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22 August 2011

 

2011-08-22

Girl Geeks edit while they dine, candidates needed for forthcoming steward elections, image referendum opens

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By Tom Morris and Skomorokh

Bristol hosts "Girl Geeks vs. Wikimeet"

The Girl Geeks had a Wikipedia globe-shaped cake...
...which was quickly consumed.

On Thursday, Bristol Girl Geek Dinners hosted a joint event at the University of Bristol with Wikimedia UK to try to encourage and help women edit Wikipedia. The session was led by Fiona Apps (User:Panyd, an administrator on English Wikipedia) and was supported by Martin Poulter (User:MartinPoulter). As with all Girl Geek Dinner events, the primary audience was women and men could attend if they accompanied a female attendee. Wikimedia UK provided food and drink including a cake decorated to look like the Wikipedia globe.

At the event, after a talk about how to edit and how to avoid the pitfalls, the audience pulled laptops out and started editing. A second presentation soon followed with discussion on some of the problems new editors (both male and female) face including unexplained reversion of their changes and the "excessive zeal" of some experienced Wikipedians in reverting, warning and deleting new content and tagging articles with cleanup tags. Fiona responded by explaining to new contributors about how to resolve disputes on the discussion page.

According to a writeup on the Bristol Wireless blog, "the Bristol Girl Geeks were almost unanimous in their criticism of the Wikipedia editing interface". The event was also written up at thefreshoutlook.com.

The Signpost spoke to Fiona about the event:

Whose idea was having a Wikipedia-related Girl Geek Dinner?

Wikimedia UK, I think it was Martin Poulter who approached the Girl Geek Dinners organisers.

In discussions of gender gap (and systemic bias) issues on Wikipedia, the overall issue often gets obscured by the examples: baseball cards vs. fashion designers, Mexican feminist writers vs. video games. These examples are always inevitably followed by someone pointing out that it is sexist to presume that women are interested in fashion designers rather than baseball cards. Was topic choice something that women attending had any strong opinions on?

The attendees were very interested in editing topics they were interested in, and agreed that general women's issues and interests should be covered more in depth and given more interest on the project. However, they were also averse to being pigeon holed. Generalisations about women and what they were interested in, and an overall sense of patronisation, were very prevalent themes of the night.

There were newbies editing at the event: how did they get on? Any new pages get created? Anyone have any particularly good experiences?

These were complete newbies. So we actually found that rather than editing during the night, we were having to familiarise them with the interface, which a lot of feedback was also focused on. However, some external links were added and a few people found WikiProjects they were interested in, so the overall impression was good. 43% of those attending said they were interested in further editing

Have you got any thoughts on how the community or the Foundation might help meet the rather modest goal Sue Gardner has set of increasing participation by women? And do you think the participation gap might extend to other groups like ethnic minorities, religious groups, LGBT people etc.?

I think it's a certainty that there are other minorities on Wikipedia, and I think we not only have to reach out to these people but also take note of our own privileges in doing so. One of the best things about this event was that we didn't tell women why they didn't edit, we asked, and more minorities need to have the opportunity to speak out on their own behalf about what keeps them from editing and any issues they face.
From the feedback we received, the online ambassadors program and more welcoming parties need to be introduced to help with the initial editing experience - many women wanted help and someone to personally assist them in their Wikipedia journey, and cited not having this as a main reason for not editing that includes helping with layout issues, learning markup and working with new editors when their edits are reverted

Do you know if there are any plans to have future Wikimedia events in the UK on women editing Wikipedia, either through the Girl Geek Dinners or independently?

We are hoping to collaborate with Girl Geek Dinners again in the future, and we are also hoping to set up editing days for those who express interest at the Girl Geek Dinners. So yes! I'd also like to thank Wikimedia UK and Bristol Girl Geek dinners for putting on such a wonderful event!

