Does Wikipedia Pay? is an ongoing Signpost series seeking to illuminate paid editing, paid advocacy, for-profit Wikipedia consultants, editing public relations professionals, conflict of interest guidelines in practice, and the Wikipedians who work on these issues by speaking openly with the people involved.
Paid editing overlaps in places with public relations, the industry of individuals who are employed by companies and clients to manage an image and communicate a message. On Wikipedia, public relations does not enjoy a positive reputation. Considered 'spin' and viewed skeptically by many due to a history of adding positive and removing negative information, it would be fair to characterize public relations as far from having gained the respect of the community.
This standard narrative has recently become more complex, as the PR industry has begun to push for an accepted place in the Wikipedia ecosystem, arguing against a history of what they see as unfair excommunication by Wikipedia editors—which in their view has left articles on corporations and brands rife with inaccuracies and devoid of constructive improvements that expert corporate communicators could provide.
That charge has been led by Phil Gomes, a marketing executive with Edelman Digital, whose January 4 open letter on his blog catalyzed the public relations community around a set of grievances and a growing consensus for some corrective action. The momentum generated by Gomes' letter morphed into Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement (CREWE), a collective of industry professionals and some Wikipedia editors. CREWE's membership is attempting to simultaneously chart a path forward while coming to terms with a complex history in the relationship between PR and the encyclopedia.
The Signpost spoke with Phil Gomes to better understand how he views Wikipedia and what he thinks needs to change.
What's your background in PR? When did you start? What do you do?
I was nearly a decade in Silicon Valley, mostly representing startups, science- and research-focused organizations and a few enterprise-scale firms. From there I joined the Edelman public relations firm in 2005 and spent 18 months in the firm's LA office. I moved to Chicago in 2007. As Senior Vice President of Digital Integration, I aim to imbue online community principles into the day-to-day communications activities of the firm and its clients. My entire career experience has been as an agency/counselor rather than in-house.
A more interesting story concerns how I started focusing on online communities. You can find that on my blog.
What do you like about public relations? Why do you think it is important? How do you counter the cynicism that public relations is mainly 'spin'?
“
"Spin" is most often hurled at an organization as a synonym for "This particular organization, which I'm not disposed to like anyway, has articulated a point of view that I don't agree with."
”
PR makes it your job to learn (and keep learning) how the field of communications and the nature of influence and persuasion changes day-to-day. Clients rely on people in my line of work to maintain this knowledge and devise the best ways to apply it. Public relations is an important function for companies and organizations because reputation is absolutely vital. This issue has gone from being merely arithmetic to absolutely geometric in complexity over the past 20 years or so, given the Web. It's an incredibly exciting time to be in the field.
The Public Relations Society of America lists six qualities of ethical PR conduct: advocacy, honesty, independence, loyalty, expertise and fairness. How are advocacy and loyalty compatible with honesty, independence, and fairness?
Those terms are not mutually exclusive, and the question is whether you can be a loyal advocate for your client while remaining independent, honest and fair. Everyone deserves to have their point of view heard in the marketplace of ideas, as well as the responsibility to address that marketplace's reaction. PR is the discipline by which that point of view is articulated and dialogue is maintained. And, keep in mind, it's not just businesses that make use of PR. Activist groups and non-governmental organizations ("NGOs") also have very strong communications operations and are adept at articulating their own points-of-view as well and crafting strategies for same. The Wikipedia Foundation itself sought public relations help in mid-2009: [1].
How do you deal with conflicts of interest as a PR professional? Is disclosure standard practice or required by your ethical code or company?
Yes, indeed. Management of potential conflicts is something that we pay a lot of attention to. It's also called out specifically in my employer's code of ethics and business conduct.
Can you give an example of a time when you found yourself with a conflict of interest? How did you navigate it? What were the results?
“
We were pretty shocked at how blatant the ask was. ... No amount of money is worth destroying your professional reputation.
”
Great story. An outside-the-US consumer products company once approached us with a very large potential budget. They wanted to hire a firm that would stuff positive reviews on the likes of Amazon and stuff bad reviews for its competitors. "After all," their rationale was, "our *competitors* are doing it!" (I imagined George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove" screaming "We must not have a sockpuppet gap!").
We responded with what we would do with that budget—a long-term plan that would both respect the mores of online communities and help identify and cultivate a fan-base. It was a completely above-board public engagement program that, frankly, would have been an absolute blast to implement. The company wasn't all that interested in an ethical approach, though. We walked away from an opportunity that would have been lucrative. My bosses backed me up at every step of this process.
When and why did Wikipedia come onto your radar as an issue for public relations? What problems did you perceive in the way that Wikipedia currently handles PR professionals or other paid editors?
“
Certainly one can point to any number of bad actors in the PR field. I doubt Wikipedia would want to be judged by the worst of its volunteers.
”
Online reputation, as a broad topic, is something I consult on for a number of our clients worldwide. Obviously, Wikipedia is an important part of that. Contrary to popular belief, my boss is not mashing my phone number on speed-dial asking how we might make vast amounts of coin selling "Strategic Wikipedia Consulting." I do what I do because I feel that companies can—and absolutely must!—be proactive about managing their reputation. The common view is that a communications professional has nothing to contribute whatsoever—that he or she is "damaged goods". But far from being damaged goods, most of us want to do right by Wikipedia *and* the companies we represent.
You wrote an open letter on your blog recommending a sea-change in how Wikipedia treats PR professionals. What motivated that post?
“
I felt that the policies of Wikipedia and the channels for remedies are so complex such that they almost try their best to encourage bad behavior.
”
The primary motivation was that talk page entries for articles on multi-billion dollar firms (and their related Wikiprojects) in high-interest industries were going ignored for several weeks, all while inaccurate information about the company persisted and remained highly available to search. That struck me as not right. There were also odd reports of people who tried to do right by Wikipedia and got smacked for it (e.g., putting one's employer's name as part of a login ID like "InitechMichael" in the interests of full disclosure, only to be banned for "promotion.") And I was hearing stories of communicators who made small and incontrovertibly factual edits only to get banned, which I thought an extreme response.
