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7 May 2014

 

2014-05-07

New system of discretionary sanctions; Buchenwald; is Pirelli 'Cracking Wikipedia'?

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By Tony1 and The ed17

The English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) introduced the first form of what are known as the "discretionary sanction" (DS) in 2009. From then until 2011 this developed into the system that was used until last Sunday, 4 May, when the 12 active arbitrators unanimously passed a motion replacing all DS provisions with an updated procedure. The new DS regime, called Discretionary sanctions (2014), is the result of an elaborate review process involving both the community, since last September, and the committee, for more than a year.

The Signpost understands that the DS system was and still is a response to the overwhelming task of managing the wars that flare up on many articles on "hot-button" areas of knowledge—typically those that are ideological, cultural, racial, and scientific flashpoints in human society. The English Wikipedia is especially vulnerable to these wars because it receives about 40% of the page-visits and 40% of the edits of the 290 language Wikipedias; this tends to attract people who want their views to prevail on the global stage. In recent years the site's judicial and administrative resources have struggled to cope with the chaos and personal nastiness that can ensue when foes meet on that stage.

Under the old approach (which is not easy to grasp from the text), any editor, or ArbCom itself, could place a DS template on the talkpage of another editor participating at a DS-listed article, exposing that editor to a heightened risk of being banned on the basis of their subsequent activity on the article or its talkpage. This was interpreted by some editors as an unfair and poorly applied millstone around their neck, not helped by language on the template that appeared to blame, and the fact that they typically felt "singled out".

The new approach is a marked shift from this. Now, a newly designed template merely alerts editors to the fact that the article or talkpage they have edited is DS-listed. There is no overt blame in the wording, and the template is issuable by anyone to all editors who edit a DS-listed article or talkpage. This is an attempt to remove any stigma and to avoid catching editors new to the topic, or the site, unawares. To avoid cascades of templating for regular editors of a topic, an editor can receive only one DS alert for a DS-listed topic in a 12-month period. One arbitrator we queried used an analogy with a poorly signed ban on parking in a particular street: "now all motorists on the street are personally alerted to this fact in a polite, neutral way". All that is missing from the updated DS page is a brief lead explaining what discretionary sanctions are.

Since the management of hot-button articles is often prone to gaming, both old and new versions are couched in legalistic terms, as can be seen from the diff of old versus new. Where a DS is actually applied after the informational template has been issued, appeal is via either AN/I, Arbitration enforcement, or directly to ArbCom. If either of the first two is chosen, a further appeal can be made to ArbCom.

The Signpost asked arbitrator AGK to comment on the changes. He told us that he sees three main benefits:


"The system is now fit for purpose," AGK said, "and less intimidating and dense, so people won't need to turn to ArbCom once a week, asking for clarifications. The alerts system is now also automatically logged. MediaWiki keeps a record of all ArbCom alerts issued, so editors no longer need to keep hundreds of logs updated."