In brief

  • Steward candidates wanted: On Meta-Wiki, preparations are underway for this year's second steward elections. Candidate submissions are open until 7 September 2011, 23:59 (UTC). Candidates must be 18 or older, have three months of experience as administrators, and must be willing to identify themselves to the Foundation. Stewards are empowered to intercede on local projects in need of technical and administrative assistance, such as combating crosswiki vandalism. As a result of the departure of former Volunteer Coordinator Cary Bass, the election is being organised by a committee of stewards in collaboration with the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Reader Relations, Philippe Beaudette. In a departure from elections past, Board of Trustees have announced their intention to abstain from confirming the outcome. The elections follow discussions on the steward mailing list and a recent request for comment from the steward ranks asking How to make your Wikimedian life easier?, centering on tenure and granting of permissions of responsibility.
  • New Chapters 'Planet': A new blog aggregation service ('planet'), http://www.chaptersplanet.org/, has been launched, focussing on the blogs of Wikimedia chapters. Unlike the official http://planet.wikimedia.org subdomains, it is not language specific, but includes posts by chapters in any language (or multiple languages). As of time of writing, some 19 chapters have their blogposts pooled by the service.
  • Chapter reports: Several chapters announced publication of their regular reports last week: Wikimedia Hungary (March, April, and May 2011), Wikimedia Sweden (June and July 2011) and Wikimedia Denmark (second quarter 2011).
  • Wikimedia USA?: As the public debate over a letter published by the Wikimedia board of trustees calling for more rigorous controls on chapter funding cooled, commentators have turned to related subjects. Gerard Meijssen picked up on the often-aired sentiment that a Wikimedia USA should be created despite concerns that it would need to cover too large an area, whilst French Wikimedian Teofilo strayed into outright criticism of chapters' practices, including hiring staff, though such opinions are yet to find great support among the wider community.
  • New Wikizine: The latest edition of Wikizine, "an independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community" has been published. Most active in 2006, it is the first issue of the bulletin to be published since January, and covers the ongoing image referendum as well as linking to other major reports published recently.
  • WikiHistories – Turkish 'Vikipedi': Ayhan Aytes, one of the Foundation's WikiHistories summer fellows, reported on his investigations within the Turkish Wikimedian community, which recently lost its Wikimania 2012 bid and is facing possible government censorship.
  • More content on Twitter?: There was a discussion this week on the foundation-l mailing list about the possibility of providing an English Wikipedia feed. The thread also included a list of currently available micro-blogging feeds.
  • Referendum ongoing: The image filter referendum, devised by the WMF Board of Trustees, is underway. The actions of the board in creating the referendum were praised by some (Alec Conroy described those overseeing the filter project as "acting very thoughtfully and going in a direction carefully chosen to be consistent with our values"), but criticised by a small number of others (for example, Coren accused the referendum writers of begging the question by not including an option to signal dislike of the whole idea of a filter).
    Prangins Castle, the site of a conference hosted this week by the Swiss chapter Wikimedia CH
  • GLAM conference in Switzerland: On Saturday the Swiss chapter Wikimedia CH organised a French-speaking conference at the Prangins Castle, heritage site of national significance. The topic was the state and future of GLAM projects in Switzerland, and feedback from the French chapter Wikimédia France. The speakers were Adrienne Alix, director of programs, and Benoît Evellin, former Wikimedia-in-Residence at the Palace of Versailles. After the talks, Wikimedia CH president Mourad Ben Abdallah opened a discussion between the public, attending Wikimedians and GLAM representatives.
  • Backstage pass and edit-a-thon: The Children's Museum of Indianapolis hosted an editathon on Saturday, August 20, focusing on its Caplan Collection of folk art, toys, and other objects. Wikipedians participated both on-site and virtually, creating four new articles, adding photographs, and translating articles.
  • New administrator: The Signpost welcomes Fluffernutter (nom) as our newest admin; her candidacy succeeded without opposition. Fluffernutter expects to work on WP:AIV and Category:Wikipedia protected edit requests, and cleaning up redirects. She will also be able to use her new admin tools in the OTRS work that she does.

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2011-08-22

Journalist regrets not checking citation; PR firms issue advice on how to survive Wikipedia (and a U.S. Congressman's office is accused of copying)

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By Strange Passerby and Skomorokh

Wikipedia in the spotlight again after newspaper blunder

Ice hockey manager Mike Gillis criticised the Toronto Star this week for publishing a quotation attributed to him on Wikipedia without checking that he actually said it.

Wikipedia and its ability to be freely edited by anyone has again come under media scrutiny this week after the Toronto Star published a falsified quote attributed to Mike Gillis, the general manager of the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team, made about former Canucks forward Rick Rypien, who died earlier this week. (The story was later corrected with an accompanying apology, after Gillis and the Canucks criticised the newspaper in a statement.) This is not the first time that journalists have made such a blunder; for example, many newspapers included an erroneous quotation attributed to Maurice Jarre after his death in 2009 (see previous Signpost coverage).

An intern at the Star had found a quote supposedly by Gillis on Wikipedia attributed to the Vancouver Sun, and did not verify its accuracy before including it in his story. His editor likewise assumed that the quote was accurate, as the story did not reference Wikipedia. As a result, Michael Cooke, the Editor of the Star, sent out an internal memo telling writers to verify the accuracy of information obtained from Wikipedia. In the memo, he noted numerous problems with his own biography in Wikipedia, including the fact that "up until a month ago it had me graduating from a university in New Zealand. I have never stepped foot in that country. Other errors remain."

In response, Kathy English, the public editor at the Star, has written an opinion piece titled "Don't trust Wikipedia". In it, she cites a Wikipedia essay, "10 things you did not know about Wikipedia", which says "we do not expect you to trust us", and ends her piece by noting that journalists must know what information to trust, in order to maintain their readers' trust.

A discussion on the administrator's noticeboard highlighted the fact that the quote had been sourced to an online reference (which the Star writer had failed to check), initially reproducing the original faithfully, but then tampered with by a vandal.

The public relations professional's guide to Wikipedia

Recently, several online publications have focused on a topic of recurring relevance to Wikipedia editors intent on policing its strict policy on neutrality: questionable editing of the encyclopaedia by public relations professionals. The search engine result prominence of Wikipedia, the apparent openness of editing, and its perceived status as a "good enough" authority of neutrality and illumination for a wide breadth of topics make direct engagement with the site perennially attractive to those tasked with improving the online profile of celebrities, products and institutions.

