Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2011-05-30
ArbCom referendum goes live; US National Archives residency; financial planning; brief news
Community to vote on new ArbCom policy
Discussion and feedback on the update has involved extensive community input: more than 35,000 words over the past year, and almost 55,000 words in the year before that. There have been five revisions at roughly six-monthly intervals, the first in April 2009. Arbitrator Roger Davies told The Signpost that the way the Committee works in practice has evolved significantly since the first policy was ratified in 2005, yet the text has remained static; the proposed update to the policy reflects how things now work in practice, and is structured in a way that is much clearer and more accessible to editors.
All Wikipedians are encouraged to vote in the referendum.
Wikipedian residency at US National Archives begins with image donation
User:Dominic (Dominic McDevitt-Parks) recently began his stay as Wikipedian in Residence at the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) (cf. Signpost coverage of the announcement). Similar to previous projects at other GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums), the job description lists the following broad goals for the residency (a paid student internship lasting until late August):
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As described by Sj on the "Wikilove.in" blog, Dominic has already secured an image donation of 220 high-resolution reproductions of public domain images, responding to an earlier uploading request on Commons for the already available low-resolution versions. It concerns a series of black-and-white photographs dating mostly from 1941–42, commissioned from photographer Ansel Adams – mostly landscape photographs of US National Parks and portraits of native Americans. Sarah Stierch (fellow Wikipedian-in-residence at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, cf. Signpost coverage) pointed out that while Adams' photos are in the public domain, NARA's release of the high-resolution reproduction was nevertheless significant: Adams' work, she said, "is known for being one of the most accessible to the public eye – pleasant and monumental images of the parks of the West, often making their ways into calendars and posters in gift shops ... This accessibility and availability allows for cultural organizations to milk what they can out of licensing; fearing to release their images into the public domain due, claiming they'll lose major income. Many of us within the [GLAM] world know that this is rarely a truth".
The first editing challenge is currently in preparation, and will involve the "Today's Document" section on the NARA website. Dominic told The Signpost that it "will hopefully stimulate article content on Wikipedia to be used or referenced on the National Archives website, as well as bring in high-resolution documents from the National Archives."
Last week, NARA saw an hour-long presentation by Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama, who has just left the Wikimedia Foundation's office, where he had spent part of his year-long WMF "GLAM fellowship" about cultural collaborations). In his introduction (as well as in a blog post), David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, said he had "long been a fan of Wikipedia", emphasized the importance of GLAM-WIKI collaborations, and called Liam Wyatt (whom he credited with introducing NARA to local Wikimedians) "one of the [Wikimedia] movement's greatest champions". In January, NARA had already hosted 90 Wikimedians for a one-day "WikiXDC" event celebrating Wikipedia's 10th anniversary (Signpost coverage).
As reported in the May "This month in GLAM" newsletter, DC Wikimedians were exploring possible collaborations with the Center for History and New Media last week, founded by the late Roy Rosenzweig – known to many Wikipedians for his 2006 essay about Wikipedia, titled "Can History be Open Source?".
IRC office hour with Sue Gardner and others on Foundation's financial planning
The log of last week's office hour with WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner has been posted. Topics included work on the 2011–12 annual plan. Gardner explained that "one of the issues the board grapples with ... is how much emphasis the Wikimedia Foundation should put on growing its operational reserve fund ... balancing the importance of programmatic activities (e.g., Visual Editor) against the importance of yes, having rainy day funding." Another part of the tech budget will go into the "Wikimeda Labs" projects. Brion Vibber said "it's still all a little vague at this point", but that it would include "adapting toolserver-like infrastructure and making it even easier for researchers and experimenters (should be very awesome). [It] will be more flexible than toolserver and we'll be able to let folks run more server-ish tools".
Trustee Kat Walsh talked about several aspects of the Board's work. Gardner also looked ahead to the wrap-up of the Public Policy Initiative, scheduled for September. The WMF intends to make permanent "the most successful elements of that program, and internationalise its work. .... We're also going to fund more 'editor recruitment' in India, and begin some similar work in Brazil. [We hope] to fund a couple of community convenings (gatherings of community members to tackle hard challenges like editor retention)... we're wanting to finally start the [online] shop, so people have easy access to Wikimedia merchandise ... and we'll be spending a little more money on legal work." Regarding financial sources, she remarked "that we (WMF) don't have a 'bad boy' donor policy. Some non-profits explicitly have people they won't take money from: we don't [have such a list]."
In brief
- Board elections: Voting on candidates for the three community-elected seats on the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees has started (using the Schulze method, and employing servers of the independent nonprofit Software in the Public Interest). All three incumbents – Ting Chen (Wing), the current chair, Samuel Klein (Sj) and Kat Walsh (mindspillage) – are running again, competing with 16 other candidates (questions to candidates). Voting is possible until 12 June 2011 (23:59 UTC).
The logo of Wikimedia Canada - New Wikimedia chapter: Wikimedia Canada was approved by the Wikimedia Board of Trustees last week to become the newest Wikimedia Chapter. Incorporated as "Wiki Canada" (to avoid using the Wikimedia trademark before approval, similarly to Wiki UK), it currently has 25 paying members, according to Doc James from the board of directors, who told The Signpost: "Currently our two main projects are a) working to increase the involvement of medical students (we are working with UBC on creating a scholarship in medicine awarded to the student who makes the most significant contribution in combination with presentations on how and why one would edit) [and] b) some GLAM projects in Quebec." He explained how the chapter deals with the country's multilingualism: "Our website is fully bilingual and a large proportion of our membership is French Canadian, as is one of our board members, Benoit Rochon."