What was the response to your open letter, in both PR and Wikipedia communities?
In the first month, people ascribed meaning into my post that they so desperately *wanted* it to have, rather than what it actually said. Some Wikipedians and Web 2.0 royalty seemed to regard it as yet another example of a PR guy who "just doesn't get it." Some PR folks and Wikipedians thought I was advocating the full-on opening of Wikipedia to PR editing; that's equally incorrect. Others used it as a way to resurrect long-held grudges against Wikipedia that are neither of concern nor interest to me. All of this is typical when a group forms around a particular topic that people are very passionate about for different reasons. After about a month, the tourists started to go home and people who are seriously dedicated to exploring this issue remained and continued to participate. What did happen (eventually) was that we are now having some of the most productive, constructive, sustained, wide-ranging, thoughtful conversations about companies' relationship to Wikipedia that we've ever had.
Do you read the conflict of interest guideline as prohibiting all direct paid editing, some editing, or rather permitting any editing that is neutral?
I see COI as an admonition that you shouldn't put your own interests above those of the encyclopedia. That's just and fair. The problem, in practice, is that any editing of Wikipedia by a corporate representative is not likely to be treated as a matter of degree. In any event, you'll notice that CREWE long ago left behind the topic of directly editing an article (even within extremely narrow guidelines). I can't remember the last time someone who wasn't deliberately trying to mischaracterize our work brought it up.
What about how CREWE is seen in the Wikipedia community?
Much of the mischaracterization of CREWE as endorsing direct editing of Wikipedia articles probably comes from my early observation that there's little opportunity for COI damage in an article infobox (e.g., founding date, CEO name, annual revenues) and that it could be a walled-off section for a corporate communicator to update. As it stands today, though, it would be treated more or less like "whitewashing". Critics of a company would then run with "evidence" that company was "changing its entry" even if that edit was as simple as correcting, say, a list of board members. A mainstream press not sensitive to those nuances would quickly run with a "bad company behaving badly" story.
“
The conflation of "public relations" and "paid editing" is, frankly, part of the misunderstanding that CREWE seeks to remedy.
”
I still don't think a PR person updating the summary-box should be a big issue, but it's just not where CREWE has focused for the past several months. We've instead focused on educating people in the communications industry with regard to proper engagement with Wikipedia. So claims that CREWE attempts to "forcibly change Wikipedia policy by off-site coordination of paid advocates" (to quote Jimmy Wales in a previous Signpost edition) strike me as inaccurate.
There's a scandal-ridden history of individuals, groups, and companies editing their own Wikipedia articles. Do you understand why there's a high level of opposition and skepticism about encouraging or allowing PR and paid editors on Wikipedia?
Of course. I wouldn't have helped start CREWE with John Cass if I didn't think there was an issue and a capabilities gap that could be solved. I just happen to have a point of view on the matter that many in PR have been too scared to articulate and many Wikipedians dismiss as asked-and-answered without really exploring it.
Wikipedia's foremost principle is neutrality. Public relations officials are accountable to their employers and are hired to improve their profitability and commercial success. How are those two motivations compatible?
As a point of clarification: PR officials aren't specifically on the hook for improving a company's profitability. It can and very often does play a role in terms of positioning a company for commercial success, but the shades of gray in that discussion probably exceed readers' interest. Most reasonable people can agree that, for example, a representative for Union Carbide ought not to be mucking around in the Wikipedia article on Bhopal. That's not what we're talking about here, really.
Early on in the CREWE discussions, someone put the argument that activists don't have a neutrality problem or COI because they don't get paid for being activists. This is wrong on multiple levels, principally:
Many activist organizations drum up donation money on the basis of their perceived ability to promulgate a certain point of view and to encourage others to do the same.
An activist—by definition, money or not—exhibits a degree of passion about a topic that typically precludes neutrality or, at least, no more or less so than it might for a PR person.
However, if an accurate article is in the public interest, it doesn't matter if the source of that verifiable information is a PR person, Wikipedian, or dyspeptic chipmunk.
I think some PR people need to recognize that their job isn't to push every positioning point for incremental advantage in every forum. Rather, they should focus on guiding companies to help online communities do better in the spirit of mutual and objective benefit. Both critics and many people in my field may find this view naive, but I think it will be increasingly essential in terms of preserving a company's perceived moral authority to participate in online communities.
What do you think a healthy relationship between the PR community and Wikipedia would look like?
“
AGF is not a selective policy, to my knowledge. The fact is that the tactic of publicizing the (admittedly bad) behavior of many corporate communicators on Wikipedia has evidently not been a deterrent and has ultimately resulted in making the issue worse.
”
Any such relationship would serve the public interest of accurate articles that are maintained, developed and delivered in a way that meets the goals of an encyclopedia. That takes the form of articles that are truly of encyclopedic quality—a goal that Wikipedians profess to have and most companies will reasonably accept. This requires that PR make a good-faith effort to participate in the community with full disclosure of their reasons for being there.
It also requires that Wikipedians not dismiss corporate representatives out-of-hand as "damaged goods". Via CREWE, corporate communicators and Wikipedians are coming together constructively to help companies navigate those waters to the benefit of all involved. CREWE's first output here is a flowchart for doing so—an attempt to harmonize the disparate policies, guidelines, admonitions and whatnot that exist in several different places around Wikipedia.
Gomes' CREWE flowchart for navigating Wikipedia
You and others in the PR community have made the point that many articles on corporations have errors and PR editors are in an ideal position to correct those errors. Media coverage of a recent PRSA study published by Penn State professor Marcia DiStaso characterized the proportion of articles with errors as some 60% (Signpost coverage: here). What's the state of corporate articles and how can PR editors improve it?
The original PRSA announcement and the articles that followed most certainly did not reflect the spirit of CREWE or even the findings of that research. It's not that 60% of articles about companies had errors, it's that 60% of the 1,200+ respondents reported that their companies'/clients' entries had errors. Bit of a difference. The latter is still a very important finding, though. The research should have also been positioned as a wake-up call to the PRSA membership and the PR trade in general. For me, at least, talk-page participation is absolutely "table stakes" when it comes to companies working with Wikipedia. In the survey, 88% of those polled hadn't gone anywhere near a talk page.