For example, edSocialMedia have released a guide to Wikipedia for educational institutions, advising the addition of flattering photographs, promotional Facebook links, and lists of prominent alumni, and highlighting the Worcester Academy article as a particularly well-written article in the latter regard. Ragan's PR Daily also issued guidance, but noted the potential ethical difficulties for public relations professionals seeking to engage with the encyclopaedia; the four "rules of engagement" offered were "establish notability', "be transparent", "avoid jargon", and "ask for help". In a press release for its own guide, EreviewGuide.com adopted a wary tone, with media relations consultant Oliver Thompson counselling would-be editors of the "dark side" of the project; that "Wikipedia can easily become a trap," and "If used improperly, Wikipedia can get you expelled for plagiarism, can torpedo your term paper grade, can cause professional embarrassment and all sorts of headaches. People need to use Wikipedia with proper tools." Its extensive and well-informed "Wikipedia Survival Guide" encouraged prospective contributors to "read other Wikipedia entries first", "balance opposing views", "for every assertion or claim, offer support", "keep the correct hierarchy of sources in mind", and "no anonymous edits". Notable by its omission was seeking recourse to Wikipedia's internal help network, which is undergoing revision to counter accusations of hostility towards newcomers.

Briefly

  • Gillis misquote fallout: The Vancouver Sun published a photo essay of the "Top 10 Wikipedia factual blunders" on the same day the error was reported in the Star article. The essay, which mainly covers instances of outright vandalism, also includes the suggestion that 100,000 articles on the English Wikipedia may be factually incorrect due to vandal activity.
  • Wales to lead BBC festival: The BBC reported that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales is to be the keynote speaker at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival, which will take place in November this year.
  • U.S. Congressman's office accused of embellishing article: The Huffington Post reported on a series of edits made by Wikipedia user HouseofRep. (talk · contribs), claiming to be from Indiana Republican Representative Mike Pence's office, to Pence's article in April 2011. The report notes that the edits included wholesale copy-and-paste content from Pence's official website, which triggered a concern about WP:POV. The user has not edited since April 30, 2011, but has received messages on his talk page regarding this, including one from the Wikimedia Foundation's Philippe Beaudette.
  • Wikipedia in India: According to a Times of India report, students from a number of engineering courses at the College of Engineering Pune will now have to edit Wikipedia articles as a compulsory part of their undergraduate degree programmes. "The exercise is aimed at developing research, writing and review skills, critical thinking and collaborative work ethics among students," the newspaper reports.
  • How many articles lead to philosophy?: According to news.com.au, a man named Mat Kelcey, based in Seattle, Washington according to his Twitter profile, downloaded an offline backup of all Wikipedia articles which amounted to 30 gigabytes—just to find out exactly from how many articles one will get to the article about philosophy by clicking on the first link in each article. (Since at least 2008, it had been conjectured that this is the case for most articles, see Wikipedia:Get to Philosophy‎. In May, an Xkcd episode triggered media interest in this observation, see Signpost coverage.) According to the results, three and a half million pages on Wikipedia will eventually take you to the article on philosophy if you only clicked on the first link in each article, while just one hundred thousand won't. Full results are also available.
  • Azeri and Armenian Wikipedias compared: An article on the news.az news portal compares the growth rates of the Azeri and Armenian Wikipedias, noting that the Azeri Wikipedia has seen greater growth in editor numbers and the number of articles compared to the Armenian Wikipedia in the last six months.
  • Gujarati Wikipedia to get help: Daily News and Analysis, a news website with a strong Indian focus, reports that Gujarati Sahitya Parishad (a literary council for the Gujarati language) is to look into assisting the Gujarati-language Wikipedia. "If we want to pass on a rich legacy of Gujarati language to next generation of Gujaratis, we must use the technology and medium of expression available. ... Gujarati Parishad is posting Gujarati literature on Wikipedia and as an institution [and] we would like to check the information available on the site", says Secretary of the council Rajendra Patel.
  • Wikimedian achieves first legal enforcement of CC license in Germany: The regional court of Berlin (Landgericht Berlin) has ruled in favor of a German Wikipedian against the reuse of a photo from Commons which violated the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. As reported (in German) last month by ifrOSS, the preliminary injunction was already granted in October; it does not appear to have been contested. ifrOSS called it "as far as known the first successful enforcement of a Creative Commons license in Germany". The photo in question depicts Thilo Sarrazin, a politician whose statements on immigration policy and criticism of multiculturalism had started a huge controversy last year, during which the photo was used on the blog of a right wing party, without naming the photographer and without linking (or reproducing) the license text. User:Nina was represented by JBB, a law firm which has also represented the German Wikimedia chapter in various cases.

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2011-08-22

Images in Motion – WikiProject Animation

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By SMasters


WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
This animated sequence of a race horse galloping, first published in 1887, is a Featured media of WikiProject Animation.
The article on Joseph Barbera, co-founder of Hanna-Barbera, is a Featured article of WP:TOON.
WikiProject Animation has 31 Featured lists, including 16 on the popular animated sitcom, The Simpsons.
Pixar Animation Studios is an example of the 477 Good articles under the Project

This week, we turn our attention to WikiProject Animation. Started in September 2006 by Klingoncowboy4, the Project covers all articles about animation, including animation studios, animators, animation directors, animated television series, animated films, animated characters and so on. It does not cover any anime series or films. Home to more than 15,800 articles, with 44 Featured articles, 31 Featured lists, 4 Featured media, 473 Good articles, and a portal, the Project has 19 participants and 18 work groups. The Signpost interviewed Project member Jj98.

