Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-11-08
November 15 launch, emphasis on banner optimization and community involvement
| Fundraiser 2005 21 February 2005 |
| Fundraiser 2006 18 December 2006 |
| Fundraiser 2007 22 October 2007 |
| Fundraiser 2008 10 November 2008 |
| Fundraiser 2009 10 November 2008 |
Fundraiser starts on November 15, aiming for $16 million in two months
Last week, Philippe Beaudette (User:Philippe (WMF)), the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Reader Relations and leader of the upcoming annual fundraising campaign, posted a "memo to Wikimedia community, friends, staff, and other stakeholders", detailing its schedule and giving an overview of the preparations that have been ongoing since August. The campaign will kick off on Monday, November 15 (one week later than was planned in September), and will run for two months, ending around the time of Wikipedia's 10th anniversary. Explaining that the campaign had an "entirely achievable goal", but that the projected amount was "still a stretch", Beaudette said:
| “ | This year, we have to raise $16,000,000. That’s our biggest target yet, but it’s still only a tiny fraction of what the other top-ten websites spend on their operations. It’s critical that we reach our goal to maintain the infrastructure necessary to keep Wikipedia and its sister sites running smoothly. | ” |
The fundraiser is expected to contribute most of the $20 million projected spending in the fiscal year 2010–11 (see also last week's News and notes: "Foundation's financial statements released and July's Signpost coverage of the Foundation's 2010–11 financial plan: "Plans for major expansions of the WMF".)
Community involvement
As in every fundraising drive since they started in 2004, the primary means for soliciting donations will be notices displayed on Wikimedia sites. The 2009–10 fundraiser – although reaching its goal in the end – had a rocky start due to concerns about its "WIKIPEDIA FOREVER" banner that was developed with a communications firm. As the Foundation's Deputy Director Erik Möller acknowledged at the time, this "was too in-your-face for many Wikipedians". There were also technical problems with some browsers that led to a disabling of the banners for several days. (See Signpost coverage: "'Wikipedia Forever' fundraiser arouses controversy", "'Wikipedia Forever' fundraiser begins")
The approach taken in this year's fundraiser preparation clearly reflects lessons learnt from last year's issues, with an emphasis on community involvement ("the fundraiser you can edit"). Volunteers were invited to submit a banner proposal (adding to those by consultants), for example in last month's "Beat Jimmy" challenge (see Signpost coverage) that sought a message which would perform better than Jimmy Wales' personal appeal. However, (as in previous years) "Jimmy" continued to outscore the alternatives in the tests, with a 3% clickthrough rate. According to Beaudette, "almost 900 people were involved in the creation and discussion of potential banner messages".
As reported earlier in the Signpost, the Foundation's Chief Community Officer, Zack Exley, has been advocating an integrated view of donors, readers, and Wikipedians as part of the same community (reflected in the creation of a single "Community Department" headed by Exley, instead of separate departments responsible for fundraising and relations with volunteers/readers). This year's fundraiser introduces a novel concept of using part of the advertising space "to ask people to contribute – not financially, but with their knowledge. We will target readers, and encourage them to become editors" (after the financial goal has been met).
The Community Department's temporary staff employed for the fundraiser includes several "Community Associates", hired from the volunteer community through the "Community hiring" process started in July (Signpost coverage). These staff members are tasked with "making sure that people know about the fundraiser, trying to convince various language wikis to participate in the creation of new banners, working on our social media plan, and a few other things." Last month's hiring of another Community Associate, Christine Moellenberndt, who will act as the first point of contact for Wikimedia's Reader Relations in coming months, is indirectly related to the fundraiser, as it is intended to take workload off Beaudette during that time. He explained that she "has been a Wikimedia reader for some time, which positions her nicely as someone who can speak for the needs of our readers", and that this increase in capacity was also necessary because of the impending departure of Volunteer Coordinator Cary Bass at the end of the year (see Signpost coverage).
Research and testing
Some banners will be appearing before the launch, from Friday, November 12, for "full-scale functional testing". Occasional testing had already been ongoing during recent weeks, with the team focused on optimizing three major points in the donation process. The first is "banner messaging" (the message displayed in the ad, such as the already-mentioned high click-through rate for "Please read: a personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales"). Secondly, regarding "banner design", the team found that graphical banners perform twice as well as text-based banners, and will therefore use them more heavily than in previous years. The third point concerns the design of the landing pages (that are reached after clicking through the banner) where the actual donation is initiated. Chicago-based research firm Webitects optimized the donation form, and has blogged about their findings – for example, that "with radio buttons of equal size for PayPal and Credit Card logos, presented on one line, users were most likely to donate". The extensive research conducted in preparation also included a focus group and a survey of past donors, carried out by contractors.
