freiburg, Germany (nom). Creator Armin Hornung took the pictures from the Schlossberg tower and stitched them together using hugin.
Crystalline Dolomite & Magnesite (nom), chemical formula CaMg(CO₃)₂ (created by Archaeodontosaurus).
Ford Focus RS WRC 09 (nom), an action shot of Jari-Matti Latvala driving his Ford Focus RS WRC 09 in Muurame shakedown. Photographer Kallerna, who achieved sharp focus despite the proximity and motion of the vehicle, assures us that "there was still room between me and the car (~ 1 metre)."
Kelvin–Helmholtz Instability (nom). This mesmerizing animation illustrates a Kelvin–Helmholtz instability arising at an interface between fluids of different densities and speeds (created by Bdubb12). (animated video at the top)
Nudibranch laying an egg spiral on a sea squirt (nom). This striking image received unanimous praise for its vibrancy (created by Nhobgood).
Vertical replenishment (nom), a highly encyclopedic panorama of a US Navy operation (created by John L. Beeman, US Navy).
Last flight of Space Shuttle Atlantis (nom). Nominator Raeky referred to this as "an amazing shot of a historic flight" (created by NASA).
Space Shuttle Atlantis's last flight (side view) (nom). Although this shot of the launch is rare and unconventional, reviewers supported it for its "dramatic angle" and "wow factor" (created by NASA).
Humpty Dumpty (nom), as illustrated by W. W. Denslow in 1904 (created by William Wallace Denslow).
Cretaceous fossils (nom), This rock has three recognizable fossils: Nematonotus sp., lobster Pseudostacus sp., and a partial Dercetis triqueter (created by Mbz1).
Messier 81 (nom), a spiral galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major (created by NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team, i.e., the STScI/AURA). (Interactive large-image viewer)
Chthamalus stellatus (nom), a species of acorn barnacle common on rocky shores in South West England, Ireland, and Southern Europe (created by MichaelMaggs). (right)
Toad Mountain Harlequin frog (nom), a species of brightly colored toad endemic to Panama (created by Brian.gratwicke).

Choice of the week. We asked Makeemlighter, a regular reviewer and closer at featured pictures candidates, to choose his favorite among the past week's promotions: "With several outstanding images this week, it was a difficult choice. I kept coming back to the Freiburg panorama, so I'll make it my pick. This panorama is very sharp and well-stitched. As an American living in a suburban neighborhood, it's fascinating to see such a detailed image of this German city. I really get a great sense of what it must be like to live in Freiburg. It's particularly interesting to see the modern layout of a city that's been around since the 12th century. Be sure to check it out using the 360° viewer. " (below)

Featured picture Choice of the week: a panoramic view of Freiburg, Germany as seen from Schlossberg. Freiburg Münster (cathedral) can be seen in the center.

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2010-08-23

Proposed decision of climate change case posted

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By Ncmvocalist

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

Open cases

Climate change (Week 11)

This 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. Special rules of conduct were put in place when this arbitration commenced. Since the workshop phase was closed on July 19 (five weeks ago), arbitrators have not formally set any specific target date to post a proposed decision. However, requests for updates from arbitrators have received several responses (see previous Signpost coverage from August 16 and August 9). The case has been technically open: although the evidence and workshop pages have remained closed, no proposals were posted on the proposed decision page and participants were prevented from further discussing their case on the case pages. Up until last week, participants were discussing the case on the proposed decision talk page, but an arbitrator stated that further discussion should not take place on this page until a proposed decision was posted. Instead, general discussion was directed to a general discussion page that was specially created for this case.

Recently, a proposed decision drafted by Newyorkbrad, Risker, and Rlevse was posted for this case. This sparked a significant quantity of unstructured discussion - as of the date of this report, while appreciation or praise was incorporated in a few responses ([3][4][5][6][7]), a large number of concerns were expressed about the proposed decision by many different users, including participants and non-participants (examples: [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]).

Race and intelligence (Week 12)

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 decision that was proposed by the drafting arbitrator of the case, Coren, sparked several concerns among participants and non-participants (example). Since then, 9 out of 10 active arbitrators opposed the remedies that Coren proposed and drafted – these included a reminder to all editors about sources, a source probation which required all sources used in race and intelligence articles to be independent, secondary, and reliable sources, and a topic restriction requiring all named parties to make no more than half of their total number of edits to the race and intelligence topic.

Several proposals by other arbitrators are being voted on; a number of these proposals, most of which were drafted by Roger Davies, relate to individual editor conduct and individual editor topic bans, and these have been supported by at least 8 out of 10 arbitrators. A standard discretionary sanctions scheme and a remedy concerning evidence sub-pages have each also received a similar level of support from the Committee. A motion to close has received some support from arbitrators.

Motion

Speed of light: A motion was recently passed to impose a topic ban on Brews ohare from all physics-related pages, topics and discussions. The topic ban is set to expire in August 2011.