Tell us a bit about yourself, and what motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Animation?

Your Project has over 15,800 articles associated with it. How does the Project keep all these up to standard, and what are its biggest challenges?

  • Jj98: Our biggest challenge is that fans of animated series and films who come to Wikipedia, whose intimate knowledge of certain subjects are critically important and welcome, tend to treat articles as fan sites, filling them with minutiae and fictography of interest only to hardcore fans and not the general public. The goal is to acquire some of the inactive animation-related WikiProjects and convert them into work groups of WikiProject Animation, including WikiProject Cartoon Network, which was started back in 2007 by Driveus [which] I've converted into a work group after it went inactive back in 2008 and had one Mfd in March, along with the Style recommendations, including Adult Swim, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Ben 10 task forces which I also converted into work groups as well. WP:TOON was originally a shortcut for WikiProject Cartoon Network, is now a shortcut for our Project. Also, I've converted WikiProject American Animation into American animation work group, which has 4,540 articles. It was started back in 2006 by FuriousFreddy, before I converted it into a work group in November 2010. I am going to possibly convert WikiProject The Simpsons, WikiProject Futurama, WikiProject South Park, WikiProject Family Guy, WikiProject Machinima (although it had been very inactive and had attempts to make into a task force of WikiProject Video games), SpongeBob SquarePants task force and Avatar: The Last Airbender task force into work groups of WikiProject Animation in near future if the Project has been overlapped with our Project and [has] low activity. The problem with the Project is keeping it active like WikiProject Anime and manga and WikiProject United States. Many of the editors who are blocked and no longer working around any animation articles on Wikipedia are moved to the inactive list. Sadly, our founder, Klingoncowboy4 is no longer active since I've revamped the Project.

WikiProject Animation has a very respectable number of Featured content, and 477 Good articles. How did your Project achieve this and how can other Projects work toward this?

  • Jj98: We do have a nucleus of editors who are responsibly editing some animation-related articles that have achieved Good article and Featured article like Phineas and Ferb, which had been listed as a Good article since 2009, and Joseph Barbera was promoted to a Featured article back in 2008. Our goal is to reduce any fan site mentality that will reduce the fatigue of any current editors. Our Project is intended to model after WikiProject Film, WikiProject United States, WikiProject Military history, WikiProject Comics and WikiProject Anime and manga. The Project has medium activity, like WikiProject Anime and manga, which is a very active Project.

Does WP:TOON collaborate with other WikiProjects?

How does your Project manage the Animation portal?

What are the most pressing needs for WikiProject Animation? How can a new contributor help today?

  • Jj98: The former, to reduce any fancruft, ORs, copyvios and in-universe information that's been creeping around the articles. We have our own Manual of Style guidelines to guide editors who work on animation articles. In the future, I will propose a new official Manual of Style guideline for animation-related articles, similar to anime and manga, film, comics, television and fiction guidelines.

Anything else to add?

Next week, it will be 30–love with your turn to serve. Keep track of all the points, sets, games, and matches in the archive.

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2011-08-22

JJ Harrison on avian photography

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87
This week's Featured content includes the first of an occasional series of interviews with featured-content creators. It appears beneath our regular sections.


A new featured picture taken just eight weeks ago by Wikimedian Muhammad Mahdi Karim in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania, east Africa. This grand beast—a female African Bush elephant—is the largest living terrestrial animal. Civility warning: it weighs 6,000–9,000 kg and can reach a top speed of 40 kilometres per hour (25 mph) when irritated. (The photograph, and that of the Impala below, was supported by an equipment grant from the Swiss Chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation.)


New featured picture: a female impala, standing aloof to the sweet whisperings of photographer Muhammad Mahdi Karim.
New featured picture: a diagram of the relationship between the US federal and state governments, drawn in 1862 in the midst of the Civil War. The diagram, which needs to be viewed at full resolution, contains clues to how social relations and governance were perceived at the time.
Seven images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":


Other promotions

Two lists were promoted:

No articles were promoted to featured article status over the past week.

An Azure Kingfisher in Queensland, northeastern Australia. The photographic challenge is that this species is often difficult to see until it quickly darts from a perch above water. JJ Harrison hid for nearly two hours to capture this image. (Both of these images are among those supported by funding from the Foundation's local chapter, Wikimedia Australia.)
New featured picture this week: Striated Heron on the Daintree River, Queensland. The rapid "sewing machine" head movements while holding a twig—behaviour sometimes observed in members of this species—have still not been scientifically explained.


