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2 July 2014

 

2014-07-02

Wiki Education; medical content; PR firms

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By Chris Troutman, Andreas Kolbe, Andrew Lih, The ed17, Gamaliel, Pine, LtPowers, Antrocent and Kevin Rutherford

Wiki Education Foundation course: building ties to academia

Wiki Education Foundation logo

The Los Angeles Times highlighted a recent Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) course at Pomona College in their article "Wikipedia pops up in bibliographies, and even college curricula". We interviewed Char Booth, the campus ambassador for the course, for additional details.

The article discussed the changing attitudes among academia toward Wikipedia, characterizing academia's earlier sentiments of Wikipedia as "the bane of teachers ... amateurish, peppered with errors and too open to nasty online spats over content." The article cites Wikipedia's early anti-establishment user base for the initial rejection of degreed academics and quotes Kevin Gorman, himself a WEF Regional Ambassador and Wikipedian in Residence at University of California, Berkeley, speaking about the ongoing need to diversify beyond the "basically techno, libertarian, white dudes" so prevalent since the early years of Wikipedia.

The course, Poli3, came to Wikipedia through a working relationship between Booth, a WEF campus ambassador and librarian in the Claremont Colleges consortium (of which Pomona College is the founding member), with a fellow Claremont librarian, Sara Lowe. Booth, a self-described champion of "the pedagogical use of Wikipedia" needed an interested faculty member to host the program. Lowe introduced Booth to Professor Hollis-Brusky in the summer of 2011. After hours of conversations and many e-mails the course's first entrance to Wikipedia happened in the Spring of 2012 and has become an annual event since. The practice of sending students to create a new Wikipedia article or develop a stub for a grade rather than writing a traditional research paper is a cornerstone of the collaboration. The LA Times article quoted Professor Hollis-Brusky: "Even the best research papers get buried in a drawer somewhere... [t]hese make a real contribution to the public discourse."

The Times mentioned four of the articles assigned, namely First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, Federalist No. 70, FairVote, and Clean Diamond Trade Act. Because the class was comprised of 28 students, articles were assigned as group projects. Each student group developed their collective work in stages from outlines to drafts in order to refine the scope of the project and eliminate redundancy. Although each student had registered their own Wikipedia account, much of the editing was performed in sandboxes by single-purpose accounts both to protect student privacy and to reflect each student group's consensus product. Booth says that the end results were some very student-focused articles and that the effort "has been successful beyond my wildest expectations." Not only does she expect the annual Poli3 course to continue its association with Wikipedia but she also expects another political science class and perhaps three others in the near future.

The LA Times posits, again quoting Kevin Gorman, that Wikipedia "has essentially become too large to ignore." The Times mentions recent initiatives from both the American Sociological Association and the Association for Psychological Science to bring academic editing into Wikipedia to ensure the reliability of what the general public reads. It also mentions the recent series of edit-a-thons in the LA-metro area organized by East of Borneo, a Cal-Arts sponsored online magazine, as proof that industry professionals are increasingly reaching out to contribute in a cooperative manner. The article further mentions that the Wiki Education Foundation coordinated with more than 150 different courses across the US and Canada in the Spring Semester of 2014, including classes at Carnegie Mellon University, University of California, San Francisco, and Boston College.

When asked about her role as a campus ambassador while also employed as a librarian, Booth replied that it's a "really natural relationship." She sees her role as a librarian as a function of developing student information literacy skills as well as bringing them to resources. She says that Wikipedia is a public resource and everyone who enjoys what she calls "information privilege" should consider their responsibilities toward informing that resource. Though she does not consider herself a Wikipedia editor she identifies as an "educator who uses Wikipedia" seeking to improve the public knowledge base.