In brief

This film from the Buchenwald concentration camp was taken shortly after it was liberated from Nazi German forces. The still frame of several stacked bodies, featured on Commons' main page on 8 May, can be seen at 4:10.
  • Commons and dead bodies: The Wikimedia Commons' media of the day for 8 May, featured on a main page that is seen by over 80,000 people each day, showed a still frame (Editor's note: contains graphic material) of dead bodies from a broader video of the Buchenwald concentration camp. An email to the Wikimedia-l mailing list (titled "Commons' frontpage probably shouldn't prominently feature a decontextualised stack of corpses") opined "This isn't the first time that Commons frontpage has featured content that, while often appropriate material to be hosted by Commons, has been framed in an inappropriate way likely to cause dismay, upset, or scandal to the average Wikimedia Commons viewer. It flies in the face of the WMF-board endorsed principle of least astonishment—no one expects to click on Commons' homepage to see a still image of a stack of corpses at Buchenwald." Discussion continues on the mailing list and Commons.
  • Wikimania: Scholarships have been awarded for Wikimania 2014 in London. Katie Chan, the chair of the Scholarship Committee, told the Signpost via email that compared with previous Wikimanias, "the Wikimedia Foundation has increased the scholarship budget this year", so they were "able to award the largest number of scholarships in the history of Wikimania." However, this year's process did not go off without difficulty: the announcement of scholarship recipients was delayed for about a month, something Chan attributed to an overly ambitious target schedule.
  • Adrianne: A Wikipedia editor who perished several weeks ago in a rock-climbing accident is continuing to have an impact both in the media and on Wikipedia. The Boston Globe published an editorial where it praised her edits to Wikipedia: "Scholar of British literature Adrianne Wadewitz never appeared on The New York Times bestseller list or on the talk-show circuit, but she probably did more to increase popular understanding of female writers than almost anyone else in her field. ... But her influence was much greater outside academia—as a volunteer editor on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. / Her work will help ensure that information on women’s contributions to literature, philosophy, and even, in a piece she finished just before her death, rock climbing is at the world’s fingertips." On Wikipedia, a video of her speaking about the impact of Wikipedia is now featured on the English Wikipedia, and the children's literature portal has been nominated for featured status.
  • Academics vandalizing Wikipedia: In a piece brazenly titled "Are you an academic who vandalises wikipedia? Then stop it!", Alaric Hall—a lecturer at the University of Leeds and Wikipedia editor since 2005—told an anecdote about an academic colleague who proudly boasted on Facebook about vandalizing Wikipedia's article on Queen Elizabeth II as a demonstration for his students. As Hall goes on to note, "Six minutes (and perhaps twenty views by innocent encyclopedia-readers) later, of course, some upstanding member of society fixed the page (which to me is the real take-home point for this individual’s students)." He asked how ethical it was to purposefully introduce poor or untrue information into a source of knowledge, and whether these actions foster the critical engagement that the professors are presumably going for. This comes on the heels of a study that found that 43% of academics have edited Wikipedia.
  • Super-spreader student edits reverted, restored: University of Michigan ecologist and professor Meghan Duffy blogged about her experience allowing a student to do her coursework on Wikipedia. As alluded to in the title, it did not go well. The student's edits to super-spreader were reverted by the page's creator with comments that the professor described as "hostile", despite at least one Wikipedian seeing them as "better". It was only when other editors picked up on the blog post and Hacker News that the majority of the student's edits were restored, leading Duffy to comment:
  • Wiki Loves Earth: An international photography competition modeled on Wiki Loves Monuments has started. Wiki Loves Earth aims to encourage contributors to upload photographs on natural heritage sites. It runs until the end of May.
  • Wikimedia Foundation, movement entities
    • FDC assessments: Staff assessments for the Funds Dissemination Committee's second annual round have been published on Meta. Of note is the Wikimedia Foundation's proposal, which includes no funding requests and was reviewed by a movement entity that it itself funds (Wikimedia Germany).
    • Audit Committee: The Wikimedia Foundation's Audit Committee, which "represents the Board of Trustees in its oversight of financial and accounting issues", is calling for volunteers.
    • New data center: The Foundation's data center, which has been fully or partially hosted in Florida since its founding, will finally leave the state in favor of CyrusOne in Dallas, Texas. Mark Bergsma, Director of Technical Operations and Lead Operations Architect, stated that "The CyrusOne bid met our key requirements at a very competitive price. It is a modern and large facility with a highly redundant and efficient power and cooling infrastructure. In addition, the state of Texas maintains an independent power grid, which may be beneficial in case of major power issues affecting our Ashburn facility."
    • Pakistan: The Wikimedia Community User Group Pakistan has been officially recognized by the Affiliations Committee
    • Privacy policy: Now that the Foundation's Board of Trustees has approved the Wikimedia sites' new privacy policy, the organization's legal team has announced that it will go into effect after a one-month notice period.
    • Hovercards: Inspired by the long-time Navigation popups Wikipedia feature, "hovercards" are in beta and available for trial by logged-in users. According to Wikimedia Highlights, hovercards are "brief previews of a Wikipedia article or other wiki page, displayed when the reader hovers over a link to that page. The preview consists of the lead paragraph and first image of the article."
  • Pirelli: A suspicious video titled "Cracking Wikipedia" appeared on the Ads of the World website, claiming to have promoted Pirelli, a tire manufacturing company, by replacing images on Wikipedia articles with similar items that include Pirelli logos in the background. Yet neither the Signpost, nor any readers of our Twitter post, has found any article on the English, Spanish, or Portuguese Wikipedias where such a replacement was done; this appears to have been a proposal or a simple mockup. An emailed inquiry to Havas Digital, the advertising agency listed as being behind the video, was quickly acknowledged but not substantively responded to within a week's time. (Editor's note: public access to the video was blocked after the publication of this article. In anticipation of such a move, the Signpost has stored a copy of the video, which originally appeared on the Ads of the World website here and on Youtube here.)

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2014-05-07

TMZedia

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By Serendipodous

For all the claims of Wikipedia bringing the world's knowledge to all who want it, it seems that the human race most wants a tabloid newspaper; a quick source for TV listings, pop culture facts, celebrity gossip and, above all, scandal—with some nice juicy racism thrown in too.