The English Wikipedia is lucky to have several specialist avian photographers; among them, Fir0002, Benjamint, and Mdf have been highly successful in building our gallery of featured avian pictures. But more recently, the most prolific contributor to this category has been JJ Harrison, also known as Noodle snacks. JJ, who lives in Tasmania, Australia's island state to the south of the continent, has been a regular nominator and reviewer at featured picture candidates for some years. In the first of an occasional series of interviews with featured-content creators, The Signpost spoke to him about his photography.
JJ Harrison on a boat during his recent photographic expedition to Thailand
Featured picture: a White-throated Rock-thrush (Monticola gularis), Khao Yai National Park, Pak Chong, Thailand
Featured picture: a male Plumbeous Water Redstart in Doi Inthanon National Park, Ban Luang, Chiang Mai, Thailand. A video of the same individual features its call.

How it all started. JJ's particular interest in nature photography was driven by an abiding interest in animal behaviour and a passion for watching wildlife. "I had a few favourite experiences, but they were more to do with observing wildlife than photographing it. I'll always remember some of those early encounters. Like seeing a wild Spotted-tail Quoll bound around the New Pelion Hut in the alpine central highlands of Tasmania—but frustratingly, the right photographic equipment was days' walk away. Or watching a Black-faced Cormorant fish a few metres underneath me as I was snorkelling—but no underwater camera! Or the amazing sight of thousands of waders and shorebirds in Thailand—often in the distance. And I've had a Yellow-throated Honeyeater steal a lock of my hair to use in building its nest." But he warns that some of his memorable experiences haven't been so pleasant. "I get bitten by members of what are commonly known as bull ants pretty regularly, and I've come fairly close to stumbling on poisonous snakes a few times."

So how did JJ learn the art and technique of nature photography? "I guess you could say I'm an autodidact; the internet has been a particularly useful source of information. The reviewers at featured picture candidates gave valuable technical feedback, although while that trains you to identify problems, it doesn't directly teach good technique. I guess the big one is field craft, which requires you to develop knowledge about your subjects, including the best locations and times of year to photograph them. But even knowing these things doesn't allow you to predict what will happen when you go out: you might have a vague idea of what to expect for a given habitat, but usually you can't predict specifically what you'll come across."

JJ settled on birds as his primary interest because they're the most challenging subject he has tried. "The biggest hurdle is that most of them are small, and afraid of you." But the technical problems of photographing birds in the wild go beyond the subjects themselves: "The best times of day are dawn and dusk, and many species can be found only in low-light environments. This throws up many challenges. Even at high ISOs, the slightest camera or subject movement will result in motion blur. My solution is to shoot lots of photos with a remote shutter release; I might get only a few sharp frames out of dozens."

Thailand. During February, JJ spent several weeks in Thailand photographing birds. There he captured images of species that have no coverage at all on Commons, and in some cases no article on Wikipedia. These images have since been trickling through to the nominations page at featured picture candidates as he's processed his work—selecting, uploading, categorising the images, and allocating them to articles on the English Wikipedia. "I knew from experience at home that my chances of finding the best spots were basically nil in two weeks. So the critical thing was to find and engage a local professional bird guide. His name's Reang, and he has expertise in the birds of Thailand; he's been a guide for more than eight years and speaks reasonably good English."

The Thai jungle they visited is very dense, and this made photography difficult due to low light conditions and the dense foliage that physically obscures the subjects. This effect was exaggerated because JJ was "blind" as far as recognising bird calls goes: "that's where Reang's skills were really important", he says. The other technical novelty for JJ was shooting from a boat. "This was not something I’d tried much before, and it has its own challenges. Any boat movement is greatly exaggerated with a telephoto lens. I spent about two days taking photographs from boats. The first time we started here and journeyed down a coastal river for a few kilometres and out into the ocean. The second time we started here, on a sort of lake with rice fields on the edges." (See the picture at the right, of JJ with telephoto lens on the boat about 15 minutes after starting from the side of that lake. Lotus plants can be seen either side of the wake.)

From land, he took some of the photos from inside a car: "birds ignore cars, but take flight if you get out (I shoot from a car at home occasionally, too). But there were opportunities outside from the roadside too, particularly at Kaeng Krachan, where we walked along trails. At that location, there seemed to be only bird watchers and photographers—mostly Thais. We also spent quite a lot of time in portable hunting blinds in areas birds frequent, such as drinking holes and the ubiquitous rubbish dumps, which contain food scraps that attract birds but, ultimately, are damaging the intricate ecosystem.

Queensland. JJ undertook a photographic trip to the northeastern part of the continent in July. This involved travelling to Cairns and from there along the coast, which is mainly rainforest. Because the moisture content of the habitat is dramatically reduced away from the coast, his work extended to the very different bird species that can be found up to 50 kilometres (30 mi) inland. His output from this trip is now making its way to the featured picture candidates page. Two successful nominations are displayed at the top of this section.

Ethical considerations. JJ says you need to be conscious of the ethics of photographing wildlife. "It mostly pertains to both your subjects and their environment. Feeding birds is usually a bad idea: it will probably help feral species out-compete native species; long-term feeding may also cause dependence among wildlife species, increase competition for (nesting) tree hollows, and spread disease. (I have used bait, but only for one night each in different locations—kangaroo pellets for the Eastern Bettong and Eastern Barred Bandicoot photographs.) Be careful not to damage the environment itself—don’t trample vegetation. In certain areas it's important to wash your shoes and tripod to prevent the spread of disease. Don’t move closer to birds if they're showing signs of stress. If they do fly away, don’t repeatedly follow them. You can get closer by moving slowly and using natural cover; and do avoid loitering around nesting birds."