As to the state of corporate articles, I point to Robert Lawton's FORTUNE 100 project. 54 out of the FORTUNE 100 were "C" class and below. 98 were "B" class and below. Some students did an audit of what basic facts were outdated or otherwise inaccurate. We now need volunteers to normalize their work into Robert's Google Doc so we can get to the next level of detail. Meanwhile, those same articles show up in the first five results on Google for 88% of companies; 96% on Bing. This, again, is one of Mr. Lawton's findings.
What are CREWE's goals? What are you working on?
The stated mission is simple: "CREWE comprises Wikipedians, corporate communications, academics, students and other interested parties who are exploring the ways that PR and Wikipedia can work together for mutual benefit, defined narrowly as cooperation toward more accurate and balanced entries." The main projects right now are the aforementioned flowchart and the FORTUNE 100 project. We're also allied with Wikiproject:Cooperation and the efforts going on there in terms of mentorship, etc.
Jimmy Wales has been stridently opposed to any paid editors directly editing articles. That so-called "brightline rule" has led him to view CREWE's motivations skeptically, since the group is pushing for broader editing privileges than 'brightline' would provide. What's been your interaction with Wales, and what do you think of his position?
“
Jimmy Wales and I have traded emails. We respectfully disagree about things. That's about it. ... Instead of beating people up for doing things wrong, let's reward those who do it right.
”
As mentioned earlier, we haven't really focused on the the direct-editing issue in some time. I still think there are areas of an entry that might admit PR participation without harming the integrity of the encyclopedia through COI risk. Again, not a current focus.
Observably, there are mechanisms for dealing with the unethical ones. Plenty of PR folks who want to do the right thing both by the companies they represent and Wikipedia (or online communities in general). Again, it's clear to me that Wikipedia has reached the absolute limits of the "public shaming" approach. It's simply no longer as effective a deterrent as it once was. This is resulting in what I call "umbrage fatigue." One of the ideas that came up was the notion of case studies posted to Wikiproject:Cooperation, and I think it's a good one. I suspect that this "umbrage fatigue" is why Wikiproject:Cooperation managed to get quite a bit more momentum than another effort spawned around the time CREWE started, WikiProject:PaidAdvocacyWatch.
There's a current of concern that a horde of paid PR professionals is at the gates of the site, that they are using the issue of article inaccuracies as a wedge to get into the community, and that once they do they will overwhelm the unpaid volunteers with their corporate resources, expertise at spinning information, and pro-client bias. What do you say to assuage them of their fears?
I remain curious as to why there's no such anxiety applied to, say, activists or class-action lawyers, both of which are groups that possess the resources, expertise and bias described here, and in ample amounts. I guarantee you, though, that activists and class-action lawyers are not about to create a group dedicated to exploring best-practices a middle ground between their interests and those of Wikipedia volunteers. I'm not naive enough to think that, by itself, this is enough to overcome significant distrust quickly, but it's a start.
Among the negative reactions to your efforts, there have been new roots of cooperation, notably among some of the Wikipedia editors who have joined CREWE and also in WikiProject Cooperation itself. What do you think of those efforts? Will they be able to outweigh the controversy and entrenchment on both sides, or is this situation destined to be deadlocked for years?
Sterling "Silver Seren" Ericsson has done some great work and has been a wonderful asset to CREWE and WikiProject:Cooperation. I'm especially a fan of the mentoring idea. Controversial and mis-marketed though it was, the Penn State research shows that there is plenty of room to grow on both sides. Even the flowchart, humble though it may be, is a significant step. The best thing we can do at this stage is demonstrate that we bring something of value that, in the end, actually helps the encyclopedia.
What do you think Wikipedia is doing wrong?
Wikipedians should consider judging the quality of the contributions. By all means point out when "marketingy" contributions are offered, but don't dismiss the source simply on the basis of how he or she makes a living. For me, it all comes back to, "is the result objectively better?"
The Wikimania 2013 jury announced this week that the ninth global community conference will be held in Hong Kong next year.
Wikimania is the annual conference for the international Wikimedia community. It is organised by community members and held every July or August in locations as diverse as Germany, Taiwan, Egypt, and Argentina. The conference features presentations on Wikimedia projects and fellow open-content projects, open-source software, and the social and technical aspects of our work. The first Wikimania was held in 2005, while the most recent was in Haifa, Israel in August 2011 (Signpost coverage); the next will be in Washington DC in July 2012.
While China is not listed on the priority list of Wikimedia's strategic areas to increase participation, the Hong Kong bid team made a different case. The team argued that a Wikimania in the city state would strengthen ties among Asian Wikimedia communities, improve regional co-operation in Greater China, and raise awareness for a sensitive handling of community and political issues related to the Chinese mainland and the Chinese language projects such as Cantonese.
Changes related to the organization of the Wikimania conference are coming up as well. Since its inception, the conference format has been organised through an ad hoc group of long-standing community members, Wikimedia Foundation and chapter staff, and former organizers. A discussion is currently underway on Meta on replacing this approach with a more community-led, open process, while continuing expert support from the movement for the organizers of each conference.
Brief notes
Top 10 countries by total donations to Wikimedia entities (the foundation and chapters)
Fundraising 2011 report: The report on the annual fundraiser 2011 has been published on Meta. It provides details on where the movement raises its funds – US$24M from more than a million donors, primarily from Europe and North America – and technical aspects such as banners and email campaigns.
Editor Engagement Experiments Team: The first office hour of the WMF's new editor engagement experiments team (Signpostcoverage) was held on May 4 to discuss the purpose of running short-term experiments to evaluate ideas, among them how to better engage volunteers to edit Wikipedia.
Malayalam community conference: The Malayalam language projects were at the center of the Wikisangamotsavam 2012 conference on Wikimedia projects in Indian languages. The report also covers progress in other Indian languages such as Hindi and Gujarati and emphasizes the need for better outreach in the non-English-speaking communities in India to improve Wikimedia's engagement among the vast majority of the population. Alex Wafula, an editor on the Swahili Wikipedia and a third-year student at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya, has played an important role in the Kenyan chapter's schools project.