- WMF Community liaison: The Foundation has hired Maggie Dennis (User:Moonriddengirl) as "Community liaison", a new position within the Community Department, on the basis of a contract from 3 to 12 months. According to the job description, it includes serving as "an entry point for volunteer contributors to get answers to questions about the Foundation, or for introductions to Foundation staff, or to better understand a decision-making process or path. The job of the Community Liaison is to be a friendly face who is never 'too busy' to talk with contributors who have genuine questions or issues for the Foundation. The liaison steps into difficult discussions to explain details and context to staff and contributors to promote mutual understanding and healthy communication", and also "helps to integrate new Foundation staff into the Wikimedia community".
- Wikimedia Board to give visitor status to "significant" contributors: In a resolution published last week, the Foundation's Board of Trustees decided on "allowing up to two visitors to observe the Board's work for a year", a status that will be restricted to "significant content, financial or expertise contributors", and will not involve voting rights. As reported two weeks ago, the Sloan Foundation had recently expressed an interest in obtaining "observer" status on the Board, while considering renewal of the $1million/year grant it had awarded Wikimedia in March 2008. The resolution was supported by eight trustees, while one voted against it and another one was absent.
- "Founder" term extended to two years: In another resolution, the Board extended Jimmy Wales' term as "Founder" Board member from one to two years between reappointments (a change mirroring that made for other Board-appointed Trustees some months ago at the Board Governance Committee's recommendation – see Signpost coverage: "Board extends term of Board-appointed Trustees from one to two years, re-appoints them").
- Wikipedian-in-residence at Picasso museum: Catalan museum management student Àlex Hinojo (User:Kippelboy) has posted more information about his recently announced stay as Wikipedian-in-residence at the Museu Picasso. Kippelboy points out that it is "one of many fruits" of the Glamwiki BCN meeting last March at the Picasso Museum: "Following that event, museums across Catalonia, ... are beginning to establish contacts with the Catalan community of wikipedians." (More than a year ago, the Museu Picasso had already been represented in a GLAM-WIKI workshop, cf. Signpost coverage: "Wikimedians meet with museum leaders".)
- First GLAM partnership in Mexico: Wikimedia México (a proposed chapter) has formed its first GLAM partnership, with the Museo de Arte Popular (MAP), a museum in Mexico City, founded in 2006 and dedicated to Mexican handcrafts and folk art. (The May edition of the "This month in GLAM" newsletter has more details.)
- Fundraiser report: The Foundation's Community Department has published a detailed report analyzing various aspects of the last fundraiser.
- Outreach news: Wikimedia Foundation fellow Lennart Guldbrandsson (User:Hannibal) has reported "News about the Bookshelf Project and new direction for Fellowship" on the WMF blog, including the fact that his fellowship work will now be devoted fully to the Account Creation Improvement Project, and that the process to apply for Bookshelf grants (money to print outreach material) has been simplified.
- French chapter recruits two people: The French chapter Wikimédia France announced the recruitment of two new employees. Adrienne Alix (User:Serein) – previously a PhD student in the history of religion, a high-school teacher, editor-in-chief at an e-commerce website, and outgoing president of the chapter – is now Director of Programs. Her work will include managing partnerships and projects with institutions (governments and GLAMs).
Carol Ann O'Hare (fr:User:CarolAnnO) holds a master's degree in integrative and cognitive neuroscience, and another in political science. She is the director of the popular science association Plume, which already partners with the chapter for the Wikipeplum project to help PhD students edit Wikipedia. As the Research and Education Manager, she will be in charge of developing the relationships with the academic world.
On the same day, two other job offers were unveiled, for a community/technology manager and a fundraising manager.
The French Wikipedia's article about the Rennes Cathedral in front of its subject - Wikipedia articles join their subjects in Rennes: As part of celebrations of the French Wikipedia's 10th anniversary, ten panels were put up in Rennes, France, displaying Wikipedia articles about notable sights next to their subjects. The panels were made in cooperation with the city, which supported the event, and include a quadratic hole through which the article's subject can be regarded, illustrating the encyclopedic text directly. Like their digital sources, which they link through QR codes, the physical Wikipedia articles in Rennes have not been spared vandalism. Pictures of the panels and the other events are available at Commons
- Wikimedia Germany report: The German Wikimedia chapter has published its report for April 2011. Among other activities, many of them covered previously in The Signpost, it describes the organizing of a conference at the University of Göttingen to connect Wikipedia and the field of ancient history, and the intended purchase of a photo microscope for use by the German Wikipedia's biology WikiProject ("Redaktion").
- Belarusian Wikipedia featured in history cartoon: As evidence that the "Belarusian Wikipedia (is) getting popular even more", Wikipedian Paul Selitskas (User:Wizardist) noted its appearance in a cartoon "which depicts all Belarusian history in a 5-minute movie", recently released by the Belarusian civil campaign "Budźma Biełarusami" (Let’s be Belarusians): The rousing, patriotic lyrics at one point exclaim that (the Belarusian/be-x-old) "Wikipedia has a lot to say" about one protagonist, medieval ruler Gediminas.
- POTY final begins: Voting on the 36 finalists of the Commons "Picture of the Year (POTY) 2010" contest began on May 29 (some votes had already come in on May 19, before the voting was halted temporarily). Eligible user can submit their vote for one picture until June 7 (23:59 UTC).
- IRC general meeting: Wikimedia Board member Phoebe Ayers announced a general Wikimedia IRC meeting to be held on Saturday June 4 (18:00 UTC). The last such meeting took place in February.