Other

CheckUser and Oversight positions

As reported in last week's Signpost, the Community has until 23:59 on 25 August 2010 (UTC) to comment on, or make further comments on candidates being actively considered for appointment to CheckUser and Oversight positions. Time is running out as the commenting period is soon going to close. The Committee made a second call for the Community to submit their comments during this commenting period.

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2010-08-23

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250

Plans to improve password security

Head developer Tim Starling has proposed an upgrade of the way the MediaWiki software (and hence Wikimedia sites) encrypts ("hashes") passwords (wikitech-l mailing list). He outlined concerns that if someone could acquire an encrypted password from the database, they could decrypt it and log in as that user within 20 minutes, with no special hardware. Highlighting this issue, he requested that any new system be:

“

Future-proof: should be adaptable to faster hardware.
Upgradeable: it should be possible to compute the C-type [i.e. new] hash from the B-type [i.e. old] hash, to allow upgrades without bothering users.
Efficient in PHP, with default configure options.
MediaWiki-specific, so that generic software can't be used to crack our hashes.

”

Tim Starling suggested that the "Whirlpool" hash be incorporated as a way of achieving this. The result was a general consensus that the proposed scheme was better than the current process, with a wide-ranging discussion of what might be even better. User:Simetrical played down the threat, arguing that "Hackers go after money, and there's no money in hacking Wikipedia. We have nothing secret or valuable that's not already readily available".

Concerning client-side improvements in password security, a JavaScript-based password complexity checker has recently been written (rev:70520), prompted by the remarks of a security researcher quoted in the Technology Report earlier this month (Study of web passwords includes Wikipedia).

See also earlier 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).

Google Summer of Code: Brian Wolff

We begin a series of articles about this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with student Brian Wolff (User:Bawolff), who describes his project to improve MediaWiki's image metadata support:

“

For those not familiar with what image metadata is, it's somewhat similar to how back before digital cameras, people used to write information about photographs (date taken, the subject of the photograph, etc.) on the reverse. In digital photography we cannot write on the back of a digital file, but we can embed such secondary information inside the file itself. My project is to improve how we extract and show this embedded information on file description pages.

Currently MediaWiki does extract some image metadata, specifically exif data in jpeg files, and as of a couple days ago, tiff files (example). However it misses some exif data, most noticeably, embedded GPS data (example, with embedded GPS data that has had to be manually extracted). Part of my project is to fix up MediaWiki's current exif support so that it extracts GPS data and other properties currently missed. With that said, exif is only one on the many types of metadata. The two other (main) types I added support for are IPTC (IIM) and XMP data. IPTC data is often found in more professional archive type settings. For example, many of the images on commons from the German federal archive have IPTC metadata and no exif metadata. XMP metadata is a relatively new metadata standard that is slowly gaining ground. It has the ability to store metadata properties in multiple languages, which I feel aligns very well with the multilingual goals of Wikimedia. XMP data can also be easily embedded into formats such as PNG and GIF images, in addition to JPEG images.

The code I've been working on also allows extracting file format specific metadata. This includes JPEG, GIF, and PNG file comments, as well as PNG textual data chunks (for those familiar with the internals of PNG, the tEXt, zTXt and iTXt chunks). For example, File:Pentdod gruen neu anim.gif has hidden inside it a comment of "Created with The GIMP by Alfons Kolling (Lokilech)" which my project allows us to extract and show to the user. Another example of why this is important is that whenever you download a thumbnail from Wikipedia (or other Wikimedia site), MediaWiki adds a file comment with the URL for the image page. It is kind of ironic we can't show the metadata that we ourselves embed in thumbnails.

”

Once finished and rounded off, the new code could easily be merged into the MediaWiki base, improving functionality for all new MediaWiki installations and upgrades, including Wikimedia sites. Metadata can also help volunteers to spot low-level image copyright infringement.

In brief

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.

The final Vector and advanced editing tools rollout will start on 1 September (Wikimedia techblog), to all remaining wikis (mostly the smaller ones).
A number of problems with image thumbnails are outstanding; for example, with large thumbnails (bug #24824) and the sharpness of thumbnails (bug #24857).
Further to previous coverage, User:Simetrical has begun his overhaul of the category display system, this week improving the <CategoryTree> extension, which had previously been disabled on WMF wikis over performance concerns (bug #23682).
In last week's Technology report, it was noted that the complexity and informality of wikitext presented a problem in developing WYSIWYG editors. Recently, Andreas Jonsson reported preliminary success in moving to a formalised, predictable model (wikitext-l mailing list).
Researcher Dirk Riehle argues that "companies are shying away from bringing commercial innovation and investment to MediaWiki because of the uncertainty around its intellectual property", especially the question whether the GPL would prevent publishing proprietary extensions, and the usage of the term "MediaWiki". He suggested setting up a separate "MediaWiki Foundation".

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