Offline outreach to schools in Kenya: The WMF blog covers how offline Wikipedia reaches Kenyan schools by means of a Wikimedia Kenya project. The Kenyan chapter – the only one in the region – officially launched the project at Wikipedia's Anniversary on January 14, 2011; the project covers 30 schools in three regions, in which a team of volunteers travel to remote parts of Kenya to share offline Wikipedia with students, installing offline versions of the English Wikipedia from a disc or memory stick in schools that have computers. The volunteers then provide both teachers and students with tutorials on how to operate the database.
Vital articles: The expanded vital article list (large page; slow to load) has surpassed 10,000 articles for the first time, though concerns about systemic bias are still being brought up on both the main and expanded talk pages.
Milestones: The following Wikipedia projects reached milestones this week:
In an article by the Atlantic, Wikipedia's meaning of the word "expert" has been put into question. The article pondered on what Wikipedia would call an expert, who we would trust and who we wouldn't, and how this may have changed over the past few years.
For instance, academics who double as editors may well be an expert in their field and edit or create Wikipedia articles about that topic, and we'd therefore consider them trusted. But what about the other side of it? The whole idea of anonymous collaboration, is of course, anonymity. So how do we define just when to trust someone, and where do we draw the line? It is true that we benefit from academics and people who know their subject, so do "experts" in the traditional sense (e.g. academic pedigrees) still matter in this collaborative environment?
As reported by the Atlantic, a new study by researchers at Stanford University and Yahoo Research points to a complementary phenomenon: the definition of what makes someone an expert is changing. They search for expertise in Wikipedia's pages, and they find it, but what they're looking for – what they call expertise – uses different signals to project itself. Expertise, to these researchers, isn't who a writer is but what a writer knows, as measured by what they read online. Overall, the authors write, Wikipedia's editors are "more sophisticated than usual Web users."
It is difficult to deny that when somebody who knows something adds their knowledge, the Wikimedian community are thankful for it, but the question of when they deserve to be trusted, and not, remains a live one.
"Wikipedia is largely fiction"
The age-old debate has come up again: is what Wikipedia says true? The most common response to such a question is to argue yes, we try and reference most of it, and delete what is not referenced, but some things do slip through the net, so to speak. In this amusing yet short article, an actor from the film The Avengers, Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, made an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman on April 27, 2012.
Hemsworth said that his hometown Phillip Island was not part of any ocean, crediting Wikipedia as his source of information. Letterman responded by saying "Wikipedia is largely fiction". Hemsworth then said that in his own biography on the site, the information was true. "Well, my biography is true, it said I had seven brothers, four sisters. I was on a various amount of TV shows in Australia." Letterman said, "Now, wait a minute, you had seven brothers?" Hemsworth replied, "No, that’s what Wikipedia says." Letterman added, "There you go, you’ve proven my point for God’s sakes." It seems Hemsworth did not do a very good job of defending Wikipedia here; let's hope he does better at defending the world in his new film.
In brief
Jimmy Wales is to help give free access to research to the public
Jimmy Wales to help in government's research scheme: The Guardian published an article last Wednesday about how the Wikipedia founder is advising the British government to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it. The intention is to give freedom to the research done by researchers and scientists and let the public read them at will, much as we have access to lots of information through Wikipedia. In the longer term, Wales will help to set up the next generation of open-access platforms for British researchers. The initiative is set to start in around two years.
Wales gives speech at Vatican meeting: More Wales, and at this article by Catholic Register, Jimmy gave an interview about the controversy surrounding abortion and how the online encyclopedia could promote "a more thoughtful world", even as the site was under fire for how it referred to those who oppose and support legalized abortion. In an interview after his speech, Wales also spoke about Wikipedia's arbitration process to determine the correct Wikipedia use of the terms "pro-choice," "pro-life," "abortion rights" and "anti-abortion" to describe individuals and movements. Wikipedia also wants to be careful about using terms that implicitly imply a judgment, for instance by using the term "pro-abortion", he said. The meeting last week gave a thoughtful insight into how Wikipedia affects what people think, and why we must be careful which terms we use.
Controversy in Obama campaign slogan article: The International Business Times commented on the proposed deletion of Forward (Obama–Biden campaign slogan) because the word 'Forward' has often been used in the past for promoting communist parties. The slogan for the campaign was launched on 30 April.
Maunus: I was mostly editing language articles when I first started. I am a linguist by profession specializing in Mesoamerican languages. I speak Danish, English, and Spanish fluently. I have worked professionally with the Nahuatl and Otomi indigenous languages of Mexico and have done field work on both of them. I have been taught and have basic grammatical knowledge of Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic), Latin and German. I have basic knowledge of the historical linguistics of Indo-European, Uto-Aztecan, Mayan, and Mixe-Zoquean languages. I read French and Portuguese with a dictionary.
Angr: I've always been interested in languages, I have a Ph.D. in linguistics, and my original motivation for joining Wikipedia was to add information about Irish, so joining WikiProject Languages was a very natural step for me to take. I know English and German best, and can converse in French. I have a very good theoretical knowledge of Irish, but couldn't carry on a conversation in it beyond the most simple things. For Welsh, both my theoretical knowledge and my practical knowledge are rather less than for Irish. I can read Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch without too much difficulty if I have a dictionary. I have a good theoretical knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek, and a fair theoretical knowledge of the other ancient Indo-European languages. I have a fairly sound (no pun intended) knowledge of how Burmese phonology works, but I can't actually say anything in it besides Aung San Suu Kyi and even then I can't get the tones right.
How well are languages covered on Wikipedia? Are some better covered than others are? How does the coverage of languages vary across the versions of Wikipedia written in languages other than English?
G Purevdorj: We have a huge number of stubs created by a few users that contain basic classificational and geographic information. The 1500 start class articles and a subset of the stubs provide more context and some information on phonology, grammar, or sociolinguistics, but never on more than two (sub)areas in any detail. Only very few stub or start class articles are actually concise sketches that strive for any form of overall coverage. Most articles on better-known languages have larger articles from C class upwards, but some of the better articles belong to else less-known languages. English Wikipedia tends to be more extensive than the other Wikipedias except for articles on regional varieties.