- New administrator. There is one new admin: Drmies (nom), from the US, has a long record of content contribution and experience in New-page patrol, Unassessed biography articles, DYK and cleaning up unreferenced BLPs. At the time of publication there is one live RfB, Maxim's second, due to finish Wednesday, and one live RfA, for January, due to finish early Sunday UTC.
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Collaboration with academia; world heritage; xkcd; eG8 summit; ISP subpoena; brief news
Collaborations with universities and a professional society
An article in The Washington Post ("Wikipedia goes to class") reviewed the success of the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative, with a focus on participating universities from the region: Virginia Tech, Georgetown University and James Madison University. The article said that "Many students involved in the project have received humbling lessons about open-source writing as their work was revised, attacked or deleted by anonymous critics with unknown credentials", but indicated that this had had a positive impact on quality, quoting Rochelle Davis, one of the participating professors from Georgetown University: "Collectively, they were the best papers I’ve ever read at Georgetown". The Washington Post noted the Foundation's goal "to train at least 10,000 professors and students by 2013". The article's author also designed an online quiz inviting the reader to "test your Wikipedia knowledge" on the Washington Post's website.
The Wikimedia Foundation's blog featured an entry last week about the work of Campus Ambassadors at Montana State University.
In India, Daily News and Analysis (DNA) reported on the extension of the Campus Ambassadors program (originally introduced as part of the Public Policy Initiative) to Pune, as the first place outside the USA to ("become Wikipedia's campus ambassador").
As reported on The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Wired Campus" blog ("Academics, in New Move, Begin to Work With Wikipedia"), a "call to action" for participating in Wikipedia "was all over the Association for Psychological Science’s annual meeting" last week, as part of an initiative recently launched by the association (Signpost coverage: "US psychological society starts Wikipedia initiative"). A Wikipedia booth at the event was staffed by Sage Ross from the Foundation's Public Policy Initiative, User:Piotrus and Wikipedia researchers Rosta Farzan and Bob Kraut. Sage Ross described his impressions in a blog post ("Wikipedia and the psychologists"), detailing the numbers of psychologists recruited so far, noting the positive reaction of the associations board to a presentation about Wikipedia, and concluding "I’m optimistic that we’ll see a wave of additional professional societies getting behind Wikipedia".
Students take Wikipedia editing "more seriously" than class assignments
In related news, Brenna Gray (who appears to edit as User:Brenna.gray) of the Department of English at Douglas College has been using Wikipedia in the classroom and summarized her experiences at the 2011 Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (press release). She found that students produce better quality work when they are writing for Wikipedia than if writing their assignment for the teacher alone; in particular, they become much more worried about the factual accuracy of their work. The students in question were first-year English students instructed to write biographies on Canadian writers.
The story was picked up by several other Canadian news outlets, including the National Post ("Can Wikipedia improve students’ work?").
World heritage debate continues, petition passes 10,000 signatures
The campaign to have Wikipedia listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO (cf. last week's "In the news": "New York Times and others on Wikipedia UNESCO bid", and earlier Signpost coverage listed there) continued to generate media coverage and online discussions last week, for example from The Atlantic ("Is Wikipedia a World Cultural Repository?") and on Firstpost.com ("Wikipedia’s bold bid for World Heritage status"). An article by Deutsche Welle quoted a German representative of UNESCO: "We sympathize with this desire and we take this as a starting point", while pointing out difficulties in reconciling the proposition with UNESCO's regulations. But he added that "this is only the beginning of a mutual discussion with Wikipedia".
Two promotional videos featuring Jimmy Wales advocating the idea were published last week on Vimeo [1] and YouTube [2] (they do not appear to have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, but are licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0). The online petition surpassed 10,000 signatures on May 30; it will close on January 15, 2012.
In unrelated news, Florence Devouard (User:Anthere, former Wikimedia chair) is currently participating in an expert meeting on languages at UNESCO, in her capacity as Wikimedia advisory board member.
Xkcd features Wikipedia
The May 25 episode of the webcomic xkcd described Wikipedia as an "Extended Mind": "When Wikipedia has a server outage, my apparent IQ drops by about 30 points" (on the previous day, Wikimedia wikis had undergone a scheduled downtime, see this week's "Technology Report"). The detailed drawing of the standard "Wikipedia has a problem" error message drew scrutiny on the Wikitech-l mailing list, where developer Domas Mituzas observed that the included server IP address (10.0.0.242) could not have actually appeared since it was that of an internal DNS server. Mituzas later quoted an explanation from xkcd creator Randall Munroe: "I drew it based on an older error message where the IP was 10.0.0.243. I changed it to 242 (a) because I try not to get too specific with those things, and didn't want people poking the actual machine at .243 (if it was still there) -- I actually considered putting .276 and seeing how many poeple noticed, but figured they'd just think I made a dumb mistake. and (b) as part of this ancient inside joke involving the number 242 ... ".
The tooltip comment to the comic rekindled interest in the observation that for most articles, if one clicks on the first wikilink in the article and keeps repeating the process, one will eventually pass by the entry about philosophy. (This had been described on Wikipedia since at least 2008, see Wikipedia:Get to Philosophy.) For example, Thenextweb.com invited its readers to "Try This Crazy Wikipedia Trick". On May 25, page view numbers for philosophy peaked at around 40 times their previous daily average. One xkcd reader programmed a tool displaying the chain for any given start article.