Beaudette emphasized that the fundraising team is "committed early to radical and full disclosure of all the data we had".
Technical issues and chapters
The Foundation's technical department is also involved in the fundraiser, and three staff members are working on several tasks, including the CentralNotice software extension to display the banners. The necessary changes have not come without minor disruptions, causing a very brief failure of the entire site at the end of September, and a distortion of the pageview statistics on Wikimedia sites (see Signpost coverage) that was remedied last week, as announced by Erik Zachte, the Foundation's data analyst.
A separate server has been set up at http://geoiplookup.wikimedia.org/, allowing the easier geotargeting of countries, and the involvement of a chapter's donation system if a chapter exists in that country. In that case, donations are split evenly between the Foundation and the chapter, a requirement that has recently caused headaches for some chapters (see Signpost coverage: "German chapter creates new body to meet Foundation's fundraising requirements").
See also the log of the November 5 IRC office hour with Philippe Beaudette and the fundraising team.
Reader comments
Second Wikipedian in Residence, citation needed for sanity
Second museum gets Wikipedian in Residence
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (said to be the largest of its kind in the world) recently invited Wikimedians for a "backstage pass" tour, as described by Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama) on his blog. It is currently hosting Lori Phillips (User:HstryQT) as a Wikipedian in Residence (see Wikipedia:GLAM/TCMI and Wyatt's guest post on the museum's blog), making it the second institution to use this concept, after the British Museum's pilot project earlier this year (see Signpost coverage).
Lori Phillips intends to "mine the museum" to discover good illustrations and material that could be used for Wikiprojects; they have already started photographing their collection for Commons along with compatible copyrights for Wikimedia's use. The Children's Museum is dedicated to the concept of "Family learning" and currently has no online catalog of their collection, but plans to have one soon. Lori Phillips is also helping the Museum Studies course run by IMA conservator Richard McCoy (User:RichardMcCoy) to write Wikipedia articles about notable artworks in the Indiana Statehouse.
Wyatt and Phillips talked with the staff about their concerns in working with Wikipedia. When asked by a staff member about Wikipedia's responsibility to minors, Liam Wyatt explained that Wikipedia is not censored for age-appropriateness, and there is ongoing work being done with issues related to controversial content. He also noted that there is "nowhere else on the unrestricted internet that is dedicated to making NSFW information as un-titillating as possible." In a staff-only presentation he pulled a Google result for "Sex" and chose Wikipedia's entry from the top results, he proceeded to show the article and the accompanying images - from human conception to an illustration of Sexual Dimorphism in a Pheasant. He mentioned that the staff was impressed with the educational and yet direct approach of Wikipedia.
See also Phillips' summary of a November 2 talk by Wyatt and Adrianne Wadewitz at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, "Wikipedia & GLAMs" (an interactive Prezi presentation by Wyatt), and last week's Signpost coverage of Liam Wyatt, Katie Filbert, Lori Phillips and Richard McCoy attending the "Museum Computer Network conference".
[citation needed] for sanity
The October 30 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C. (a gathering of an estimated 215,000 people to protest extremes in US media and to promote reasoned political discourse) featured numerous demonstrators ([1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]) bearing signs adapted from Wikipedia's "citation needed" template, among them Wikipedian (and Wikimedia Board member) User:Mindspillage (Kat Walsh), whose website shows some amusing juxtapositions with other signs at the rally. References to the template in popular culture date back at least to the July 2007 "Wikipedian protester" cartoon by webcomic xkcd (tooltip comment: "SEMI-PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION"), which has since been used in turn on Wikipedia:Citation needed to illustrate the concept, and had inspired earlier such demonstration signs. In 2008, Boing Boing reported on an artist who had printed little "citation needed" stickers for a "culture jamming" project, to mark dubious claims on public ads and signs.
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"Citation needed" sign at the D.C. rally -
Combined with a sign saying "Wikipedia is a valid source" -
Chance meet of two {{citation needed}} signs at the rally -
xkcd's "Wikipedian protester" cartoon
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Briefly
- Illustrated licensing tutorial: On the Wikimedia Foundation's blog, Guillaume Paumier has announced the availability of an illustrated licensing tutorial for Wikimedia Commons, commissioned from a freelance illustrator as part of the Multimedia usability project. Within three days, Wikimedia translators have already produced about 20 translations and about a dozen localized SVG versions.