Maunus: Not well at all. The coverage is haphazard depending on the specific expertise of particular editors. Even some of the world's major languages have very bad articles. Some of the best articles we have are about tiny exotic languages like Nafaanra or Tashlhiyt. Some editors like User:Kwamikagami are struggling valiantly to make sure that most of the world's languages are represented at least with stubs and organized in relation to what is known about their family relations. But it is a very large task and it requires editors with expertise in each language group to be done well. Many language groups have only one or two experts doing work on them and often they are unlikely to contribute to Wikipedia. That said there are a number of professional linguists that are Wikipedia editors and who have done great work on the languages they specialize in – User:A R King (Pipil grammar), User:Davidjamesbeck (Totonacan languages, Upper Necaxa Totonac), User:Taivo (Numic languages, Timbisha language, Ukrainian language), User:Lavintzin (Tetelcingo Nahuatl), User:stevemarlett (Seri language), User:G.broadwell (Choctaw language, Chatino language), User:Blillehaugen (Zapotec languages), and User:G Purevdorj (Mongolian language) are some of the professional linguists that I know have made excellent contributions to the languages they work with professionally. User:Miskwito have also done excellent work on Ojibwe language and Ottawa dialect (I think he is not a professional yet, but I'm pretty sure he will become one). I am mostly familiar here with work done on Native American languages – but I am sure there are more professionals working on languages in the rest of the world.
Angr: Obviously better-known languages are better covered than less-known languages. The availability of reliable sources pretty much forces that to be the case. It's much easier to find sources about a language spoken by millions of people that have official or quasi-official status in the country where it's spoken than it is to find sources about a language spoken by a few dozen people. For example, I don't think our article about Sentinelese can ever be significantly expanded unless the facts on the ground change.
Has the project borrowed anything from other language versions of Wikipedia? How much overlap do you see in editors working on multiple language versions of Wikipedia?
G Purevdorj: The few articles on different language versions that I have read read rather differently. Not too much overlap, but rather different perspectives.
Maunus: No, not really. I've seen some of our articles being translated into other languages, but not by any of the editors who work with languages here. I don't generally contribute to other language wikis.
Are there any elements of a language that are difficult to cover in encyclopedia articles?
Maunus: It takes very dedicated and diligent work to give decent coverage of grammar, most language articles stop with the description after a giving phonemic inventory and basic typological information. Describing the grammar requires a high degree of expertise and writing skills since grammars are often written in highly theoretical and technical ways that needs to be translated into something that is accessible for readers that are not specialists or who want information on the language that is not dependent on a particular linguistic theory. It also requires having a full view of the literature on the language that often spans a couple of centuries and being able to weigh the different descriptions for accuracy and relevance. For many languages there is no complete grammar and there are only highly specialized articles on for example particular aspects of syntax and phonology — in such cases using the literature is difficult because it is too specialized to paint a full picture of the language and the specialized information doesn't do much good on its own without background information.
Angr: Some aspects of language, such as sentence-level intonation, are extremely difficult to explain using words alone. Sound recordings help, but they're few and far between, and have limitations of their own (such as being impossible to edit). Otherwise, most aspects of language can in principle be covered in an encyclopedia article, provided the sources are available.
Have you contributed to any pronunciation guides or recordings? How widespread is the use of pronunciation recordings in articles? What can be done to improve this?
G Purevdorj: Well, pronunciation guides would not be in the spirit of a lexicon. Phonology chapters exist in various lengths, and some are quite good. But otherwise, the integration of small sound files into articles would probably be doable and useful. This has been done very rarely only, I think for Swedish ... Still, quite a lot of work.
Maunus: I've made exactly one recording, and I am not planning to do any more. It might be a good idea to have more of that but since I mostly work on small and endangered languages it is not on the top of my to-do list. Perhaps I should upload some of my recordings of the languages I've worked on.
Have you worked with any of WikiProject Languages' descendent projects, WikiProject Endangered languages, and WikiProject Latin? What are the biggest challenges faced by these projects? Is there collaboration among the projects?
G Purevdorj: Most languages are endangered, so the coverage of WP EL and WP LANG should be about the same, thus we don't need both.
Maunus: I was among the ones to start the Endangered Languages Project. Unfortunately, it is sort of inactive now. The biggest challenge is to remain active — many editors work on one language only and, when they are satisfied with the coverage, they stop. There is very little collaboration among projects.
Angr: I'm a member of both those descendent projects, but neither of them is terribly active. The biggest challenge faced by these projects is probably editor apathy, and the fact (which applies to the main languages project as well) that editors tend to work alone rather than in collaboration.
The project has 7 Featured Articles and 12 Good Articles. Have you contributed to any of these? Have you learned any important lessons while working to promote an article to FA or GA status?
G Purevdorj: Created one article to GA, copyedited and promoted one article to GA, and demoted a number of older articles from GA. But no, I don't think I learnt a lot in the course of doing so. Basically, all linguistics plus rating criteria that must be fulfilled. Quite nice to know about picture descriptions for FA, for example, and to create those, but such knowledge is just about the system here rather than about general editing of language-related topics.
Maunus: I was the main contributor to Nahuatl (with a lot of help from User:CJLLWright, User:A R King and User:Lavintzin), to Mayan languages (with a lot of help from User:CJLLWright, User:Homunq and User:Madman2001) and to Greenlandic language (with a lot of help from User:G Purevdorj). When I was trying to get Otomi language to FA, I realized it wasn't worth the effort. I was very disheartened by the FA process, which I found mostly consisted in people chastising the nominator and making demands for including types of information that was irrelevant or non-existent. I would have preferred a more collaborative spirit where the reviewers see the potential of the article and work with the nominator to improve it and make it as good as it can be. I don't mind demanding or even snarky reviewers if I submit an article to a journal, but in that case I have a personal stake in improving the content that I don't have here. This is something I am doing in my free time as a volunteer, I don't need people yelling at me or telling me what to do when I work as a volunteer. I am happy to accept constructive criticism and advise if offered in a collaborative spirit — but that wasn't what I met at FAC. If I publish an article my career advances, that makes it worth the while to have to deal with unreasonable reviewers. But if I get an article to FA I get a gold star I can put on my userpage. That's not worth the hassle, and I'd rather focus on publishing articles then. In my view, FA depends on creating an amiable collaborative environment. I do have a plan about getting Language to FA status, but that is a huge amount of work and I am not going to do that unless I have at least two or three co-nominators.