Jimmy Wales attends eG8 summit
Jimmy Wales was one of the representatives from the global Internet industry who met with government leaders at the E-G8 Forum in Paris last week, to discuss the Internet in the context of global public policy. Much of the discussions at the event concerned stricter regulation of the Internet by governments (an approach championed by the host, French president Nicolas Sarkozy). In particular, the recent UK superinjunctions against the publication of allegations about the private life of some celebrities were debated in Paris, where Jimmy Wales added to his previous criticism (Signpost coverage), going so far as to compare it to the Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China: "I do view it to being similar to the Chinese situation where they also cover up misdeeds of high ranking people" (BBC), and warned that the US would not weaken its strong free speech protections to compromise with other countries.
In April, Wales had asked readers of his blog "What should I put on the agenda at the upcoming e-G8?". The Guardian reported a remark by Wales about the impact of the Internet on languages in the developing world, and more specifically that of Wikipedia, citing the example of the Swahili Wikipedia which is the first ever encyclopedia in that language. In response to "criticism that Wikipedia is a permanent record of some information that people might prefer not to have on a public forum", Wales said: "They say an elephant never forgets; Wikipedia is a very big elephant." A somewhat gossipy article on CNBC mentioned Wales' commitment to running Wikipedia as a nonprofit, and described him having a "heart-warming reunion" with Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters.
US ISP has to release identity of anonymous editors in libel case
As reported earlier ("Company sues IP editors for defamation"), fashion company Façonnable last month filed a John Doe lawsuit against anonymous (IP) editors who inserted what it says are false claims alleging ties of the company with the Lebanese Hezbollah organization into the Wikipedia article about Façonnable. The lawsuit was brought after the users' Internet provider, Skybeam Inc, had rejected the request to provide their names to Façonnable, stating that this would need "a summons delivered by a local law enforcement agency".
According to the blog E-Commerce Law ("Identity of Anonymous Wikipedia Editors Not Protected by First Amendment"), the District Court for the District of Colorado has now rejected a motion by Skybeam to quash the subpoena that had been subsequently obtained by Façonnable. The charges brought by the company against the IP editors, as summarized by E-Commerce Law, allege they "violated the Lanham Act and committed trade libel and commercial disparaging by falsely posting that plaintiff is a support of Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamist militia and political party which has been designated as a terrorist organization", and the court's justification for not applying the "heightened standard" used by other US courts for such discovery of the identity of online speakers was that in this case "the burden placed on the anonymous speaker's exercise of free speech was content neutral as the subject subpoena was not 'designed to suppress the express of unpopular views,' but instead to allow an allegedly injured victim to seek relief against anonymous Internet posters for actionable speech."
On Foundation-l, the Wikimedia Foundation's former legal counsel Mike Godwin illuminated the legal situation further by describing "the status of anonymity under U.S. constitutional law" according to the landmark case Lovell v. City of Griffin, which "basically says you have the right to attempt to engage in anonymous public speech, and you don't have an obligation yourself to disclose who you are simply in order to speak. At the same time, Lovell does *not* say you have a constitutional guarantee to *succeed* in being anonymous. In effect, that means that telcos and ISPs can be compelled to provide whatever information they have on you, the anonymous speaker, and the government may be able to use other investigatory techniques to figure out who the anonymous speaker is anyway."
The articles about Façonnable and its parent company M1 Group had been speedily deleted some weeks after the earlier news reports about the lawsuit appeared.
Briefly
- Strauss-Kahn coverage in French- and English-language Wikipedias: The French magazine Télérama wrote an article about the different ways the French- and English-language Wikipedias covered the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. English-language editor User:Tvoz and several French-language editors were interviewed and quoted in the article.
- Podcasters examine their Wikipedia articles: Marc Maron, Adam Carolla, and Alison Rosen discussed Wikipedia in a live episode of Carolla's (record-setting) podcast, quickly covering an incorrect entry on Maron's article and the ongoing meme of Carolla's page erroneously claiming he has Crohn's disease. They then focused on Alison Rosen's lack of notability. Rosen explained how she understood and viewed the AFD process. (Ca. 10 minutes of discussion in this episode, about 50 minutes in.)
Similarly, Chris Hardwick used a recent podcast to step through his Wikipedia entry, confirming and denying statements, which User:Tedder used for the article. - Wikipedia in Greece: On the University of Amsterdam's "Masters of Media" group blog, graduate student Ilektra Pavlaki related her experience in following a campaign to participate in the Greek-language Wikipedia, launched late last year, and supported by the Greek Ministry of Education which declared 2011 to be the "Year of Digital Encyclopedia". Posting in two parts ("A 'lazy' Wikipedia. An active community. An interesting story", "The lessons that 'teaching' taught me"), she described her encounter with Greek Wikipedians, and how she held two workshops about Wikipedia for Greek school students ("64 students in total, 34 from the second class of lyceum and 30 from the third class of high school"). Although almost everyone seemed to be familiar with Wikipedia, only 6 of the 64 were able to answer the question "who writes Wikipedia?" correctly, and most had never noticed the "edit" button while using Wikipedia.
- Israel-Palestine conflict on Wikipedia: A report on Russian TV network RT ("Wiki War: Israel, Palestine dig digital trenches") described the struggle between Israeli and Palestinian editors on Wikipedia, quoting representatives from both sides.
- Town mayor repairs vandalism: The Pantagraph, a local newspaper in Illlinois, USA, reported the insertion of false information into the article about Farmer City, Illinois ("Wikipedia displays odd historical record on Farmer City"). It quoted the town's mayor, who took it upon himself to update the article with correct information (cf. User:Farmercitymayor).