For the full top 25 list, see WP:TOP25. See this section for an explanation for any exclusions.

For the week of 27 April to 3 May, the ten most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most viewed pages, were:

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes
1 Donald Sterling C-class 2,155,108 What's more likely to generate watercooler conversation than a racist outburst by a privileged aged white guy? A nonsensical racist outburst. If one does not wish to "associate with black people", as he put it, owning a basketball team is probably not the way to go. And if he doesn't want black people "brought to his games," one wonders how he deals with his team's roster, which currently consists of 12 black individuals and two Caucasians. He's been banned from the NBA, though that is unlikely to affect his revenue stream.
2 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 C-Class 618,326
For a sequel to a reboot no one asked for, this movie is proving very popular with the public; after finally opening in its home territory, it scored $35 million on its first day, on top of $155 million it has already earned overseas. It's not surprising that this was released in foreign markets before its home territory; the original Spider-Man made $822 million worldwide, with the domestic and international grosses split roughly 50/50. The rebooted Amazing Spider-Man (this film's predecessor) made $752 million worldwide, but with international grosses now comprising 2/3 the total. This radical shift in Hollywood's biosphere has taken place in just a decade, and it is already altering hunting strategies, for good or ill.
3 Bob Hoskins Start-class 593,143
Much loved and respected actor who passed away on 29 April. Although he played the quintessential well'ard Cockney in films like The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa, Hoskins was perhaps ironically best known for playing the American PI pastiche Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
4 Amazon.com B-Class 538,283
This article has been veering wildly (and suspiciously) around the view graph for several weeks, but at least now its presence on the list has a reason: Amazon Fire TV; a digital streaming device to watch online content on a HDTV. How it distinguishes itself from the three or four other such devices currently on the market is a matter of some dispute.
5 May Day B-Class 499,206
Before it was International Workers' Day, May Day, aka May 1, was a fount of odd and esoteric traditions.
6 Game of Thrones B-class 492,768
New seasons of this immensely popular show always draw people to Wikipedia.
7 Deaths in 2014 List 422,311
The list of deaths in the current year is always a popular article.
8 Man-Thing C-Class 407,317 Marvel Comics' monster-man, to whom DC's Swamp Thing, debuting 18 months later, would bear an uncanny resemblance, got some press after it was revealed he would appear in an upcoming episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..
9 Shakira B-Class 372,839
The Colombian singer with the famously swiveling hips had a number of encounters with the media this week; between being the subject of a popular Reddit thread, being upstaged by Ariana Grande at the iHeartRadio Music Awards (see below), and posting a photo of her adorable toddler Milan on her Twitter feed, she's certainly made a splash amongst the cyber-chatterati, whether she intended to or not.
10 Game of Thrones (season 4) Start-Class 371,364
This is the page with the plot synopses for each episode.


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2014-05-07

Foundation announces long-awaited new executive director

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By The ed17
Lila Tretikov: the WMF's new boss

In a live video stream on 1 May, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that Lila Tretikov will be replacing Sue Gardner, its executive director. Gardner, who has been in the position since 2007, declared her intention to leave more than a year ago.

Tretikov started her career in the technology world in 1999 as an engineer with the Sun-Netscape Alliance, the name used by Netscape during its acquisition by AOL. Over the succeeding years, she founded her own company and served as a senior director of development for TeleSpree before moving to SugarCRM, where she had been employed for the past eight years. Tretikov was also named as a 2012 finalist in the Female Executive of the Year – Business Services category.

Tretikov served most recently as SugarCRM's chief product officer, which is based in Cupertino, California, and produces Sugar, a customer relationship management system. The Foundation has described the company as an "open-source, cloud-based software vendor": "SugarCRM sponsored an open source project with more than 30,000 contributors and deployed by over 1.5 million individuals in 120 countries and 26 languages. Lila’s responsibilities during her tenure included product strategy, engineering, operations, IT, product management, professional services, marketing, and user experience."

According to the company's Wikipedia article, it was founded in 2004 to create a strictly open-source customer relationship management software. Having joined only a few years after its founding, Tretikov has a wealth of experience from its open-source activities, despite its August 2013 announcement that the software's newest version, Sugar 7, would not include a community edition, and a February 2014 community post notifying users that they would no longer be releasing new community versions.

Tretikov addressed this in the live announcement, saying that while she had championed community involvement with Sugar, the decision to discontinue new community editions was made by the company's board.

Having held these varied roles, Tretikov comes to the Foundation with a strong skill set. Her personal LinkedIn profile emphasizes the hiring and developing of people, technical management, and product design. These, and a surprisingly lengthy list of other required qualifications the Foundation was looking for, factored into their decision to hire her:


According to Gardner and Foundation board chair Jan-Bart de Vreede, "Lila is precisely what we set out to find."