Angr: I was the main contributor for Irish phonology. Bringing it up to FA status was a very satisfying experience, but I can understand some of Maunus's frustration. It's difficult dealing with reviewers who have no understanding of the topic you're writing about, and often their suggestions seem irrelevant or uninformed. The writing itself is difficult because it's extremely hard to write on such an arcane subject as Irish phonology in a way that can be understood by the average reader. As the writer, you don't want to have to walk the readers through a virtual introductory linguistics course and introductory phonology course before you can get to the matter at hand, but neither do you want 99.9% of your readers (especially on Today's Featured Article day) scratching their heads in puzzlement before they get to the end of the first sentence. It's a lot of work, and something I was only able to do while I was unemployed and could spend pretty much all day doing research and writing the article. Now that I work 40 hours a week again, there's no chance of my bringing another article up to featured status.
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can a new contributor help today?
G Purevdorj: Of course, there is a vast number of languages that don't have any reasonable coverage. Turning stubs or start class article into C class articles that include a reasonable share of overall information on grammar and sociolinguistics is presumably much more useful to the average reader and would make a lot of sense. If referencing is good, building up articles to C class might have the best working time / gain ratio. The other thing is articles on linguistic theory that are overall very poor. But non-linguists can't do that, and most linguists just don't invest the time.
Maunus: We need ever more contributors with expert knowledge of particular languages. Language articles cannot be written to reasonable standards by editors without expert knowledge (i.e. both knowledge of linguistics and of the language (being a native speaker is rarely enough)). Editors without expert knowledge could participate by expanding the thousands of stubs that we have on minor languages — information to write a decent C class article is often readily available from sites such as [www.ethnologue.com], [www.wals.org], [2] or from specialized websites about the languages. Information such as where spoken, number of speakers, language family and whether the language is considered endangered or not is often readily available and does not require specialized knowledge.
Angr: Obviously we need more experts, especially ones who can read languages in which descriptions of tiny languages may have been written. For example, there are dozens if not hundreds of small languages in the former Soviet Union, but if they've been described at all in print, they've been described in Russian, which means only editors with a working knowledge of Russian can use those sources to write articles. A new contributor can help by finding a language we don't have enough info on and going to the library!
Next week, we'll have a spot of tea with Wikipedia's editor support group. Until then, introduce yourself to the archive.
SMS Ostfriesland (nom) by Parsecboy. SMS Ostfriesland was the second vessel of the Helgoland class of battleships of the German Imperial Navy. Named for the region of East Frisia, Ostfriesland's keel was laid in October 1908 at the Kaiserliche Werft dockyard in Wilhelmshaven. Ostfriesland was launched on 30 September 1909 and commissioned into the fleet on 1 August 1911. Along with three sister ships, Helgoland, Thüringen, and Oldenburg, she participated in all of the major fleet operations of World War I in the North Sea against the British Grand Fleet and saw action in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy. Ostfriesland was sunk during air power trials off the Virginia Capes in July 1921.
Tichborne case (nom) by Brianboulton. The Tichborne case was a legal cause célèbre that captivated Victorian England in the 1860s and 1870s. It concerned the claims by an individual sometimes referred to as Thomas Castro or as Arthur Orton, but usually termed "the Claimant", to be the missing heir to the Tichborne baronetcy. He failed to convince the courts, and was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 14 years. In 1884, the Claimant was released and died destitute in 1898. Although most commentators have accepted the court's view that the Claimant was Orton, some analysts believe that a lingering doubt remains as to his true identity and that, conceivably, he was Roger Tichborne.
John Sherman Cooper (nom) by Acdixon. John Sherman Cooper (1901–91) was a politician, jurist, and diplomat from the U.S. state of Kentucky. He served three non-consecutive, partial terms in the U.S. Senate before being elected to two full terms in 1960 and 1966. He also served as U.S. ambassador to India from 1955 to 1956 and to East Germany from 1974 to 1976. He was the first Republican to be popularly elected to more than one term as a senator from Kentucky and, in both 1960 and 1966, he set records for the largest victory margin for a Kentucky senatorial candidate from either party.
Featured lists
Four featured lists were promoted this week:
List of amphibians of Michigan (nom) by Dana boomer. The US state of Michigan is home to 26 species of amphibians: 12 species of frogs, 12 of salamanders, and two of toads. Two of these species are considered endangered by the state, and another is considered threatened. Amphibian habitats in the state are generally split into four regions: the northern and southern Lower Peninsula and the eastern and western Upper Peninsula.
1936 Summer Olympics medal table (nom) by Miyagawa. The 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin, saw 388 medals awarded to athletes from 32 National Olympic Committees (NOCs). The most successful NOC at the games was Nazi Germany, with 33 gold medals; African-American runner Jesse Owens was the most successful individual athlete, much to the ire of the German leader, Adolph Hitler.
Casting Crowns discography (nom) by Toa Nidhiki05. The American contemporary Christian band Casting Crowns has released five studio albums, two independent albums, one holiday album, 14 singles, four live albums and five music videos since being founded in 1999. Their most successful release to date is their self-titled debut album, released in 2003, which has sold 1.7 million copies.
Timeline of the 1990 Atlantic hurricane season (nom) by 12george1. The 1990 Atlantic hurricane season produced 16 tropical depressions, of which 14 intensified into tropical storms, eight became hurricanes, and one became a major hurricane. The strongest storm of the season was Hurricane Gustav, but Hurricane Diana and Tropical Storm Marco caused the greatest damage and loss of life, respectively.