We asked whether there are differences in the practice of wildlife photography in Thailand compared with what he's used to: "The same broad practical and ethical considerations apply, but every species is different—I wasn’t there long enough to really learn the nuances in behaviour among species. One thing I became aware of is that the use of recorded bird calls to attract subjects into position is much more prevalent. Recordings should be used sparingly in my view. And it seemed that far fewer species in Thailand depend on seeds or nectar, and that feeding on fruit is more common than in many parts of the world."

Opportunities for Wikimedians. Much of JJ's photography involves Tasmanian wildlife. Does he plan to widen his geographical purview? "I don't expect I'll live in Tasmania forever—to start with, I'll need to move for postgraduate studies in the next few years. I've probably been able to get featured images for about a third of the bird species in the state (and less than that for mammals), so there's still plenty of work to be done. Please, we need more photographers contributing to Wikimedia sites, and more editors collaborating with them to write articles." JJ says that Wikimedia has good photographic coverage, and usually at much better resolution than Flickr, in which only 800 × 500 px is typical. "However, the distribution of featured pictures is patchy. For example, I'm surprised how little coverage there is for western Europe and North America. There's lots to be done just about everywhere." He says many Wikimedians don't realise how well-positioned they are to photograph wildlife in other parts of the world. "Once you start to identify species, you'd be surprised just how many are around you. Pay attention to bird calls—they're more useful than your eyes for locating subjects."


Next in this occasional series of interviews: Wehwalt, one of the English Wikipedia's most experienced writers of featured articles.


Radjah Shelduck, Centenary Lakes, Cairns, Queensland. Seen from above in flight the birds have green bands on the tops of their wings. The female has a harsh rattle and the male has a breathy whistle. The Radjah Shelduck inhabits the mangrove forests and coastlines of New Guinea, and in Australia, where it is a protected species.


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2011-08-22

After eleven moves, name for islands now under arbitration

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By Jorgenev

This was another active week for the Arbitration Committee. One new case has been opened, for a total of four active cases. Details of cases are correct as of Saturday, August 20.

Senkaku Islands case opened

Background

The Senkaku Islands dispute—over a group of five islands in the East China Sea administered by Japan since 1972 but claimed by China—is itself the subject of dispute here on Wikipedia along with its parent article Senkaku Islands.

The figurehead point of controversy appears to be the name, Senkaku Islands, which, as the Japanese name, has been alleged as supportive of the Japanese side in the dispute. As a result, a handful of editors have been pushing for the Chinese name instead, and many arguing for the anglicized The Pinnacle Islands as a correct, NPOV descriptor. The point has seen many discussions, an RFC, and mediation. Since 2005 the article on the Senkaku Islands has been moved eleven times, but is now back where it started. To what extent the article should acknowledge the other names of the islands has also been a point of edit warring, with the current text including significant coverage. Comparisons to the dispute of the name of the Liancourt Rocks—islands claimed by both Japan and South Korea—have been drawn. In that dispute, an anglicized name was chosen over the Korean or Japanese names, although the dominant consensus has consistently been that "Senkaku Islands" is the name most commonly used in English publications for the islands. Edit warring in the body of the two articles has also been significant, with many users feeling that the article endorses the Japanese claim to the islands.

The dispute has seen established users in good standing on both sides of the issue.

Request

The request was opened on August 13 by Qwyrxian who wrote that (s)he has "come to believe that until the behavioral problems are corrected, we will be unable to make constructive progress on the article content". Eleven parties gave statements and the case was accepted unanimously by eight arbitrators with one recusal. Arbitrator Coren wrote in his acceptance that the Senkaku Islands dispute is "a relatively simple case where it's likely consensus could be reached if everyone behaved and where Arbcom could help by making sure everybody does."

Arbitration

Since its opening on August 17 it has seen little activity so far; STSC and Penwhale have presented brief statements of support for the position that 'Senkaku Islands' is not NPOV. Tenmei has posted some stock principles in the workshop.

No drafting arbitrator has been assigned yet.

Abortion case proceeds

The case, which centers on the naming of abortion-related articles and related behavioral issues, proceeded into its second week. Three more uses have presented evidence this week:

  • MastCell wrote that Wikipedia has difficulties dealing with agenda-driven accounts. He accused DMSBel, Anythingyouwant, NYyankees51 and Haymaker of being such accounts, writing that "most people have an opinion about abortion, and those opinions don't disqualify anyone from editing the topic. However, I think in each of these cases there is clear evidence that the editor's personal views on abortion have overwhelmed their ability to edit within policy on the topic." Anythingyouwant and NYyankees51 have disputed MastCell's allegations.
  • SarekOfVulcan presented a few diffs of the general behavior that he felt was inhibiting progress.
  • NuclearWarfare noted that "This case is simply an amalgamation of two cases: the dispute over the naming of the pro-choice / pro-life articles and the lead sentence of abortion, as well as some smaller matters" and then gave a lengthy narrative of his work on the lead sentence of Abortion (where he reports that after extensive research he concluded that using the word death in the lead was not NPOV). He also pleaded for strict action from the committee, writing that he "doesn't know what will help solve this dispute in a reasonable fashion, but [he] guarantee[s] that a simple 'everyone go play nice and remember to reread WP:OR and WP:NPOV' will not suffice."