- Quora and Wikipedia: In an interview for TechCrunch, Charlie Cheever, one of the founders of the Internet question-and-answer site Quora, was asked by Andrew Keen (well-known as a Wikipedia critic) to explain "the difference between Quora and Wikipedia" (a question that has already been explored by other commenters, see Signpost coverage from March 7, February 14). Cheever argued that what distinguished Quora from Wikipedia and "most other sites" was that it published "a lot of primary source knowledge ... a lot of times, people who are like the authorities or experts will come write sort of a definitive answer on Quora that just wasn't there before". Asked by Keen on how to decide whether a Quora poster was an expert or not, Cheever replied that "I think the answer to that is basically like crowd sourcing, for the most part." The fact that Quora is a for-profit company was noted as a further significant difference to Wikipedia.
- Malayalam short film about Wikipedia: A short film on Wikipedia (in Malayalam, with English subtitles) has been published on YouTube. The plot centers around an Indian Internet user who discovers Wikipedia, uses it successfully for competing in a dial-in TV quiz and for writing newspaper articles, but in the end has to discover to his horror that Wikipedia has discontinued its free service, after he has already sold off his books.
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The Royal Railway
- The June Wikification Drive begins Wednesday. Do you have what it takes to climb the leader board?
- After clearing out nearly all of the backlogged articles from 2008, the May Copyedit Drive ran out of steam. Please help them end the drive with a strong push in the final day!
This week, we took a ride on the trains of WikiProject UK Railways. The project, begun in April 2006, currently conducts expansion and maintenance on over 11,000 pages. There are 26 featured articles, 5 featured lists, and 52 good articles included in the project's scope. The project maintains a portal, a list of open tasks, and plenty of resources available to all Wikipedians. WikiProject UK Railways is a child of WikiProject Trains (see our interview from September 2010), sister of WikiProject UK Trams, nephew of WikiProject London Transport, and cousin of WikiProject UK Waterways (interviewed in January 2011). We spent some time with project members mattbuck, Thryduulf, Optimist on the run (formerly Tivedshambo), Alzarian16, Iridescent, Simply south, and Mjroots.
What motivated you to join WikiProject UK Railways? Do you commute via rail? Would you consider yourself a trainspotter?
- mattbuck: I think I originally joined due to my interest in the Ffestiniog Railway. I'd never commuted by rail, but there is an almost-universal fascination amongst British people for steam trains, and as a boy I'd always enjoyed going to various railways while on holiday. I did subsequently become a trainspotter, in the autumn of 2008. I'd just got back from my first visit to the job centre, and was feeling that I'd signed my life away to be a shelf stacker, so I decided to go out somewhere. I'd been working on Commons sorting photos of my home city of Bristol, and realised that some Bristol stations were severely lacking photos. I started with the stations, and trainspotting sort of came naturally from that.
- Thryduulf: I've always been interested in transport, and particularly railways so joining this project when it started seemed a natural thing for me to do. Apart from a few days here and there, I've never commuted by rail, although I would have done for several years if the stations within walking distance of my home (Cheddar Valley Line) and my office (Henbury Loop Line) had not both been closed in the 1960s. I don't consider myself a "trainspotter" but I do think of myself as a "railfan", as I'm interested in the stations, history, etc rather than seeing individual trains.
- Optimist on the run: I don't like the term "trainspotter" as it has negative connotations, at least here in the UK, and portrays an image of an anorak-clad individual standing at the end of a platform. I hope my interests in railways are more rounded than that. I've always been interested in railways and have a good knowledge (and access to some more obscure reference material), which is why I joined the project. I commute by rail most days, though recently I've been cycling sometimes instead.
- Alzarian16: I found the project via the talk page of an article I was working on at the time (British Rail Class 180 I think) and thought it looked like a good way to find topics of interest to work on and ask for help when I needed it. I don't commute at present, but if I did I would try to use rail if at all possible. "Trainspotter" is a very narrowly defined term for a small part of what's really a much wider interest, but I don't object to its use, although "enthusiast" is better.
- Iridescent: I'm interested in 19th century civil engineering, rather than in trains per se. Railways were the defining technology of the period, so there's a lot of train-related material there. I wouldn't consider myself either a trainspotter or a railfan; my interest is in the infrastructure, rather than in individual locomotives.
- Simply south: I have always been interested in rail transport since a very young age. I have found Wikipedia to be a good outlet for this and for collaborating with other people interested in the different aspects of the rail industry and everything else about it. I am not really a trainspotter. I describe myself as a rail enthusiast and am more interested in the routes and stations, as well as the journey.
Do you find yourself working more on articles relating to currently operating railways or historic/defunct railways?
- Mjroots: Mostly historic railways, with some heritage railways thrown in. I am also interested in railway accidents.
- mattbuck: I don't tend to do much work on actual articles, I'm more involved in the photos on Wikimedia Commons. However, I would say more current operating articles, as they're generally easier to photograph; though I have produced several route diagrams for defunct lines. That said, I've recently been working on Severn Beach Line-related articles, which hold a certain emotional connection to me, as my grandmother lived right next to the station at Redland.
- Thryduulf: I'm more of a wikignome and facilitator rather than a major contributor of prose. I tend to work on a wide variety of railway articles, although the Westcountry and London are particular focuses, as is wherever I've recently travelled. The Bridgnorth Cliff Railway and LNER Class A4 4488 Union of South Africa articles were two of the first articles I ever created as a Wikipedian (I'd recently taken very good photos of these).
- Alzarian16: A bit of both - basically anything that I come across which would benefit from improvement, with a slight focus on areas with which I have a personal connection. My two rail-based article creations were a former station and a proposed line.
- Iridescent: On railways which were operational in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some are still operational, some are long defunct.