In announcing Tretikov, Gardner described this complex set of requirements as forcing them to look for a "unicorn—one that we weren't sure existed". These arose because Gardner was given the unusual chance to grow into the role: under her leadership, the WMF has undergone fundamental changes. In 2007, its budget was only $3.5 million. By 2012, this had risen to an annual $22.3 million, the year in which a five-country fundraiser netted $25 million in just nine days. Over the same period, the Foundation has expanded beyond a simple server-supporting organization, funding programs from education to GLAM opportunities. The WMF itself was transplanted from St. Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco, along with expansion from fewer than 10 employees to 160 by 2012 and 207 today.

Coverage of Tretikov's hiring was collated by Pete Forsyth, and included the New York Times (Noam Cohen), the Wall Street Journal, and Re/code. Follow-up stories in English appeared in Mashable and WebProNews.

In related news, Tretikov's partner Wil Sinclair has joined Wikipedia and Wikipediocracy, the latter leading to forum members offering their suggestions for reforming Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, including that he try to have various Foundation staff members fired.

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2014-05-07

2014 WikiCup enters round three

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By J Milburn and Adam Cuerden
The views expressed in this report are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section.
SMS Gefion, as restored by first-place finisher Adam Cuerden

Round 3 of the 2014 WikiCup has just begun; 32 competitors remain. Pool G's Oh, better far to live and die / Under the brave black flag I fly... Adam Cuerden (submissions) was Round 2's highest scorer, with a large number of featured picture credits. In March/April, he restored star charts from Urania's Mirror, lithographs of various warships (such as SMS Gefion) and assorted other historical media. Second overall was Pool E's Smithsonian Institution Godot13 (submissions), whose featured list Silver certificate (United States) contains dozens of scans of banknotes recently promoted to featured picture status. Third was Pool G's United States ChrisGualtieri (submissions) who has produced a large number of good articles, many, including Falkner Island, on Connecticut-related topics. Other successful participants included Rhodesia Cliftonian (submissions), who saw three articles (including the top-importance Ian Smith) through featured article candidacies, and Washington, D.C. Caponer (submissions), who saw three lists (including the beautifully-illustrated list of plantations in West Virginia) through featured list candidacies. High-importance good articles promoted this round include narwhal from Canada Reid,iain james (submissions), tiger from Wales Cwmhiraeth (submissions) and The Lion King from Minas Gerais Igordebraga (submissions). We also saw our first featured topic points of the competition, awarded to Nepal Czar (submissions) and Indiana Red Phoenix (submissions) for their work on the Sega Genesis topic. No points have been claimed so far for good topics or featured portals.

192 was our lowest qualifying score, again showing that this WikiCup is the most competitive ever. In previous years, 123 (2013), 65 (2012), 41 (2011) or 100 (2010) secured a place in Round 3. Pool H was the strongest performer, with all but one of its members advancing, while only the two highest scorers in Pools G and F advanced. At the end of June, 16 users will advance into the semi-finals.

Gallery of content created for the WikiCup this round

Of course this is not a complete list of content produced by any contestant; consider this a bite-sized sampling of their work.

Top thirty-two

Others

Just because they didn't pass to Round 3 doesn't mean there wasn't some excellent content created by the participants. This section features some of the work by people who had a damn good try at a place. As before, they all did a lot more work than the sample featured.



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2014-05-07

Google and the flu; Adrianne

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By Go Phightins!
Editor's note: In the media will now be a monthly section, published the first edition of each month, and will cover Wikipedia and more broadly the Wikimedia movement over the preceding month. Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to bringing you more great editions of ITM in the future. This edition includes summaries and links to what should have been in issues dating back to February.

Wikipedia outdoes Google in tracking flu

See also: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-04-30/Recent research

Boston Children's Hospital postdoctoral fellow David McIver and a team have determined that using page view statistics from Wikipedia, they can track flu progression better than the Center for Disease Control can using Google searches.

The researchers seek to have a more "holistic" view of where flu-like symptoms are prevalent. Jay Walsh, WMF Communications Director, commented that the WMF is "always excited and intrigued when people make new/creative uses of our data, within the boundaries of the law and our privacy policy." He did caution, however, that data of this nature should be extrapolated and analyzed only by medical professionals. Only time will tell the effectiveness of the data, but for now, it appears to be an interesting and exciting alternate use of Wikipedia.