In the workshop Steven Zhang proposed some very broad principles and remedies, Anythingyouwant and HuskyHuskie proposed principles, findings of fact, and remedies in line with their respective sides of the dispute.

Cirt and Jayen466 case proceeds

The case involves allegations of non-neutral editing by Cirt and also allegations against Jayen466 that he has stalked and harassed Cirt. Three more users presented evidence this week,

  • Prioryman presented evidence against Jayen466 in support of Cirt.
  • Delicious carbuncle wrote in criticism of Cirt.
  • Cirt, apologizing for the presenting evidence so late (citing real-life circumstances), said that he was "astonished by the length and intensity of complaints" and that "I’ve reflected on my past behavior and I realize that these complaints have some validity" but countered that he had resolved the issues writing "This case, and the previous RfC and RFAR, have been a learning experience for me, and I’ve already stated at those forums that I’ve withdrawn from the areas in which my editing has been at issue. I undertake to edit in good faith to benefit the project, and to be sensitive to any complaints that might arise concerning my editing." Cirt endorsed proposals by Cbrick77 for a topic ban against himself, covering "new religious movements or their members, and political BLPs, broadly construed", as well as an interaction ban between himself and Jayen466.

Manipulation of BLPs case proceeds

The case, which was broken off from the Cirt and Jayen466 case to be a somewhat unusual investigation of BLP policy, proceeds into its third week. The sluggish addition of actual evidence submitted remarked upon last week appears to have ameliorated. This week nearly twice as much evidence was presented as in the first two weeks of the case combined.

  • Wnt wrote "it is difficult to give evidence for such a very wide-ranging proceeding" then went on to challenge the prevailing notion of the case arguing that the real issue is not "diminish[ing] or increas[ing] particular reputations" but that it is instead "almost purely a Wikipolitical conflict between deletionists and inclusionists", alleging that "one side makes use of every policy, including BLP, to oppose what they don't like, while the other defends Wikipedia's breadth of coverage." He suggests that "it should be made clear that Wikipedia policies apply to removal of text just as much as addition", for example that "removing mention of open homosexuality from someone's page because you personally think it's a 'negative' thing violates WP:NPOV"—such removal runs quite contrary to current BLP best practices.
  • FuFoFuEd wrote that he was being "misrepresented as a champion of BLP violations" and countered various assertions.
  • Tryptofish championed two recommendations: that a guideline to deal with subtle search engine optimization editing be developed, and that the committee establish clear guidelines related to arbitrator recusal, citing SlimVirgin's request in June that Shell Kinney recuse herself during a previous request for arbitration, which Shell Kinney refused, as evidence that clearer guidelines are needed.
  • Waalkes, a new user with only 36 edits, accused Will Beback and SlimVirgin of BLP violations on Lyndon LaRouche and LaRouche movement, starting off by noting that "BLP policy discourages the use of insinuation and allegations against living persons attributed to anonymous sources", then accusing of them of using such sources.
  • DracoEssentialis presented the articles Kimberly Kagan, Sheila Widnall, Jed Babbin, Michael Eric Dyson, and David Hackworth as examples of where BLP policy was failing.
  • Prioryman accused Delicious carbuncle of disrupting a BLP to make a point—for which he was given a topic ban earlier this year, although it has since been overturned—and using Wikipedia Review for off-wiki hounding in a campaign against Cirt.
  • Count Iblis has thrown up the section headings "The BLP policy leads to censorship and should therefore be abolished" and "Implementing the BLP policy provokes edit warring", promising evidence at a later date.

The workshop saw little new this week, a few very pointed questions—with the subtext that the case was being unfair to Cirt—for Cla68 from Jehochman and another pointed question from Prioryman for Delicious Carbuncle listing a post of his on Wikipedia Review and asking him to explain. Also a Mathsci posted two standard "proposed principles" adapted from previous ArbCom cases on Decorum and Conduct on arbitration pages, urging civility.

Committee resolves to channel comments into votes

Last week John Vandenberg noted a trend where abstention votes were being increasingly used to give vote-like opinions, which he noted was "causing elements of arbitration cases and motions to technically pass or fail while the abstain section contains many arbitrator votes consisting of comments heavily leaning for or against". He stated that "The Arbitration Committee needs to review its use of abstention in order to ensure that the committee position on an issue is clear and that they have the requisite support to provide legitimacy for that position." This has been the first time the issue has surfaced around ARBCOM, and the need for a motion was questioned. "Well, I probably would have gone for discussion before writing motions, but meh" wrote Risker, however John Vanderberg's proposal did lead somewhere; after going through six drafts, the motion passed, creating a new "comments" section in addition to the support, oppose, and abstain sections, and advising arbitrators that "abstention votes as a vehicle for comments [... are] not recommended". The motion also guarded against slacktavism, stating "an arbitrator who posts a comment is also expected to vote on the proposal".