- Simply south: I seem to focus mainly on maintenance around the project. Overall article wise, I tend to focus more on modern railways etc.
The project's talk page is very active. What brings so many editors together for discussion? Is there anything unique about the project or the topic that might contribute to the high levels of activity?
- mattbuck: It's mostly because people there are usually very helpful. Several times I've come across a photo I want to categorise which is of a train, which I can sort, but might have no information about where it was taken - asking on the project talk I've seen people be able to identify a station just from the placement of some rubbish bins. The British railway system is huge, even larger if you include historical lines, and it's pretty much impossible for one person to know everything. That said, because of the nature of the system, we don't always agree on things, particularly names. There was a very large discussion last month about whether St Pancras railway station should be moved to St Pancras International railway station or not, as that's the current name but maybe not the common name. Furthermore, we are still divided over train naming - we currently use a system of British Rail Class X, even for trains which were manufactured after British Rail ceased to exist, and that's caused a few arguments.
- Simply south: Newcastle, Birmingham New Street, Glasgow Central have all been among the bigger disputes and some are still ongoing. However generally there are a huge amount of people interested in a variety of aspects of rail transport in the UK. We have had a huge history of transportation.
The project has 26 featured articles, 5 featured lists, and 52 good articles. Have you contributed to any of these? Do you have any advice for improving articles about railways in the UK for FA or GA promotion?
- Mjroots: I was involved in getting the Hawkhurst Branch Line article to GA status, mostly in collaboration with User:Redrose64.
- Thryduulf: I was indirectly responsible for List of London Underground stations getting featured list status after I effected a major reformatting from a messy bulleted list to a table. This was a while before even the FL nom, so I can't take a significant amount of the credit. My copyediting and similar tasks on other articles may have helped in a small way to other recognitions, but I don't keep track.
- Optimist on the run: My only FA so far has been Talyllyn Railway, though I assisted with List of railway stations in the West Midlands. I've currently got List of Talyllyn Railway rolling stock in my sights to bring up to FL standard. The best advice I can give is to arm yourself with plenty of reference material, read through it thoroughly and then write the best you can.
- Iridescent: Brill railway station, Brill Tramway, Hellingly Hospital Railway, Opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, Quainton Road railway station, Tunnel Railway, Waddesdon Road railway station, Westcott railway station, Wood Siding railway station and Wotton (Metropolitan Railway) railway station at FA (plus assorted tangentially related but not primarily railway articles like Aylesbury duck and Noel Park); Chesham branch, Infrastructure of the Brill Tramway and Railway stations in Cromer at GA. People working on railway articles (at least in the UK and North America) have the luxury of working in a field where almost every aspect of the industry has been the subject of a book at some point; the best advice I could give would be to learn where to locate these books, and also to learn to disregard websites, which are often very professional-looking but frequently wrong.
Railway articles often include detailed route maps and color-coded lists of rail lines. What sources of information are used to create these visual aids? How much effort goes into keep these updated?
- mattbuck: I've created quite a few route maps, and I use a variety of sources. The most useful one is Google Earth - you can see most details from the aerial photos, and often you can still see the paths of old railways on the landscape. For older lines, and also for finding disused stations, I use New Popular Edition Maps which maps Britain using old Ordnance Survey maps from before the Beeching Axe. I also have several reference books for various areas, which can help. It's not very hard to keep the route maps up to date - the line ones don't tend to change much, as you usually don't put in that much detail beyond the stations. The succession boxes can be trickier, as service patterns do change, and you occasionally get the odd place like Filton Abbey Wood where to keep the next/previous consistent for a particular service you need to go against the standard next/previous for that line.
- Optimist on the run: There are a number of good rail atlases available for the UK, covering both current and historic railways, and comparing these gives a good indication about changes of station names, etc.
- Simply south: WP:RDT is a good place to discuss the technical sides of these. At the project, we also have a list of company and system colours, WP:WikiProject UK Railways/Colours list.
Does the project collaborate with any other projects?
- Thryduulf: There is an obvious crossover with the parent WP:Trains and with the various geographic projects and task forces, but I'm not sure if there is formal collaboration.
- Simply south: The project does collaborations with geographical projects as well as other transportation projects, such as WP:WikiProject London Transport. The Route diagram template project is a resource on the routes of the network and discussing some technical sides.
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new member help today?
- mattbuck: We have a list of some 50 current stations in the UK that we have no photos of, which is quite surprising, though many of those are quite rural and have very low usage.
- Thryduulf: Many of the articles about smaller and historic stations are very stubby and it would be great if we could expand some of these.
- Alzarian16: The articles in Category:British Rail diesel multiple units and its contemporaries, many of which are fairly high-traffic, are often lacking in sources and early operational history. Improvements to these would be very helpful.
Next week's article will be printed, bound, and sold. Until then, see our previously published work in the archive.
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Whipping fantasies, American–British naval rivalry, and a medieval mix of purity and eroticism
Featured articles
- The Magdalen Reading (nom), one of three surviving fragments of a large mid-15th century oil-on-oak altarpiece by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden. (Ceoil, Truthkeeper88, and Johnbod). picture at top
- Percy Grainger (nom), a composer and performer widely regarded as something of an oddity. Although innovative and original, he tends to be remembered for relatively trivial works such as the eminently whistlable "Country Gardens". "As to his private obsessions", says nominator Brianboulton, "well, the less said the better". picture at right
- USS Chesapeake (1799) (nom), a 38-gun wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the US Navy—one of the original six frigates whose construction was authorised by the Naval Act of 1794. Chesapeake began her career during the Quasi-War with France and saw service in the First Barbary War. She captured five British ships during the War of 1812 (Brad). picture at right
- Myotis escalerai (nom), a European bat that was only very recently and thanks to DNA data recognized as a separate species. (Ucucha). picture at right
- Banksia marginata (nom), a species of tree or woody shrub found throughout much of southeastern Australia, and still the subject of taxonomic uncertainty. (Casliber) pictures at bottom
- Jefferson nickel (nom), the five-cent coin that has been struck by the United States Mint since 1938. Nominator Wehwalt says if you've ever noticed that the image of Jefferson's residence Monticello "seems far more imposing on the coin than in real life, read on".