Passing of Adrianne Wadewitz

The Signpost has previously covered the sad fact that a famed, beloved Wikipedian Adrianne Wadewitz has died in a rock climbing fall. The New York Times published an obituary that recapped her life and work on Wikipedia. WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner commented: "It is a huge loss for Wikipedia. She may have been our single biggest contributor on these topics—female authors, women's history." Noam Cohen wrote for the Times that "Ms. Wadewitz's interest in rock climbing played out on Wikipedia. Her last editing was to improve an article about Steph Davis, a prominent female climber and wingsuit flier. In Ms. Wadewitz's hands, the article became filled with personal details, spectacular photos, a highlighted quotation and 25 footnotes." Wadewitz's presence is already missed on Wikipedia.

February

  • Defamatory Wikipedia: Lexology.com published an article detailing strategies for managing defamatory Wikipedia pages geared towards corporate attorneys. The article highlights our insistence on reliable sources supporting content, and outlines deletion processes.
  • Bots overtaking humans? Several media outlets covered the increasing tendency for bots to be a large source of edits on Wikipedia and Wikidata. A new app has been created to study the source of edits on the projects. The Daily Dot writes: "The program found that, over a three day period in late 2013, over 3.8 million edits were made to the 287 different language-based Wikipedia sites." These references have more detailed coverage.[1][2][3][4]
  • MediaWiki vulnerabilities exposed An article recapped some vulnerabilities that were exposed to the open-source MediaWiki platform (which Wikipedia uses), and gave some takeaways on the subject from which we all can learn.
  • Jimmy Wales' phone venture again in the news—Jimmy Wales' new phone venture, covered in previous editions of ITM, received additional coverage, predominantly centering around the legal requirements of a corporation.
  • Wikipedia's geographical bias—Motherboard.vice.com published an article examining the geographic distribution of Wikipedia's entries, concluding that the United States and Great Britain receive an overwhelming majority of the entries.
  • Greek lawsuit: A Greek editor was sued for edits he made to the Wikipedia biography of a former politician. (see related Signpost coverage: "Greek Wikipedia editor faces down legal challenge"). In addition to the WMF blog, outside coverage came from Arstechnica, lifo.gr, Protothema, Newsbeast, and the Daily Dot.
  • Wikipedia in printed form?: Printing just one copy of Wikipedia would require 1,193,014 pages, but a group that calls themselves the "Wikipedia Books Project" wants to do just that. According to an article in The Daily Dot, the project needs $50,000, and according to the project website, they have raised a little over a quarter of that. Subsequently, the project received more media attention.
  • Wikipedia's medical articles contain errors: [1]
  • Vandalism from UK government IP addresses: [2] [3] [4] [5]
  • Should government agencies edit Wikipedia?: WMF spokesman Jay Walsh recently spoke to NextGov.com about courses of action government employees can take when they spot errors regarding their agency or its jurisdiction on Wikipedia.
  • India: Candidates for Lok Sabha have to declare their social media accounts, including Wikipedia. (15 February)
  • A Noongar Wikipedia: [6] [7] (17 February)
  • Telugu Wikipedia: [8]
  • Wikipedia loses readers in Poland: [9]
  • WikiBear: [10] [11] [12] (17–20 February 2014)
  • Is Wikipedia the best place to promote women in art?: [13] (20 February 2014)
  • Doctor Wikipedia: [14] (20 February 2014)
  • Royal Society edit-a-thon: [15] (23 February 2014)
  • Are PR people breaking Wikipedia?: [16] (25 February 2014)
  • Wikipedia's spatial solipsism: [17] [18] (25 February 2014)
  • Assessing BLP quality through text mining: [19] (25 February 2014)
  • Terms of Use discussion: [20] (27 February 2014)
  • Oscar winner ... according to Wikipedia: [21] (2 March 2014)
  • Finnish Wikimedia donations: [22] (see related Signpost coverage: "Finnish investigation of donations to the WMF"; 2 March 2014)
  • Conspiracy theories in the German Wikipedia: [23] (2 March 2014)
  • Gaming Wikipedia: [24] (7 March 2014)
  • Wikipedia writers' forum in Azerbaijan: [25] (7 March 2014)