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2011-08-22

Engineering report, sprint, and more testers needed

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By Jarry1250

July Engineering Report published

The Wikimedia Foundation's Engineering Report for July was published last week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. Many of the projects mentioned have been covered in The Signpost, including the deployment of the MoodBar, ArticleFeedback and WikiLove extensions. Among those yet to have received significant coverage but that were highlighted in the report were "the successful implementation of a MySQL-based parser cache on Wikimedia wikis" and work on a "Wikimedia Report Card 2.0".

In July, work on the parser cache improved the hit rate from 30% to 80%.

There was good news for performance, too. Seventy-four new servers were purchased to increase the capacity of our Apache cluster to be installed this month, whilst the reliability of database dumps also settled down after a rocky June. The work on the parser cache was also successful, improving the hit rate (the percentage of requests which do not force the server to regenerate the page from scratch) to 80%, from 30%. On the software side, Roan Kattouw and Timo Tijhof worked on delivering "global gadgets and a gadget manager". According to the report, the "back-end for loading gadgets remotely from another wiki" is now in a workable state, as is an "inventory" of available gadgets.

The HipHop deployment, AcademicAccess, App-level monitoring, and Configuration management projects were "mostly on hold" in July, as was work on LiquidThreads 3.0. Documentation of the status of projects came under more scrutiny in July under the guidance of Guillaume Paumier, now the Foundation's Technical Communications Manager. Paumier "continued to create, update, clean up and organize the project documentation pages for most engineering activities" during July, according to the report, which is itself authored by him.

July also saw the arrival of Jeff Green (Operations Engineer for Special Projects), Ben Hartshorne and contractor Daniel Zahn (Operations Engineers) and Ian Baker (Software Developer). At the same time, however, Chief Technology Officer Danese Cooper and Code Maintenance Engineer Priyanka Dhanda left the Wikimedia Foundation.

Fundraiser engineering sprints in progress

Also published this week was a detailed insight into the present fundraising team, who are responsible for making sure Wikimedia websites have the capability to maximise the fundraising potential that the annual drive afford them. It is currently led by Arthur Richards and also includes two developers, an operations engineer, a data analyst, and a general business analyst. The team for this year's fundraiser has now been working on that fundraiser since approximately May, according to the post.

From a technical point of view, Richards stressed that good "code hygiene" was a must, including writing unit tests for all the code they produce in two-week code "sprints". The sprints focus around specific goals which the team can track using the proprietary software Mingle. "While we would much prefer to use an open-source solution, we settled on this proprietary tool as it much more closely meets our needs than any of the others we explored" wrote Richards. Examples of sprint targets include improving the banner tracking system to allow for results to be filtered. This allows the team to improve the banner range available to maximise the number of visitors who see the value in donating to Wikimedia. This year's campaign will again feature localised banners and user stories.

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.

How you can help
Test Kiwix

Try out the latest beta of Kiwix, the offline Wikipedia reader. Then leave feedback for its development team.

  • The role of the "Platform Engineering" team at the WMF was explained in a blog post by its head, Rob Lanphier. He writes that broadly speaking the team is split up into three subgroups: the MediaWiki Core subgroup; the Technical Liaison and Developer Relations subgroup (TL;DR); and the Data Analytics subgroup, all of which are currently hiring.
  • Among the Requests for Bot Approval currently requiring community discussion is a request to create between five and ten thousand stubs on certain animal species.
  • Director Mobile and Special Projects Tomasz Finc invited testers for two projects within his remit: the second round of mobile testing and the latest beta version of Kiwix, the offline Wikipedia reader that was selected for Wikimedia developer attention.
  • After a discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list, it looks unlikely that MediaWiki will fix a date for dropping PHP 5.2.x support so soon after stopping support of platforms running PHP versions 5.1.x (which it dropped in version 1.17, released in June this year). Such a move would allow use of those features of the languages only introduced in PHP 5.3, but would prevent the installation of future MediaWiki versions on older systems.
  • During a special bug triage session targeted at those bugs affecting mobile devices, a number of problems and feature requests were analysed. According to bugmeister Mark Hershberger, his department "hope[s] to do one of these mobile triages every month and, for future ones it would be awesome if we could have Kindles, iPads, and maybe even Nooks as well as BlackBerries, Androids, iPhones and even Nokia phones" (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • Developer Andrew Garrett has detailed the technical lessons that could be learned from the recent referendum-related mass emailing to potential voters, with 750,000 outgoing emails.
  • Diederik van Liere wrote on wikitech-l about the efforts of himself and other Wikimedia-sponsored researchers to harness the power of Hadoop (a platform that allows for computing in the cloud) in processing large Wikimedia dumps. The dumps, which can be many terabytes, are the most efficient way of grabbing large amounts of a Wikipedia's (or other project's) history at one time. In related news, he also published his suggestions about how the dumps could be made more reuser-friendly.
  • The main page of the Wikimedia Commons showed intermittent errors due to heavy server load. The problem was only relieved when more rigorous caching was reinforced, prompting content elsewhere to become slightly out-of-date (bug #30428).

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