- Slow loris (nom), a group of five species of primates found in South and Southeast Asia, and classified variously as "endangered" and "vulnerable". The nomination was a collaborative effort as part of the WikiProject Mammals Collaboration. The article has been receiving between 1,000 and 6,000 hits a day for many months, much of it apparently due to the controversial "tickling" and "umbrella" viral videos on YouTube, where parts of the article have been cited in viewers' comments. Such comments, according to the main nominator, Visionholder, caused multiple spikes in hits on the article while the article's appearance on DYK resulted in nearly 40,000 hits on 30 March. Visionholder says he has made efforts, with some success, to gain coverage in the press for primatologists working in the field of conserving this primate, and that the BBC has a documentary in production on the pet trade (co-nominators Sasata, Rlendog, and Ucucha). picture at right
- The Red Badge of Courage (nom), the best-known novel about the American Civil War, according to nominator María. Striking and unique in its portrayal of fear, it was written by a sickly 23-year-old man. picture at right
- 2012 phenomenon (nom), a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events will occur on December 21, 2012. A New Age interpretation of this transition postulates that this date marks the start of a positive physical or spiritual transformation for the Earth or its inhabitants, or the end of the world by catastrophe such as the collision of the planet with a black hole. (Serendipodous)
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X (nom), published in 1965, was the result of a collaboration between Malcolm X and journalist Alex Haley. The book is a spiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophy of black pride, black nationalism, and pan-Africanism, and is based on a series of in-depth interviews conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination. (GabeMc).
- Richard Barre (nom), which nominator Ealdgyth says is "the only medieval biography article you'll likely ever see with a citation to the science-fiction magazine Analog science fiction and fact.
- Nebula Science Fiction (nom), the first Scottish science fiction magazine and one of the best-loved features of the 1950s British science-fiction scene. Despite being launched by a teenager, it established itself as a significant market, and published the first sales of several well-known writers. (Mike Christie)
Two featured articles were delisted:
- Cryptography (nom) (referencing, prose, neutrality and scope)
- Anthony Michael Hall (nom) (referencing)
Featured lists
Seven lists were promoted:
- List of U.S. state horses (nom). (Nominated by Dana boomer.)
- Discontinued Hugo Awards (nom). (Nominated by PresN.)
- List of human characters in Sesame Street (nom). (Nominated by Figureskatingfan.)
- List of Vuelta a España general classification winners (nom). (Nominated by NapHit.)
- List of Watford F.C. players (nom). (Nominated by WFCforLife.)
- List of Benet Academy alumni (nom). (Nominated by Edge3.)
- Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical (nom). (Nominated by Adabow.)
One featured list was delisted:
- List of U.S. states by date of statehood (nom: [content forking, lead, referencing])
Featured pictures
The reviewers promoted only one image of 12 that were nominated:
- Cabiria 1914 poster (nom; related article), a silent movie from the 1914 film, early years of Italy's movie industry. The movie is based on Emilio Salgari's Italian-language novel Carthage in flames and Flaubert's novel Salammbo. Set in ancient Carthage during the Second Punic War, it treats the conflict between Rome and Carthage through the eyes of the title character. Hannibal and his war elephants are featured in the plot of this epic film. (Created by N. Morgello; prepared and uploaded by Jujutacular.)
Featured sounds
There are four new featured sounds
- Scriabin's Étude Op. 8 No. 12 (nom; related article), a 1894 piece for solo piano by the great Russian composer, performed by Awadagin Pratt at the White House Classical Music Student Workshop Concert on November 4, 2009.
- Turkey in the Straw (nom; related article), an American folk song from the early 19th century, performed by the US Air Force Strings.
- Arirang (nom; related article), the unofficial national anthem of South Korea, performed by the US Army Band Chorus. Another file by the United States Army Strings with a tenor solo was also promoted.
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Update – injunction from last week has expired
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases. Two cases are currently open.
Open cases
Racepacket (Week 5)
During the week, further proposals were submitted in the proposed decision for arbitrators to vote on.
Tree shaping (Week 5)
During the week, drafter Elen of the Roads submitted additional proposals in the workshop which received comments from arbitrators and parties to the case.
Injunction
- Update
The Committee has clarified that the injunction included in last week's Signpost coverage may now be regarded as expired. This is because an arbitration case will not be opened, and pending changes are not enabled on any main namespace pages [3].
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Wikimedia down for an hour; What is: Wikipedia Offline?
Wikimedia wikis down for an hour
As noted in last week's "Technology Report", Wikimedia wikis underwent a scheduled downtime of one hour on Tuesday 24 May at around 13:00–14:00 UTC. The downtime meant that the Foundation has already missed previous aired targets of limiting downtime to just 5.256 minutes per annum (equivalent to 99.999% uptime) and 52.6 minutes (99.99% uptime) for this calendar year. However, the work does appear to have been successful at reducing the quantity of out-of-date pages served to readers and other similar problems.