- Research consultant: Dario Taraborelli has been hired by the Wikimedia Foundation as a Research Consultant. He will be advising on and supporting strategic research projects for the foundation.[9]
- "A bad first date?": A draft schedule for the GLAM-WIKI conference on November 26/27 in London has been announced. Alongside keynote presentations by Sue Gardner and Cory Doctorow it includes a talk by Tom Morgan, Head of Rights and Reproductions at the London's National Portrait Gallery, titled "Wikipedia and the National Portrait Gallery - A bad first date? A perspective on the developing relationship between Wikipedia and cultural heritage organizations" - in reference last year's legal issues (see Signpost coverage: "UK public gallery threatens Wikimedian" and the article National Portrait Gallery copyright conflicts; it is not publicly known whether they have been resolved yet).
- Citizendium's finances running low: After the free collaborative online encyclopedia project Citizendium adopted a governance charter in September (see Signpost coverage), its newly elected "Management Council" took over leadership of the project from the outgoing editor-in-chief, its sole founder Larry Sanger. During this process "it has come to light that the financial situation of the project is not as sound as we had thought it to be", according to a November 6 announcement from the Council on the Citizendium forums. An earlier thread on the forums, titled "Finances running dry by the end of the year", was apparently publicly visible by accident and removed from public view soon, but not before having been captured, discussed and summarized at RationalWiki (its existence was later acknowledged by Citizendium's Managing Editor). It quoted an internal email from Sanger, where he warned that "we have just $1800 in the account and our hosting costs $700/month. ... It turns out that CZ's main benefactor ... is no longer interested in supporting CZ." Earlier this year, Sanger had told the Times Higher Education that he was considering "handing the reins to a university or a scholarly press" to ensure Citizendium's future (see Signpost coverage).
Reader comments
WP prose praised, Public Policy update, education debate, WP documentary
Praise for "efficient and impassioned" prose in Wikipedia and "revolutionary" WP:OWN policy
In her tech column for The New York Times Magazine ("What Wikipedia Is Best at Explaining"), Virginia Heffernan praised the "efficient and impassioned" prose in many of the WikiProject Video games' featured Articles, specifically Halo: Combat Evolved and Angry Birds. Interviewing one of the contributing Wikipedians, she learned about the policy against ownership of articles, calling it "revolutionary" and commenting:
| “ | My jaw dropped. The page is fascinating for anyone who has ever been part of a collaborative effort to create anything. ... The magazine business could have used some guidelines about this all-too-familiar kind of authorship jockeying decades ago. | ” |
She posited that in the digital age, the identity of an "object" is defined by its Wikipedia article, and compared the role of Wikipedians to that of taxonomists and explorers in earlier times:
| “ | Every new symbolic order requires a taxonomist to make sense of it. When Renaissance paintings and drawings first became fashionable in the art market in the early 20th century, the primary task of critics like Bernard Berenson was to attribute them, classify them and create a taste for them. ... Wikipedia has become the world’s master catalogue raisonnée for new clumps of data. Its legion nameless authors are the Audubons, the Magellans, the Berensons of our time. | ” |
Lastly, Heffernan called her readers to contribute to Wikipedia themselves.
Midterm update on the Public Policy Initiative
The Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative published a midterm update last week, reporting that the participating students were beginning to contribute articles to Wikipedia, a few of which had already been featured in the "Did You Know" (DYK) section on the main page. An Ambassador Steering Committee has been formed, "thinking through the big questions about the Ambassador program" (where experienced Wikipedians assist participating students). Five more courses have been added since the first announcement in August (Signpost coverage); two of them at the UC Berkeley, which announced in a press release that "UC Berkeley students help improve Wikipedia’s credibility".
The Public Policy Initiative was also covered in the NPR program All Things Considered ("Wikipedia Teams Up with Academia") and in The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Wired Campus" blog ("Professors Shore Up Wikipedia Entries on Public Policy").
Use of Wikipedia in education debated
In related news, several comments on the use of Wikipedia in schools and universities were published recently.
The ZDNet Education blog asked "Teachers: Please stop prohibiting the use of Wikipedia".
The Cardinal Courier (a student newspaper at St. John Fisher College in Pittsford, New York) argued that "Wikipedia is a reliable source to use for assignments". While acknowledging that Wikipedia's General disclaimer contains "capitalized letters saying, 'Wikipedia makes no guarantee of validity'", it noted that several reputed news publishers and reference works, such as The New York Times Company or the Oxford English Dictionary, make similar statements about their own reliability (possibly drawing from the list at Wikipedia:Non-Wikipedia disclaimers). Wikipedia's list of errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia was also noted.
A "Reader's view" published in the Opinion section of the Duluth News Tribune found Wikipedia "more enlightening than unilateral spin", regarding it as "the best place to begin research if proper protocol is observed".