Ongoing media debates about Wikipedia's medical content

The relationship between the United States Food and Drug Administration and Wikipedia's mission has been the topic of a number of recent news articles looking at both the reliability of Wikipedia's medical content and the role the FDA and pharmaceutical companies should play in improving it

A study published in the June 26, 2014 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that Wikipedia articles often fail to reflect the latest FDA guidance. As reported by CBS News, the study's authors:


The authors suggested that the FDA should take a more active role in Wikipedia curation, stating that "our findings also suggest that there may be a benefit to enabling the FDA to update or automatically feed new safety communications to Wikipedia pages, as it does with WebMD." The study attracted coverage from CNN, US News & World Report and more specialist publications such as Medical Marketing & Media.

On a closely related matter, The Wall Street Journal (June 17, 2014), The National Law Review (June 23, 2014) and others covered the recent publication of the FDA's draft social media guidance for companies producing prescription drugs and medical devices. The draft guidance suggests that companies should feel free to correct misinformation in sites such as Wikipedia themselves, or alternatively could contact an article's author to advise them of any errors. Comments on the FDA's draft guidance are invited before the finalized version will be released.

Also on June 23, the online news blog of the Cochrane Collaboration published a piece written by members of WikiProject Medicine, titled "Is Wikipedia’s medical content really 90% wrong?". The piece critiques a study published in May 2014 by The Journal of the American Osteopathy Association, which concluded that nine out of ten Wikipedia articles on the costliest medical conditions had factual errors, leading to numerous news headlines such as "9 out of 10 health entries on Wikipedia are inaccurate" (see previous Signpost coverage). Health IT Outcomes published a brief report on the same topic (June 30, 2014).

PR firms pledge not to game Wikipedia

TIME (10 June 2014) and many other major news outlets reported that a number of major PR companies, including Ogilvy & Mather, Edelman and Porter Novelli, had published a statement indicating their commitment to respect Wikipedia's guidelines, policies and terms of use (see Signpost coverage).


The statement can be viewed on Wikipedia.

In brief

  • Junior civil servant sacked for offensive Wikipedia edits: A civil servant in the UK was removed from his job after they made "offensive" Wikipedia edits. The incident received wide coverage in the country, such as the Telegraph (who broke the story), the BBC, and the Guardian, among others. Efforts to find other staffers involved have been to no avail. (Andrew Lih, The ed17)
Meet Carl Linnaeus, the man who researchers believe was the most influential figure on Wikipedia