More recently

  • WMF has a new executive director: The WMF hired Lila Treitkov as its new executive director, and that received some media coverage, including from The Wall Street Journal, which chronicled her career, and noted her path from the Soviet Union to Wikipedia. (see related Signpost coverage: "Foundation announces long-awaited new executive director")
  • Is there hope for Wikipedia's medical articles?: The Atlantic wondered whether Wikipedia's medical articles would ever be definitive, credible, and comprehensive. The article commented on a study from The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association on the usage of Wikipedia as a medical resource.
  • TLDR: Io9.com reports on a new service that condenses Wikipedia articles to one sentence.
  • Peoria Wikipedia page vandalized: The Peoria Journal-Star notes that some amusing vandalism found its way onto the Peoria, Illinois Wikipedia page.
  • What exactly is trivial?: Sunny Hostin evidently doesn't pay on bets, and either her or an impostor don't want that information in her Wikipedia article. Regardless, it received some media coverage.
  • An alternate aesthetic version of Wikipedia: so how would you like a more "aesthetically pleasing experience" while viewing Wikipedia? A new iPad app can help you do just that, reports Cnet.com.au. The app shows you Wikipedia articles in 17th century ligature and style, rather than an "Arial wasteland".
  • Slurs from a UK government computer draw attention: Among many other sources, the UK version of The Huffington Post reported that "inflammatory" and "sickening" edits made to at least one Wikipedia article came from the computer of a British civil servant working on a government computer. The UK government initiated an investigation, and subsequently, it was determined that government computers have made more offensive edits to articles on Muslim topics, among others.
  • Political articles suffer in terms of NPOV: 'Tis the season for campaigns and elections, and thus, tis the season for vandalism and non-neutral edits on such articles, according to an article from the India Times. Wikipedia's own Sitush was quoted in the article.
  • Wikipedia: A bias against women?: If you edit Wikipedia, you may have heard we may have a gender bias. Nevertheless, an article published recently in The National chronicles new research into the extent and ramifications thereof.
  • George Bush's paintings less than impressive?: According to a recent article, some of George W. Bush's paintings of world leaders including the one of his father, George H.W. Bush, which have attracted notoriety within the media, appear to be based on images appearing in the leaders' respective Wikipedia articles.
  • Pete Forsyth opines: Wiki Strategies proprietor and Signpost op-ed contributor Pete Forsyth recently wrote an editorial that was published in, among other locations, USA Today, prior to the announcement of WMF's new executive director. He stated qualifications for such an individual, perhaps the most important of which would be an aptitude for dealing with annoying people, e.g., all of us!
References
  1. ^ Steiner, Thomas (February 5, 2014). "Bots vs. Wikipedians, Anons vs. Logged-ins". Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web - WWW '14 Companion. p. 547. arXiv:1402.0412. doi:10.1145/2567948.2576948. ISBN 9781450327459.
  2. ^ "The Shadowy World of Wikipedia's Editing Bots". Emerging Technology From the arXiv. MIT Technology Review. February 13, 2014.
  3. ^ "New app tracks Wikipedia edits by Internet bots and humans". Press Trust of India. New Delhi Television. February 24, 2014.
  4. ^ Joshi, Chinmay (February 24, 2014). "Bots Vs. Wikipedians App To Track Edits By Bots On Wiki Pages". CrazyEngineers.


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2014-05-07

Singing with Eurovision

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By Mabeenot

Formed in 2003, the Eurovision WikiProject boasts four featured articles and 22 good articles. The Eurovision Song Contest 2014 is currently taking place in Copenhagen, Denmark, so we went down to the stage to chat with Wesley Mouse:

What motivated you to join WikiProject Eurovision? When did you first start following the Eurovision Song Contest? Does the project cover any other aspects of the Eurovision television network or the European Broadcasting Union?
  • Wesley Mouse: Although I had contributed initially as an IP editor, I decided to join WikiProject Eurovision as a member at the same time I had created a Wikipedia account back in August 2011. The Eurovision Song Contest is a subject that I feel passionate about and have watched the contest on television since 1988. WikiProject Eurovision also covers other contests such as the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, Türkvizyon Song Contest, and the ABU Song Festivals, to name but a few.


Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured or Good articles? What purpose does the project's unique "Future" quality rating serve?
  • Wesley Mouse: Indeed, I have contributed to four Good Articles, including the article for Eurovision Song Contest 2013. The project has 4 featured articles, 2 featured lists, and 22 good articles. The project's "Future" quality rating serves a unique purpose to highlight articles that are covering a contest that has yet to take place - for example any articles relating to the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2014 would be granted a "Future" quality rating.


There are periodic checks the activity of the project's members, with a percentage displayed on the project's main page. How important is it to keep the membership list updated? What other things can projects do to keep tabs on their members and motivate them to participate?
Wesley Mouse: The project's 'Activity Scale', which is updated periodically, is there to highlight to potential new members of the activity rate within the project itself. Members who actively contribute within a four month rolling-period are deemed to be active, whilst members who have not contributed for a while are deemed to be inactive but are able to resume contribution at a time of their choosing. It also serves a purpose to current members as a checking tool for those who may be curious as to the activity scale of members.
  • A project newsletter is published and distributed to members who are active to inform them of any articles that require maintenance work, as well as updates on what is happening in the world of Eurovision-related contests.