An article about the American Library Association's "Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning" list in the Chicago Tribune revealed that "Yes, students, there's a world beyond Wikipedia", observing that "for parents with fond memories of the Dewey Decimal System, library card catalogs and thumbing through their family's World Book Encyclopedia, it can come as a shock to discover that their own children's research habits often begin and end with a quick click on Wikipedia."
On her "The Daring Librarian" blog, US school librarian Gwyneth A. Jones said that "Wikipedia Is NOT Wicked!", defending Wikipedia against fellow educators who regard it "with suspicion, sometimes derision, and occasionally with fear". She named hashtags and QR code as topics where Wikipedia offered information superior to that in the research databases provided by her own library, and gave teachers some advice on how to teach Wikipedia in class – summarized in an "at a glance" cartoon (see illustration). Exemplifying her advice to "establish your web presence!" (and apparently unaware of Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline), User:Thedaringlibrarian started the article about her employer, the Murray Hill Middle School.
"Truth in Numbers?" documentary about Wikipedia gains further attention
The documentary film Truth in Numbers? Everything, According to Wikipedia was reviewed by the AOL blog Urlesque, which also noted that it was "about to be deleted [from] Wikipedia itself" (the AfD message has since been removed). After its July premiere at Wikimania in Gdansk (see Signpost coverage), the film was released last month by a screening in New York City, and is set to be shown in more US theaters later this month. In some geographical regions, it has also been viewable online for free. Larry Sanger, who is featured in the movie, recently called it "not too bad, from what I saw", while Jimmy Wales recommended against featuring it as part of the upcoming 10 years of Wikipedia celebrations, because "the film was poorly received in Poland, and it is seriously out of date" (filming had started at the 2006 Wikimania; most of the footage seems to date from 2006 and 2007). Board member Samuel Klein (User:Sj), who had attended a panel discussion with the directors after the New York screening, said that he likes "the film a lot more after seeing it for the second time, in a very different audience (and seeing their live reactions)".
Briefly
- Courtney Love prefers stub: US tabloid The New York Post reported that at a New York party, musician Courtney Love explained how she would like "her messy Wikipedia page" to improve: "I just want what awards I got ... who I [bleeped] – on the record — or who said nice things about [bleeping] me. And how many hits I've had. And that's it."
- Social analytics: PARC researcher Ed Chi has uploaded slides of a recent talk titled Large Scale Social Analytics on Wikipedia, Delicious, and Twitter (the part about Wikipedia starts on p.11, and appears to include some charts that have already been published previously).
- Medical advice about Wikipedia addiction: On the "Mediatrician" blog of the Boston-based Center on Media and Child Health, Dr. Michael Rich gave advice to a concerned parent who asked "Is my son addicted to Wikipedia?", describing that for several months, the 16-year-old "has been spending several hours a day on Wikipedia, reading and editing entries" and had also been treated for depression. (The first concern does not seem to apply to the user who last month started the Wikipedia article about the organization: His or her contributions don't extend much to other topics.)
- Neologism revisited: A blog post from The Economist referred to the debate about the entry "malamanteau", which had been ignited earlier this year by an xkcd comic (summarized by User:WWB on his "The Wikipedian" blog). The post suggested that the word be used with a different meaning than that which Randall Munroe (xkcd's author) had tried to establish with the cartoon.
- Jimbo interview: Canadian newspaper Toronto Star published a brief interview with Jimmy Wales about Wikipedia and other topics.
Reader comments
WikiProject California
- Check out new portals for Santana, Piano, and Submarines
- Newly founded projects covering North America and East Asia are looking for members.
- The Guild of Copy Editors Backlog Elimination Drive has begun. Join in the fun and earn a barnstar along the way.
- The new WikiProject Multi-sport events seeks to improve Wikipedia's coverage of non-Olympic and non-Paralympic multi-sport events like the Commonwealth Games. They could use your help.
- Discussions about the December 2010 Wikification Backlog Elimination Drive are underway.
This week's interview almost didn't happen. When we aproached WikiProject California, a debate ensued among the project's members as to whether their project deserved to be featured in the Signpost. Concerns about the number of active members and how quickly the project produces featured content left many of the members second-guessing their efforts. Zzyzx11 commented that the Culture of California was limiting the success of WikiProject California and driving contributors to focus on other, more narrowly defined WikiProjects. Spongie555 considered the project's articles to be strong while the project itself remains messy, a description echoed by Killiondude. Optigan13 pointed to individual editors as the source of the project's many featured and good articles, noting that his contributions to California articles have focused on cleanup. To Amerique, the project's greatest attribute is offering a forum for editors to discuss articles and develop consensus. The Report learned firsthand just how well the project serves as a medium for discussion.