Featured pictures
Nine featured pictures were promoted this week:
The Second of May 1808 (nom; related article), created by Francisco Goya and nominated by Crisco 1492. Spanish artist Francisco Goya's painting The Second of May 1808, also known as The Charge of the Mamelukes, was painted in two months in 1814. Measuring 266 × 345 cm (105 × 136 in), the oil on canvas painting depicts the Dos de Mayo Uprising. Another painting by Goya of the uprising, The Third of May 1808, was featured in March.
African buffalo skull (nom; related article), created by Jebulon and nominated by Tomer T. This picture, described by reviewer Saffron Blaze as a "slam dunk", depicts the skull of an African buffalo. The buffalo, which can grow to 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), has a strong skull. An adult bull's horns fuse together to form a "boss", which can stop a rifle bullet. The animals are considered among the five most dangerous African species.
Hammersmith Bridge (nom; related article) by Diliff. This panorama consists of four segments with a two-second exposure each, showing the Hammersmith Bridge in London, which crosses the River Thames, at dusk. The second permanent bridge at the site, the 700-foot (210 m) Hammersmith Bridge, is open to both traffic and pedestrians.
Boston Massacre (nom; related article), created by Paul Revere and Christian Remick, nominated by Crisco 1492. This depiction of the Boston Massacre, shows seven uniformed British soldiers firing into a crowd of American civilians. The actual massacre, which killed five Americans, led to a propaganda struggle between radicals and the British government; the featured picture is an example of pro-American propaganda, which whitewashed several details.
Monarch in May (nom; related article), created by HaarFager and nominated by Pine. The Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), perhaps the best-known North American butterfly, is also found in Europe and Oceania. It has a wingspan of 8.9–10.2 centimetres (3½–4 in) and is known for its large migrations, which last three or four generations.
Bald Eagle portrait (nom; related article) by Saffron Blaze. The image shows the head of the Bald Eagle, the national bird of the United States. Bald Eagles are not actually bald; the name derives from the older meaning of the word, "white headed". Reviewer Sanyambahga opined that this was "the most striking image" in the article.
Wood Duck, London (nom; related article) by Diliff. The Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), a generally North American species, is generally found in wooded swamps, shallow lakes, marshes or ponds, and creeks; the male specimen pictured was photographed in St James's Park, London. Reviewer Daniel Case described the image as "fit for framing on the lodge wall."
Anagallis monelli (habitus) (nom; related article), created by Lycaon and nominated by Tomer T. The Blue Pimpernel (Lysimachia monelli) is a plant native to the Mediterranean region. Although generally blue, the flowers can also be other colours; the subject has orange flowers.
The case involves accusations of disruptive editing against Rich Farmbrough. Specifically, concerns were raised about the editor and his observance of bot policy.
The proposed decision was posted on 5 May by drafter Kiril Lokshin. The decision's framework centers around principles of collegiality and behavior with automation tools. After a long series of findings of fact, the proposed decision would remove administrator privileges from Rich Farmbrough and ban him for up to one year. Kirill Lokshin gave his reason for proposing the ban: "Given Rich's history of using automation without disclosing it ... it is apparent that we have no effective means of enforcing [the] remedy [absent a] ban from editing entirely." However, arbitrator Courcelles described the ban proposal as "too draconian", arguing instead for a stringent editing restriction.
It will require six of the eleven active arbitrators on the case to adopt these proposals.
A review of the Race and intelligence case was opened as a compromise between starting a new case and proceeding with a ruling by motion. The review is intended to be a simplified form of a full case, and has the stated scope of conduct issues that have purportedly arisen since the closure of the 2010 case.
A complete decision was proposed on 16 April by drafter Roger Davies. The proposed principles include clarifications of harassment policies and sockpuppet investigation procedures. After a long series of findings of fact, the proposed decision seeks to admonish one editor involved in disruptive actions and to ban two others for 12 months. Voting so far has established a tentative consensus on some principles and some findings of fact.
On 6 May, Roger Davies posted a set of new findings of fact and remedies which effectively add two new parties to the case. According to the proposals, two other editors not named in the original case registered accounts on Wikipedia with the intent to resolve what they saw as "censorship". The two editors in question would be topic-banned from this area of the site along with a full site-ban for no less than six months. One existing party to the case attacked the addition of these new parties and the related findings, arguing that "the scope is being changed after the fact to include [the new parties] for the sole purpose of banning them." The drafting arbitrator responded by asking whether the committee should ignore "compelling new evidence that goes to the heart of the case purely on procedural grounds?"
When asked about the length of the Review and the delay in posting of these new findings, Roger Davies explained that "the main difficulty has been that the case spans about three years, with thirty-plus dispute related processes".
Other requests and committee action
The Committee unanimously rejected opening a case into alleged misconduct between editors MBisanz and Fae.
67[updated 1] unique committers contributed code to MediaWiki.
The total number of unreviewed commits went from about 100 to 138.
About 34 shell requests were processed.
63 developers got developer access to Git and Wikimedia Labs, of which 60 are volunteers.
Wikimedia Labs now hosts 81 projects, 136 instances and 305 users.
”
—Engineering metrics, Wikimedia blog
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for April 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project). Three of the headlines for the month have already received coverage in previous issues of the Signpost: the selection of nine Google Summer of Code students (explored in more detail below), the shift to a rapid deployment cycle with the deployment of 1.20wmf1 and a new version of the Wikimedia iOS app. Of the two others, one relates to work on a document detailing Wikimedia engineering’s goals for the next fiscal year, which will be featured in the "Technology report" as soon as it becomes official, and the deployment of a new mobile skin (example), which occurred after the publication of last week's issue. The skin update has since received broadly positive commentary among users; it provides a rival to the more native experience of an Android or iOS app.
Elsewhere, the roundup contained details of a massive improvement in the amount of time taken to use Wikimedia's Lucene-based internal search engine after "months of preparation and refactoring work". The difference reported was "quite amazing": the actual search component of 99% of search requests now takes under a second, down from nine seconds before; and the average search time is now 100 ms, down from 700 ms. Among the interesting updates included in the report was the news that the localisation team had started coding for a universal language selector, over 18 months after the feature was first proposed.