The project underwent an overhaul last September to coincide with the project's tenth birthday. What needed work? Are there elements of the project that could still use a refresh? What are the project's plans for growth over the next decade?
  • Wesley Mouse: Prior to the overhaul that happened in September 2013, the project's look was very bland and felt uninviting. After viewing how other project's stylised their project pages, it became clear that a "makeover" was required to add new life to the project and hopefully entice editors to join the project as active members. Navigation around the project's pages was not an easy task, and so simple navigation tabs were introduced to make getting from one project area to another much swifter for members. Also as part of the makeover, a new colour scheme for the project was adopted. The previously used pale blue, which felt cold, was changed to use a more warm, neutral scheme. An events countdown was added to the project's main page, to provide a reference for members of how many days until the next event is scheduled to take place. This also allows members to know of a time-scale for articles relating to each of the respective events, and assist them with managing time between contributing to articles and time to do whatever real-life things they wish to do - taking away the unwanted stress of feeling pressured to have as many articles created/updated in what they may feel are required urgently.
  • The project is always looking at new ways to improve itself in what it does, with periodic project discussions held to debate such matters as and when they are required.


Does the project run into an sourcing or notability issues for contestants, songs, or other articles about the Eurovision contest? Are there any particularly useful resources available for improving Eurovision articles?
  • Wesley Mouse: Sourcing is always a serious issue when it come to articles for WikiProject Eurovision, as it does for any articles within Wikipedia itself. Because the contests are an international event, many of the sources are not always published in English first, and this can cause confusion for those who rely on online translation tools to aid them with translating something into their native language. A page within the project was created to provide a list of useful websites that members may wish to use in order to help them resource what it is that they are contributing towards. If there are sources found that a member feels is dubious, then they tend to initiate in discussion with fellow members of the project in order to reach a decision on whether the source is deemed reliable or not. With the main Eurovision Contest been in existence since 1956, then there will always be new websites being created to dedicate to the contest. And we as members welcome the addition of such new websites, bearing in mind that we check for their reliability status before adding to the list of reliable sources to use.
  • The project also has what we've called "Skeleton Articles", which are basically a draft article showing the basics of how an article should look and to give example of what the style that an article should be aiming towards. Ever since the introduction of these 'Skeleton Articles' the group has been writing articles relating to a respective annual contest to a very high standard, with articles looking like 'Good Articles' before they have even been promoted to such article quality rating.


Does WikiProject Eurovision collaborate with any other projects? What can be done to improve collaboration between WikiProjects?
  • Wesley Mouse: Although there are other "sister" projects that are in relation to and/or connected with the Eurovision concept of music and television. It is very rare that the project has relied on joint-discussion with other such projects - unless of course it has been felt an extra set of eyes and ears are required. One such example was when the project enlisted the additional input from WikiProject Music on a inter-related matter. A lot of the collaborations are done unknowingly between any other projects; such as an article for Denmark in the Eurovision Song Contest which would also come under the scope of WikiProject Denmark; to name just one example. WP:ESC members would actively update the article. However it is unknown if members from connected projects also contribute towards articles. Such help like that would ease the burden and lighten the workload whilst keeping Wikipedia as up-to-date on articles as possible.
What are the most urgent needs of WikiProject Eurovision? How can a new contributor help today?
  • Wesley Mouse: There are several articles created within the project's 10-year history that require constant maintenance updating to improve their quality ratings. As was mentioned earlier in the interview, the contests themselves are an annual occurrence, and so new articles are created regularly. And this in turn results in maintenance work on articles being delayed even further. Therefore the more members the project has, the easier it becomes to keep on top of the everlasting maintenance of articles.

Until next week, check out our previous reports in the archive.

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2014-05-07

Wikipedia at the Rijksmuseum

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By Adam Cuerden and Pine


Johannes Vermeer's The Milkmaid, a new featured picture, is a major attraction at the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from April 27 through May 3. Anything in quotation marks is taken from the respective articles and lists; see their page histories for attribution.

Four featured articles were promoted this week.