WikiProject California, started in June 2005, is home to 52 featured articles, 26 featured lists, 2 A-class articles, and 140 good articles. The project maintains portals for California, the Greater Los Angeles area, the San Francisco Bay area, and the Great Central Valley. Several task forces of varying activity cover the state's geographic areas. Collaborations with other projects include WikiProject California State Highways (with WikiProject U.S. Roads), WikiProject California Schools (with WikiProject Schools), and WikiProjects for the University of California and California State University (both with WikiProject Universities). Amerique and Killiondude took some time to introduce us to the project that covers the most populous state in the United States.
What motivated you to join WikiProject California?
- Amerique: A lot of work I was already doing was on CA subjects. Joining the CA WikiProject enabled me to seek consensus on some contentious local issues from editors knowledgeable about CA & WP.
- Killiondude: Like Amerique, I was already working on a lot of California related articles and was interested in collaborating with other people who had the same interest.
Have you contributed to any of the project's 52 featured articles, 26 featured lists, 2 A-class articles, and 140 good articles? Are you currently working on promoting an article to FA or GA status?
- Amerique: I was the lead editor on getting University of California, Riverside to FA a few years ago. I also helped University of California, Santa Cruz retain GA status when it was under reassessment. Currently helping out with improving Chula Vista, California and various other regional and university articles as I have time.
In addition to cities, counties, and geographic features, what are some interesting articles covered by the project?
- Amerique: California English, dude. Also, Eliza Tibbets is an interesting bio of the woman responsible for the early development of the CA orange industry.
- If I may add two more, apart from hosting the hippie epicenter during the Summer of Love in SF, CA also bequeathed unto the world the advent of Pentecostalism during the Azusa Street Revival in LA.
Nine of the project's ten most popular pages are about celebrities or technology companies (Proposition 19 makes the list at number ten). How does Hollywood and Silicon Valley affect the scope of your project? Does this help or hurt your efforts?
- Amerique: So far as Hollywood and Silicon Valley subjects are taken as symbolic of California or the "California lifestyle", I would say they do affect the scope of the project. I do not think they hurt the project; the more media resources that are out there the better the associated articles can be, I think.
The project is home to many task forces and keeps an eye on several other California-related projects. How were most of these task forces and projects born? Are some more successful than others? Has there been an effort to consolidate?
- Amerique: I was only personally involved in creating Wikipedia:WikiProject University of California. Generally, these projects are easily started when someone takes the initiative to do so, but are difficult to maintain consistent interest in. Most of the local, regional or municipal WikiProjects were consolidated into task forces of WikiProject CA last year, I believe. Most of them were inactive and it was decided that the work of all of them would be better off if monitored from the centralized framework provided by a state-level project.
- Killiondude: There were several region-specific projects spun off as their own separate WikiProject from WP:CAL, including SF Bay Area's, Southern California's, Los Angeles', Inland Empire's, and Santa Barbara County's projects. Some of those projects started out with a lot of support and backing from active Wikipedians. However, as time went on some of them lost the drive and were mostly inactive. Optigan13 (talk · contribs) starting discussions and ultimately merging all of those projects back in as task forces under WP:CAL. In my opinion, this was a great idea and probably stirred up WT:CAL as a more active discussion place.
WikiProject California maintains a cleanup list. Has there been a push to clear out this backlog?
- Killiondude: If I recall correctly, individuals have asked on the project's talk page for help clearing specific lists of California related clean-up listings, but I'm not sure there's been a successfully organized effort to work on backlogs.
As the most populous state in the United States, has it been easy to attract participants? If not, what do you feel is preventing more editors from contributing to the project?
- Amerique: In some ways, I would say the project like the state is a victim of its own diversity, in that there seems to be little in terms of social solidarity holding the populace together or causing people to view collaboration across individual, factional interests as a way of getting things done. So, anything that is able to get done tends to be as the result of an unopposed individual initiative. Nothing prevents anyone from participating, but it may be difficult to find people interested in or capable of effectively collaborating.
- Killiondude: As mentioned above, California has quite a bit of diversity. Wikipedia editors who live in California might enjoy editing film related topics (Hollywood), technological related topics (Silicon Valley), etc. I don't think there's been a concerted effort to necessarily "attract" editors to the WikiProject. That might be an idea the project takes into account.
How can a new member help today?
- Amerique: There is plenty of work, that's for sure. Any sort of "help" would be helpful, I think.