  • Adrianne: Adrianne Wadewitz (1977 – 2014) "was an American feminist scholar of 18th-century British literature, and a noted Wikipedian and commenter upon Wikipedia, particularly focusing on gender issues." On the Wikimedia projects, Adrianne was known as User:Wadewitz; she perished last April while rock climbing. On 18 May, PBS NewsHour posthumously broadcast a news story that covered Wikipedia's gender gap. The story includes footage with Wadewitz. See the full clip on YouTube.
  • Singapore MP calls for legal action over Wikipedia vandalism: The Straits Times of Singapore reported (June 13, 2014) that Baey Yam Keng, an MP representing the Tampines Group Representation Constituency in the Parliament of Singapore, has called for legal action by his People's Action Party following "vicious" vandalism of the Party's Wikipedia article. Starting on June 11, two new accounts as well as an IP address from Singapore vandalized the article to insert a rant against the PAP, renaming it the "Party Against People". Another new account inserted a pro-PAP message in response, presumably the party's own efforts to edit the article mentioned by The Straits Times. The article was semi-protected on June 13. A lawyer quoted by the newspaper doubted that Singapore's Vandalism Act applied to Wikipedia edits. (Gamaliel)
The photo used to illustrate Wikipedia's article on grinding
  • Grinding article attracts press attention: Wikipedia's article on the dance grinding has gotten an unusual amount of attention lately because of its lead picture, which features a woman grinding on a man in a funny hat who bears a striking resemblance to the film character McLovin. The picture was posted to Flickr by photographer Jason Rollison in 2008 with the description "hands down the greatest picture I've ever taken". The picture was found there in 2012 by Guerillero, who uploaded it to the Wikimedia Commons and added it to the Wikipedia article on grinding. In January of this year, traffic to the grinding article spiked to nearly 10,000 page views a day after the photo appeared as number 21 on the Buzzfeed list "36 White People Who Need To Be Stopped", where the couple in the photo were described as "The goofy hat-wearing people pictured in the Wikipedia page for 'Grinding'". Traffic to the article increased again in June when the photo was again featured on Buzzfeed on 13 June, this time in an article called "The Definitive Oral History Of The Wikipedia Photo For 'Grinding'". The mock oral history by Katie Notopoulos quotes Rollison, Guerillero, and the compilers of the "36 White People" list in an examination of "a truly an important piece of Internet History worthy of deep scrutiny." (Gamaliel)
  • Yank Barry sues Wikipedia editors for defamation: News outlets are reporting that Canadian businessman Yank Barry has filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against four Wikipedia editors, including User:Richfife, User:NatGertler, and User:Nagle, on 11 June in the Ventura County Superior Court. These editors previously reported on Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents that they received letters from Los Angeles attorney Philip D. Dapeer which they characterized as "legal threats". Editing on the Yank Barry article has long been contentious, featuring editing conflicts with numerous new accounts that some editors charge were SPAs associated with Barry and charges that the article unduly focuses on negative aspects of Barry's business dealings. (Gamaliel)
The National Archives logo
  • US National Archives announce collaboration with Wikimedia Commons: As reported in TechCrunch (and first reported by the Signpost), the National Archives and Records Administration recently announced that it would soon begin to automatically upload all images that are being digitized onto Wikimedia Commons. An effort was made in 2010 to upload images in this manner, although it was hampered by the lack of an efficient way to mass-upload images. According to Wikipedian in Residence Dominic McDevitt-Parks, they are working on a Python script which will help to do this more efficiently. (Kevin Rutherford)
  • An ethnography of Wikipedia: Forbes featured a review by George Anders (30 June, 2014) of Dariusz Jemielniak's recently published book Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia.


A piece by Dariusz Jemielniak himself, "Wikipedians wallow in creating norms", appeared on South Africa's Independent Online news website (June 28, 2014). Another book that discusses Wikipedia and internet culture in general, Virtual Unreality by Charles Seife, was reviewed in The New York Times on 1 July. (Andreas Kolbe)

2014-07-02

The Cup runneth over... and over.

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By Serendipodous

With Game of Thrones over for another year, the World Cup dominated yet again. And that is pretty much that. This list isn't likely to be particularly eventful until the Cup is won.