The Eurasian nuthatch is a new featured article.
This Silverplate B-29 Superfortress dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Silverplate is now a featured article.
  • Eurasian Nuthatch (nominated by Jimfbleak) "The Eurasian nuthatch or wood nuthatch (Sitta europaea) is a small passerine bird found throughout temperate Asia and in Europe, where it is often referred to just as the nuthatch. Like other nuthatches, it is a short-tailed bird with a long bill, blue-grey upperparts and a black eye-stripe. It is a vocal bird with a repeated loud dwip call. There are more than 20 subspecies in three main groups; birds in the west of the range have orange-buff underparts and a white throat, those in Russia have whitish underparts, and those in the Far East have a similar appearance to European birds, but lack the white throat."
  • Silverplate (nominated by Reedmalloy and Hawkeye7) "Silverplate was the code reference for the United States Army Air Forces' participation in the Manhattan Project during World War II. Originally the name for the aircraft modification project for the B-29 Superfortress bomber to enable it to drop an atomic weapon, Silverplate eventually came to identify the training and operational aspects of the program as well. The original directive for the project had as its subject line "Silver Plated Project" but continued usage of the term shortened it to "Silverplate"."
  • Thomas F. Bayard (nominated by Coemgenus) "Thomas Francis Bayard (October 29, 1828 – September 28, 1898) was an American lawyer, politician, and diplomat from Wilmington, Delaware. A Democrat, he served three terms as United States Senator from Delaware and made three unsuccessful bids for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed him Secretary of State. After four years in private life, he returned to the diplomatic arena as Ambassador to the United Kingdom."
  • Enid Blyton (nominated by Dr. Blofeld and Eric Corbett) Enid Mary Blyton (1897–1968) "was an English children's writer whose books have been among the world's bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Blyton's books are still enormously popular, and have been translated into almost 90 languages; her first book, Child Whispers, a 24-page collection of poems, was published in 1922. She wrote on a wide range of topics including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery stories and biblical narratives, but is best remembered today for her Noddy, Famous Five, and Secret Seven series."
American writer Kij Johnson won a World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story for "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss"

Two featured lists were promoted this week.

  • List of international cricket five-wicket hauls by Fred Trueman (nominated by SGGH) "Fred Trueman was an English cricketer, an "aggressive" fast bowler widely known as "Fiery Fred". He is generally acknowledged to have been one of the greatest bowlers in cricket history. He represented England in 67 Test matches, and was the first bowler to take 300 wickets in a Test career, taking twelve years and 65 Tests to reach the landmark."
  • World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (nominated by PresN) "The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction published in English during the previous calendar year. The awards have been described as one of the three most prestigious speculative fiction awards, along with the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story is given each year for fantasy short stories published in English. A work of fiction is defined by the organization as a short story if it is 10,000 words or less in length; awards are also given out for longer pieces in the novel and novella categories. The World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story has been awarded annually since 1975, though before 1982—when the novella category was instated—the category was named "Best Short Fiction" and covered works of up to 40,000 words."

Five featured pictures were promoted this week.

A Polish Nobleman by Rembrandt van Rijn.
  • Burchell's zebra (created by Yathin S Krishnappa, nominated by Bellus Delphina) "Burchell's zebra (Equus quagga burchellii) is a southern subspecies of the plains zebra. It is named after the British explorer and naturalist William John Burchell."
  • A Polish Nobleman (created by Rembrandt, nominated by Editør) "A Polish Nobleman is a 1637 painting by Rembrandt depicting a man in a costume of either Polish szlachta or Russian boyar nobility. The identity of the subject of the painting is unclear, and has given rise to several different interpretations. The painting has changed owners several times, and its past owners have included Catherine II of Russia and Andrew Mellon. It is now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C."
  • Lagoon Nebula (created by ESO/VPHAS+ team, nominated by The Herald and ArionEstar) "The Lagoon Nebula (cataloged as Messier 8 or M8, and as NGC 6523) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as a H II region. The Lagoon Nebula was discovered by Giovanni Hodierna before 1654 and is one of only two star-forming nebulae faintly visible to the naked eye from mid-northern latitudes. Seen with binoculars, it appears as a distinct oval cloud-like patch with a definite core. A fragile star cluster appears superimposed on it." The picture had to go for three nominations (none with an oppose !vote) before reaching featured status.
  • Aqueduct of Segovia (created and nominated by Bernard Gagnon) "The Aqueduct of Segovia (or more precisely, the aqueduct bridge) is a Roman aqueduct and one of the most significant and best-preserved ancient monuments left on the Iberian Peninsula. It is located in Spain and is the foremost symbol of Segovia, as evidenced by its presence on the city's coat of arms."
  • The Milkmaid (created by Johannes Vermeer, nominated by Editør) "The Milkmaid (Dutch: De Melkmeid or Het Melkmeisje), sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, is an oil-on-canvas painting of a "milkmaid", in fact a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which regards it as "unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions"."
The Aqueduct of Segovia in Spain


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