- Killiondude: As linked above, the cleanup list is never ending. ;-) I enjoy visiting User:AlexNewArtBot/CaliforniaSearchResult from time to time and helping out (or just reading) some new articles posted to Wikipedia that relate to California. There's also usually several articles that are good article nominees or featured article nominees that fall within the scope of WPCAL, and editors are always welcome to help those pages out or work on another article to bring to those venues.
Next week, we'll munch on a tasty morsel. Until then, cure your cravings with old reports in the archive.
Reader comments
No, not science fiction—real science
New administrator
The Signpost welcomes TheCatalyst31 (nom) as our newest admin. TheCatalyst is a member of several WikiProjects, including Trains, US roads, and Cities, and has created many articles on small communities. TheCatalyst has a strong record of gnoming and page patrolling, has contributed to the AfD process, and has assisted the creation of three Good Articles.
Featured articles
Six articles were promoted to featured status:
- Lavanify (nom), about two teeth from an animal that lived on Madagascar about 70 million years ago. It is part of the gondwanatheres, the earliest mammals to evolve high-crowned teeth, possibly to eat grass (nominated by Ucucha).
- Dustbin Baby (film) (nom), a BBC television film first broadcast in 2008. Amazingly, nominator J Milburn managed to gain permission for the release of several high-quality images to illustrate the film.
- HMS Indefatigable (1909) (nom), a battle cruiser of the British Royal Navy, commissioned in 1911. The ship's stormy five-year life, which ended when it blew up after German shelling, seems worthy of a feature film (Dank and Sturmvogel 66).
- Liberty Head nickel (nom), best remembered for the mysterious 1913 nickel, of which five are known. It is an interesting story, both for the inception of the nickel and how it came to be replaced, says nominator Wehwalt.
- The Story of Miss Moppet (nom), a moral tale about teasing, written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and published in 1906 (Susanne2009NYC; picture below).
- Mechanical filter (nom), a device that blocks selected signal frequencies, and which has been a significant part of the electronics industry since the 1870s (SpinningSpark)
Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Slim Virgin to select the best of the week.
| “ | It's daunting to have to choose a favourite from such an excellent list. Wehwalt's Liberty Head nickel stands out, as his always do, for the quality of the writing and research. Ucucha's Lavanify, the story of two very old teeth, is fascinating. J Milburn's Dustbin Baby (film) has made me want to see the film, and it's the kind of article people love Wikipedia for: you watch the film then want to know who's who, and who said what, and there it all is, courtesy of a kind Wikipedian. SpinningSpark's Mechanical filter is another example of an article people will be grateful for, as is Dank and Sturmvogel 66's article about HMS Indefatigable (1909), on which 1,015 men died in 1916 when she was blown up in the North Sea. But the one I enjoyed most, just at a personal level, was Susanne2009NYC's The Story of Miss Moppet. Susanne's done some great work for Wikipedia on Beatrix Potter's books, including several GAs. I love the writing, the illustrations, the background details—and especially the Aristotelian analysis! I look forward to seeing it on the front page. | ” |
Featured lists
Five lists were promoted:
- List of MBTA Commuter Rail stations (nom) (nominated by Grk1011)
- List of World Heritage Sites in Peru (nom) (Grsz11)
- Mariah Carey singles discography (nom) (Petergriffin9901)
- PDSA Gold Medal (nom) (The Rambling Man)
- Celine Dion singles discography (nom) (Max24)
Featured pictures
- Harriet Beecher Stowe (nom), a portrait of American writer and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe (created by Francis Holl).
- Child with smallpox (nom), a young girl in Bangladesh in 1973 infected with smallpox (created by CDC / James Hicks; picture at right).
- The Reichstag building, Berlin (nom) (in German, the Reichstagsgebäude), was first constructed 1884–94 and housed the Parliament of the German Empire. It was severely damaged by fire in 1933 and fully restored in 1990. It now houses the German Parliament. The glass dome was designed by British architect Norman Foster and was added in 1993 (Matthew Field).
- The "queen conch" (nom), a species of edible sea snail, is one of the largest mollusks native to the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic, from Bermuda to Brazil. Reaching up to 35.2 cm in shell length, the queen conch is herbivorous and lives in seagrass beds (H. Zell).
- Laser towards the Milky Way (nom), in which a laser beams upwards to measure the distortions of Earth's ever-changing atmosphere. A group of astronomers were observing the centre of the Milky Way using the laser guide star facility at Yepun, one of the four Unit Telescopes of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). Yepun’s laser beam has created an artificial "star" at an altitude of 90 km high in the Earth's mesosphere, as a reference point for improved observations. More scientific information is provided at the image description page (ESO/Y. Beletsky; picture at the top).