During the downtime, designed to allow the operations team sufficient time to "update the router software and tune the configuration", access to Wikimedia sites was intermittent. The episode and associated issues was alluded to by cartoonist Randall Monroe on his comic strip xkcd (see also this week's "In the news" for more details). Wikimedia developers enjoyed dissecting the technical aspects of the cartoon on the wikitech-l mailing list.
What is: Wikipedia Offline?
Wikimedia Labs: soon to be at the cutting edge of MediaWiki development?
23 April 2012
MediaWiki 1.20wmf01 hits first WMF wiki, understanding 20% time, and why this report cannot yet be a draft
16 April 2012
What is: agile development? and new mobile site goes live
12 September 2011
The bugosphere, new mobile site and MediaWiki 1.18 close in on deployment
29 August 2011
Code Review backlog almost zero; What is: Subversion?; brief news
18 July 2011
Wikimedia down for an hour; What is: Wikipedia Offline?
30 May 2011
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
25 April 2011
What is: localisation?; the proposed "personal image filter" explained; and more in brief
21 March 2011
Many Wikipedia editors can now access the Internet from multiple locations: at home, at work, even on-the-go with smartphones. In 2010, however, only 30% of the world had any access at all to the so-called "World Wide Web", even when the high rates of availability found in the developed world are allowed to skew the data (source: CIA World Factbook). Since the Wikimedia Foundation's aim is to "encourage the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content", it is clear that either the remaining 70% will have to be supplied with the Internet so they can access the online versions of Wikimedia wikis, or the Wikimedia wikis will have to be provided in an offline-friendly format (in contrast, 50% of the world has used a computer, according to Pew Research). The "Wikipedia Offline" project, then, is a WMF initiative aimed at spreading its flagship product freely to the two billion people who use a computer but cannot access the Internet.
There are two parts to the challenge: firstly, in ensuring that there are Wikipedias in as many languages as possible. The number of users for whom a Wikipedia exists in a language they speak was recently estimated as above 98% (foundation-l mailing list); about 82% have a Wikipedia in their native tongue (also foundation-l). The second challenge is the technical one of supplying the information. A current strategy of the Foundation is to continue to make the raw data of Wikipedias available via so-called "dumps", while simultaneously supporting open-source programs that can process these files. In combination, this will allow whole Wikipedias to be either downloaded when an Internet connection is available, or to be shipped on DVDs or other portable media. This runs alongside the Foundation's existing project to select the most useful articles from a given Wikipedia, hence condensing an encyclopedia onto a single CD.
While "dumps" are largely tried and tested (though recent work has focussed on improving their regularity and reliability), there have also been efforts to enable the export of smaller "collections" of articles, for example those relating to major health issues faced by developing countries. This was in part provided by a new export format (ZIM, developed by the openZim project) that can be read by some offline readers. However, ongoing efforts focus mainly on the second half of the strategy: the provision of a good-quality reader capable of displaying off-line versions of wikis. A number of possible readers were tested. The "Kiwix" reader was selected in late 2010, and the Foundation has since devoted time to improving its user interface, including via the translation of its interface. There is also competition from other readers, including "Okawix", the product of the French company Linterweb. User:Ziko blogged last week about the differences he found between the two. Which, if either, will become the standard is unclear, because it is such a fast-moving area.
See also: Wikimedia strategy document, update on Wikimedia's progress (as of March 2011).
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.
- On 26 May user MZMcBride reported at the administrators' noticeboard that some deletion debates and arbitration pages were being indexed on Google (that is to say, appeared in Google's search listings, despite this being prohibited by the English Wikipedia's "robots.txt"). The problem was traced to a complexity in Google's spidering system, which does not equate ordinary characters (such as ":" and "/") with their encoded forms ("%3A" and "%2F"). As a result, effective blocking requires a number of additional variants to be listed. Within 50 minutes the Foundation's operations engineer Ryan Lane was working on the case, and NOINDEX code was added to relevant templates. NukeBot (run by admin NuclearWarfare) also began to add the directive to each page in turn to enforce non-spidering. Afterwards, bug #29162 was opened to propose automatically handling such cases in future.
- David Gerard launched a vocal attack on the GFDL software licence recommended to developers by the Free Software Foundation. Instead, he advised that "[developers should] use CC by-sa, CC-by or Public Domain ... If it's a software manual, [they should] license or dual-license it under the same licence as the software itself".
- Wikimedia developers honoured a request from the Foundation's legal department (one of what are termed "office actions") to delete certain image files permanently from Wikimedia servers (server admin log).
- The codebase on the anti-vandalism tool Twinkle was updated, prompting a number of bug reports and some non-functionality during the transitionary period. It is now "gadget only", according to its developer User:AzaToth (English Wikipedia's Technical Village Pump). Many other Wikimedia wikis have their own copy of the tool; many of them will have to be updated manually.
- Bug #27465, which prevented the SVG parser from rendering unusual but perfectly valid images, was fixed.
- Magnus Manske, one of the original developers of the MediaWiki software, began a new blog. His first blogpost concerned one of the gadgets he has written for Wikimedia sites, "Commons Commander".
- The Article Feedback extension for rating articles was listed on the Foundation's "Software deployments" page to be expanded to all articles on the English Wikipedia on 31 May. The lack of publicity given to the deployment raised criticism from some quarters, particularly in the light of recent controversies about the Pending Changes feature (example 1, example 2). Erik Möller explained that the page was in error, and instead announced that the tool would be rolled out incrementally over the next few weeks. In related news, a fix preventing the tool from appearing on redirect pages was pushed live to Wikimedia sites (bug #29164).
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