Coding has begun on a full system of Lua scripting, while April also saw over 20x improvements in the processing speed of the new parser on template heavy pages, suggesting that preparations for its rollout (a prerequisite for deployment of the new Visual Editor) will begin shortly. Among the relative failures of the month was the deployment of a new media caching layer ("Varnish"), which, while it has the potential to improve performance and scalability, seems to be preventing users from downloading large files successfully (bug #36577).
Google Summer of Code participants are officially still in the time set aside by Google for pre-coding work, such as deciding on the data flows their project will focus on (example diagram pictured).
As announced a fortnight ago, nine students have now been selected to work on MediaWiki this year, supported by Google stipends and WMF mentors (Wikimedia blog). The projects they represent fall across a broad spectrum: some, like Aaron Pramana's project to rethink the display and functionality of Wikimedians' watchlists, involve highly visible changes; others will have a more indirect effect on the average Wikimedian user experience (such as Suhas HS's project to improve the OpenStackManager extension that underpins the virtualisation functionality of Wikimedia Labs and Robin Pepermans' attempts to improve the usability, performance, and coverage of Wikimedia's Incubator for nascent language editions). It will be the first time many of the students have undertaken such ambitious projects in the name of open-source development; they join hundreds of other students worldwide, each working on different projects for different open-source initiatives (several countries are represented even among the WMF's nine students).
Students will officially start coding later in the month, although they may begin when they wish. They must present their final work in late August for evaluation.
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.
1.20wmf2 begins deployment process, 1.19 released: 1.20wmf2, the second "rapid deployment" to Wikimedia sites, began its process of deployment on April 30 when MediaWiki.org was switched over to the latest version, 20 days after the wiki received 1.20wmf1. It was then deployed to Wikimedia Commons May 2 2012, where it will have its greatest impact: the most significant feature of 1.20wmf2 is the introduction of so-called "chunked" uploads, which prevent intermittent connection failures from restarting an upload in its entirety. Representing just those 20 days of development, the deployment (which also hit the English Wikipedia on May 7 2012 and will be introduced to other Wikipedias on May 9 2012) includes some 47 bugfixes, among them fixes allowing the translation of edit notices and better display of the Vector skin on "high definition" devices. This week also saw the official release of MediaWiki 1.19 to external sites, allowing their wikis to benefit from a similar range of improvements as those that came to Wikimedia wikis in late February (wikitech-l mailing list).
Gerrit upgraded: Gerrit, MediaWiki's new code review system, has been upgraded to version 2.3, incorporating "lots of fixes and various other improvements". However, the most notable feature is the internalisation of Git's submodule system, which allows developers to get copies of ("clone") and update copies of multiple related repositories at the same time; as developer Chad Horohoe explained, the primary-use case is to allow developers to replicate their pre-switchover ability to grab the code from all WMF-hosted extensions simultaneously. The update has not prevented work on a competitor review system: named "Gareth" and developed by long-time volunteer developer Daniel Friesen, the code review system is an attempt to provide a more homegrown, MediaWiki-compatible review experience (also wikitech-l).
Two billion mobile pageviews: Mobile devices accounted for some 2.089 billion pageviews in April 2012, as reported on Thursday via the Wikimedia blog. The monthly figure, the first to break the self-set two billion pageview target, represents a 187% year-on-year increase, WMF Senior Manager Amit Kapoor reported on behalf of the WMF mobile team in his blogpost addressing the milestone – a jump which he attributed to improvements in both the standard mobile site and device-specific "apps" during the last calendar year. The figures for non-English Wikipedias look particularly encouraging: among those wikis seeing enormous jumps in mobile device browsing, the Portuguese Wikipedia clocks in with 600% growth, Arabic with 500% growth, and Turkish with 800% growth. Several less-developed countries are also set to gain in the second half of this year with the wider rollout of Wikipedia Zero, although the list of countries is protected by commercial confidentiality agreements.
Two performance and two preference problems: Wikimedia wikis suffered two performance issues in the past seven days, one prompting "failed images, scripts, and other static resources" for almost an hour on April 30 (Wikitech incident documentation), the other causing image corruption and various related and unrelated issues for at least four minutes on 3 May 2012 (Wikimedia Commons Village Pump). Two changes to default preferences (enabling email watchlist notifications and edits-add-to-watchlist by default) also went amiss during the week, the result of a problem related to distinguishing between the default preferences of new users preferences and those of older users who had simply never overridden the defaults; consequently, users registered more than a couple of years ago found that their preferences had mysteriously changed overnight until both changes were reverted pending a proper fix for the issue.
A mockup of the "Curation Bar", half of the New Pages Feed (previously called "New Page Triage")Mixed news for New Pages Feed project: As reported in last week's "Technology report", this week should have seen the deployment of one of the two halves of the New Pages Feed (formerly "New Page Triage") project. Bugs encountered during the first attempted deployment of this new "list view" – essentially a successor to Special:NewPages – forced a second attempt to be scheduled later in the week. That attempt was also unsuccessful, prompting a third attempt to be scheduled for May 7 2012 (PDT). The second half, community liaison Oliver Keyes reported in a newsletter this week, will take the form of a new "toolbar, which we're calling the 'curation bar'; you can see a mockup here. A stripped-down version of this should be ready to deploy fairly soon after the list view is [deployed]". When fully released, the 'curation bar' will contain many options to interact with the page including patrolling it, adding maintenance tags and nominating it for deletion, Keyes says.
MathJax preference goes WMF-wide: After a trial installation on the MediaWiki wiki, MathJax has been enabled as a <math>-rendering preference for all Wikimedia wikis (wikitech-l mailing list). The JavaScript-based system, which has been available as a user script for some time, replaces the usual PNG renderings of mathematical formulae with asynchronously typeset non-image-based representations. Although well received, the escaping of HTML tags (bug #36059) has continued to be an annoyance for MathJax users; indeed, a dozen MathJax-related bugs of varying severity have been filed in the past two weeks.
_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg)
.png)
.jpg){kind=link}