- Bubble-tip anemone (nom), (Entacmaea quadricolor), a species of sea anemone of Indo-Pacific origin that grows to 30 cm in diameter. It is believed that the bubbles—found only in the smaller individuals that colonise the regions closer to the surface—help the organism to capture sunlight (Nick Hobgood; picture below).
Choice of the week. We asked H. Zell to judge what he believes is the best new featured picture, disregarding his own new featured picture.
- "This week saw a wide range of themes: American history, medical science, historical architecture, and biology, and physics. Very impressive is the alien-like Bubble tip anemone. I finally decided on Laser towards the Milky Way. A comparison with similar pictures in the same category—for example 1, 2, and 3—shows the technical difficulty of taking such shots by night. Here, the stars are bright and the sharpness is astonishing: the acid test is that these features stand up to scrutiny in the full-resolution display."
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Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.
Reader comments
The countdown begins
The community has spoken
13 December 2010
Voting in full swing
29 November 2010
Candidates still stepping forward
22 November 2010
The countdown begins
8 November 2010
So what is being an arbitrator actually like?
25 October 2010
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The community has spoken |
It's that time of year again: the annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections are almost upon us, and election fever is intensifying. ArbCom is the final stage of Wikipedia's dispute-resolution process, and the arbitrators are typically experienced and respected editors. The 2010 election will select as many as 11 new arbitrators, whose terms will start on 1 January 2011. Interested editors are welcome to join the team of volunteer coordinators; their responsibilities are set out here.
To become an arbitrator is to take on a high-profile role, and history shows that the personal stamina and confidence of the Committee's members are important if it is to serve the community well. Among other things, arbitrators require the ability to analyse written evidence in relation to the pillars, policies, and guidelines concerning editors' behaviour, and the ability to distinguish relevant from irrelevant evidence. Arbitrators need to be able to write clear, concise English, and to be familiar with the principles of conflict of interest and neutrality.
Many Wikipedians regard it desirable that the Committee have a range of skills and backgrounds among its members. Other skills that may be relevant, although by no means essential, are the ability to draft decisions, motions and injunctions, and to contribute to the organisation of the Committee's processes.
Editors who believe they have what it takes are urged to consider running for election. Nomination is open to any editor in good standing over the age of 18, who is of legal age in their place of residence, and who has made at least 1,000 mainspace edits before the opening of the nomination period. Candidates are not required to be administrators or to have any other special permissions.
Stages of the election
- Call for nominations: Prospective candidates will officially be invited to stand on Sunday 14 November with the opening of a 10-day nomination period. Candidates nominate themselves, and create a candidate profile made up of a statement of up to 400 words and their responses to the "general" questions. Below these general questions, each eligible voter may ask one "individual" question of each candidate, up to 75 words in length. These arrangements are to avoid a repetition of the widespread complaints by voters in previous elections that the number of questions spiralled out of control and did not assist their decision-making. Editors are, of course, free to ask any number of questions on candidates' user and election talk pages, which will be open to community discussion. Nominations will close on 23 November.
- The voting period: After nominations close, there will be a two-day fallow period for discussion, for candidates to complete their responses to questions, and to allow for the management of technical issues. The 10-day voting period will start on Friday 26 November and will close at the end of Sunday 5 December. Voting will be via the SecurePoll extension, as for last year's election. Individual questions and discussion are welcome right through the process until the close of voting on 5 December.
- Results, certification and announcement: The tally will be posted and certified on the election page by the scrutineers—stewards whose home wiki is not the English Wikipedia. This is expected to take up to a week after the close of voting. Jimbo Wales will formally announce the appointments within a few days of the scrutineers' announcement.
Request for Comment: results
A Request for Comment was opened by MuZemike on 24 October, to determine community attitudes to the voting procedures. The proposals that attracted most debate were:
- that secret ballots (i.e. the SecurePoll interface) be used, or that open voting be reinstated;
- that straight support/neutral oppose voting be retained, or that some form of proportional representation (i.e. the Schulze method, Condorcet method or single transferable vote) be used in its stead.
- that last-minute withdrawals by candidates should be disallowed;
- that appointees must gain a ranking percentage of at least 50% and that seats should remain vacant if insufficient candidates satisfy this requirement;
- that a "none of the above" ballot option be provided;
- that the parameters for the 2011 election be left unsettled for the time being.
The discussion featured several other proposals that gained negligible support.
The RFC was closed on 3 November by an uninvolved administrator, Llywrch, who concluded on the main point of contention that there was consensus to retain secret ballots and the SecurePoll interface (a proposal to this effect by Will Beback attracted the support of 85 editors). However, this judgement came with two qualifications. The closing admin noted that even if support for using the Schulze method had been overwhelming, it would not be feasible to implement it due to software limitations. Secondly, Llywrch found that "[t]he argument supporting open & transparent discussions about the different candidates are compelling", and recommended that such discussions be facilitated.