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

As prepared by Serendipodous, for the week of 15–21 June, 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 2014 FIFA World Cup C-class 2,526,115
With former winners England, Spain, Italy and Uruguay now out, and old stalwart Mexico denied a place in the quarter finals thanks to a Dutch goal at the literal last minute, this World Cup has been nothing if not surprising. And with Costa Rica coming out of nowhere to the shock and awe of everyone, the surprises are sure to keep coming.
2 FIFA World Cup Featured Article 935,760 The broader article on the history of the competition may have been accessed by people looking for the long view, but in truth it was probably more to do with people looking for the more specific article above.
3 Transformers: Age of Extinction Start-Class 770,945
Usually, when a big-shot director is tired of a franchise, the studio will offer him a juicy pay packet to stay on; Paramount gave Michael Bay an entire movie so he would agree to continue to prop up their tent-pole series, which is all the more vital since Marvel and Indiana Jones are now at Disney. The movie's 17% RT rating (even lower than for the much-reviled entry, Revenge of the Fallen) shows just how much commitment Bay brought to the project; that said, its $300 million worldwide opening (of which $100 million was from the US and $90 million, thanks to some shameless in-movie pandering, was from China) shows audiences don't really care.
4 Cristiano Ronaldo B-class 504,713
2013's Golden Ball winner is a prime contender for the "best player on the planet" title. His popularity is such that he is on this list despite the fact that Portugal were kicked out at the first round after losing 4–0 to Germany.
5 Amazon.com B-Class 466,100
This article suddenly reappeared in the top 25 a few months ago after a long absence; it's always difficult to determine the reasons for the popularity of website articles (how many are simply misaimed clicks on the Google search list?) but there are at least two possibilities: first, it released its digital media player, Amazon Fire TV on April 2, and second, it is currently embroiled in a dispute with publisher Hachette that could decide whether book publishers even need to exist in the post-digital world.
6 Neymar C-Class 453,305
The 22-year-old wunderkind has scored four goals in the four matches Brazil have played this tournament, including one of the penalties that moves them past Chile to the quarter final.
7 Luis Suárez Good Article 449,362
The Liverpool forward had already earned the nickname "the vampire" for his peculiar habit of biting people during matches, but his latest bout of bloodthirst (against Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini) has proven particularly controversial, as the match ban he received for it was arguably responsible for Uruguay's exit from the World Cup.
8 2010 FIFA World Cup B-Class 427,400
The current World Cup has buoyed interest in the last one, with people doubtless looking for parallels, clues for upcoming matches, or omens.
9 Lionel Messi Good Article 425,487
The Argentine forward and captain of the national team is another contender for the title of "best footballer on the planet". FIFA certainly thinks so; he won the Golden Ball award three years in a row. He scored a goal in each of the games Argentina played in the group stage, making him a key element in the team's qualification for the knockout stage.
10 Marfan syndrome B-class 411,191
The genetic disorder thought by some to have afflicted figures as diverse as Abraham Lincoln and the Pharaoh Akhenaten got into the news this week when Isaiah Austin, a former basketball player for the Baylor Bears, received an honorary NBA draft pick after being forced to end his career due to a diagnosis.


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2014-07-02

Wikimedia Israel receives Roaring Lion award

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By The ed17
They received the award here, in the Cameri Theater

Wikimedia Israel (WMIL) has won a Roaring Lion in the category of Internet and cellular for its public outreach during the tenth anniversary of the Hebrew Wikipedia in July 2013. The awards are given out annually by the Israel Public Relations Association and are modeled on the International Public Relations Association's Golden World Award.

Itzik Edri, the chairman of the board of the chapter, told us that they nominated themselves for the award after the smashing success of their planned celebrations, which included coverage in television, radio, Internet, and traditional print. About half of the coverage was pre-planned, with WMIL working with press organizations to provide accurate history and statistics: "To show the power of Wikipedia we collected a lot of numbers, such the most viewed articles of the last five years, numbers of edits, words and many others, [leading] to many items covering the history of [the Hebrew Wikipedia]", Edri said. Still, they wanted to go further.

To do so, they enlisted the help of Gideon Amichay, an Israeli advertising executive and professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Amichay went to Channel 2, one of Israel's most-watched channels, and proposed a partnership between the two. Channel 2 jumped on the opportunity, something that was unsurprising to Edri, who noted that it was a "collaborative project between the major channel news and the major knowledge website" which presented Channel 2 "as leaders—their senior staff were writing articles on Wikipedia and giving back to this huge project."

Amichay's idea manifested itself in five of Channel 2's senior reporters writing a Wikipedia article, after being trained to do so by Wikimedia Israel. The resulting five video segments, about a minute each, were broadcast over the span of a week. They received enough attention that they were shown again during the following week.

On 2 July, nearly a year after their efforts, representatives of WMIL traveled to the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv to receive their Roaring Lion. The award, which was first awarded in 2004, is given out for at least twelve categories and carries weight in the country; the Israel Public Relations Association, the organization behind the Lions, has 4000 members that represent a large majority of the PR professionals in business, the public service, and the voluntary sector. Previous winners have included the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2011, the Israeli government's Ministry of Tourism in 2012, Hassadah in 2013, and Israeli President Simon Peres' PR team in the same year.