Llywrch noted that two other proposals "failed to gather anywhere near the support that the secret ballot proposal did", but that they nevertheless ought to be treated as "non-binding suggestions". While most statements in the RfC generated discussion on the talkpage, the debates on these two were particularly intense. The first, a proposal by Neutron supported by 35 editors, was that candidates ought not to be allowed to withdraw from the election once voting has begun, and that their results be "reported along with all other candidates." The second such proposal, by Risker with the support of 31 editors, stipulated that in order to be appointed to ArbCom, candidates must have self-nominated in the most recent election and received more support than opposition. The closing admin in recommending that Risker's proposal be non-binding, noted that this "gives Jimmy Wales carte blanche to appoint anyone he wants to this empty seat. Do we want him to appoint someone people voted for, or for anyone else who has an account who strikes his fancy?" Wales issued a response on the considerations that motivated the proposal.
Further discussion
The election talk page has seen considerable discussion, particularly over the past week, concerning several matters unaddressed in the RfC. These include:
- how and to what extent there should be attempts to encourage voter turnout;
- the duration of the discussion period; and
- various discussions on userspace voter guides.
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No cases this week; Date delinking sanctions reduced for one party; History ban extended
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving none open.
Closed cases
Date delinking (Week 2)
Ohconfucius requested that an amendment be made to relax the restriction which prohibited him from using any automation in the article space.
At the time of writing, only arbitrators had commented on this request. Two arbitrators said they were "impressed with the quality of [Ohconfucius'] contributions since the Date delinking case, and with the tone and substance of [his] comments", and suggested terminating the automation restriction entirely. The Committee followed their suggestion and adopted a motion which terminates the restriction and permits Ohconfucius to use automation subject to community guidelines. Ohconfucius is still indefinitely limited to editing with a single account. Additionally, he is still topic-banned from style and editing guidelines relating to the linking or unlinking of dates, and related discussions.
Following the 30 March 2010 renewal of his ban on editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year imposed on 14 March 2008, User:Per Honor et Gloria filed an amendment on Tuesday for the topic ban to be lifted. It was decided by unanimous vote of six Arbitrators on 8 November 2010 that the ban be extended indefinitely. PHG's participation is limited to talk pages, subject to civil interaction with fellow editors. The discussion is here.
Ban Appeals Subcommittee appointment
Arbitrator Mailer diablo was appointed by the Arbitration Committee on 7 November to fill the vacancy on the Ban Appeals Subcommittee at least until the end of this year. All subcommittee memberships will be reviewed after the December Arbcom elections.
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
November Engineering Update published
The Foundation's November Engineering Update was this week published to the Wikimedia Techblog, and gives a brief overview of all technical operations in the last month. Developer Rob Lanphier (User:RobLa) gave an executive summary of the month:
| “ | October featured continued work on the Virginia data center migration, continued work on features such as ResourceLoader, Article Feedback and Upload Wizard, increased focus on code review, new testing infrastructure, many new job postings, and the Hack-A-Ton in Washington DC. | ” |
Additionally, a number of items had had their statuses updated since last month. For example, the Foundation noted that the establishment of the new Virginia data centre (originally planned to be online by January 1, 2011) had been delayed temporarily, but was happy with work done to the donation-handling infrastructure. In addition, the Foundation announced that it was "on track to deploy a new version of Pending Changes on November 16" and the release of the new Resource Loader was nearing, but that development of LiquidThreads had slowed due to lack of available personnel.
Likewise, regarding the new media upload wizard, the Tech team said that Neil Kandalgaonkar had finished development of a temporary storage system for media files that are missing required metadata like licensing or source information, and that Roan Kattouw has started the prep-work for deployment of this feature, scheduled for late November. Other developments included the news that developer Ryan Lane had started actively investigating OpenStack for open-source testing and that the Foundation were pleased with making some headway in code review (note the drop in unreviewed revisions of the MediaWiki software shown to the right of the chart), after allocating more resources to the task (see Signpost coverage: "More developers to review code"). In addition, the success of the Hack-a-Ton (cf. Signpost coverage) was noted, as was an intention to revamp Wikimedia's mobile sites.
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 background color of the "You have new messages" box notifying users of changes to their user talk pages is being modified from orange to blue in the Vector skin (bug #25145, r76017).
{{fullurl:Special:Mytalk|diff=cur}}now works as expected (bug #25829).
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