In brief

  • Foundation news
    • FDC shortlist: The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has published a shortlist of twelve candidates for the open Funds Dissemination Committee positions; four will be selected by the WMF's Board of Trustees. In its primary role, the FDC recommends funding amounts for the Wikimedia movement's largest affiliates. They have also provided feedback on the WMF's budget, though this has not come without controversy.
    • WMF May report: The monthly report of the Wikimedia Foundation has been published.
    • Android app: The WMF has released a new smartphone app for Android devices. Coded by the WMF's mobile team, it allows users to save pages for offline reading, editing, and buttons to share articles on social media.
  • Aaron Swartz: A documentary on the life of Aaron Swartz, the Wikimedian and Internet activist who perished in January 2013, was released this week.
  • Quarterly update: The quarterly update comprising all changes to the English Wikipedia's content policies has been published at Wikipedia:Update. Volunteers to restart updates of deletion and enforcement policies are requested.
  • Genealogy project: A proposal for a Wikimedia genealogy project has been posted on Meta.
  • French community liaison: Wikimedia Switzerland has posted a job advertisement for a French- and English-speaking community liaison. The position will act as a go-between for French-speaking Swiss citizens and Wikimedia entities. The deadline is 15 July.
  • Dispenser's tools: Should the WMF give 24 terabytes of storage space—equivalent to ten billion single-spaced pages—to a volunteer to run their automated scripts and tools on Wikimedia Labs? The WMF is facing that question after the final closure of the Toolserver, which had been run by Wikimedia Germany since 2005, and the accompanying loss of the widely used reflinks tool, which automatically converted bare URL references into regular formatted references. While most of the scripts on the Toolserver were ported over to Wikimedia Labs, Dispenser's were not, as they were not released under an open source license, and he wants 24 terabytes of space devoted to his tools. The WMF's Marc Pelletier wrote that 24 terabytes is a "significant chunk of the space available to Labs", as their "disk space is somewhat constrained and expensive to increase because it lives on a highly redundant array of commercial-grade disks and not on consumer devices." Dispenser needs the space so he can store copies of all external links linked from Wikipedia, although the amount of space he wants works out to about a megabyte per link. Discussion at the English Wikipedia's village pump and the Signpost's own suggestions page is continuing.

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2014-07-02

Ship-shape

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By The Herald and Adam Cuerden
England and America. The visit of her majesty Queen Victoria to the Arctic ship Resolute - December 16, 1856 is an artwork by William Simpson and George Zobel. This act of diplomacy had long-lasting results: besides improving relations, upon the ship finally being put out of service, a desk was made from its wood and presented to the United States President. This Resolute desk has been a mainstay of the White House furniture for most presidents ever since.
This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from 22 June 2014 through 27 June 2014.

Six featured articles were promoted this week.

Banksia coccinea
The Blind Leading the Blind. Unfortunately, this excellent article only has a low-resolution image of the painting in question.

Five featured lists were promoted this week.

A gorgeous featured picture of a Common Kingfisher by Andreas Trepte
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis's illustration The Fairy Tale of Kings.

Seventeen featured pictures were promoted this week.

The Chickahominy- Sumner's Upper Bridge: 1862 watercolour by William McIlvaine.
The death of the Aral Sea: Left, 1989; Right, 2008.
One of John Bauer's famous illustrations of folk tales for Among Gnomes and Trolls.
SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, one ship in the new featured topic by Parsecboy.

One featured topic was promoted this week.

  • Battleships of Germany (automatic promotion from good topic; originally nominated in August 2011 by Parsecboy) You know, it gets hard, weeks on end, to keep praising Parsecboy for his incredible work on ship articles. Nonetheless, this is an amazing achievement: There are sixty-two articles in this topic, covering every single German battleship, and the classes they're divided into. Over half of the sixty-two articles are featured (the rest being good articles)—and this isn't even the only topic that Parsecboy is working on. Alongside Sturmvogel 66, he's probably Wikipedia's most prolific naval expert.
  • The Ayasofya Mosque in 1852, before it was partially converted back into the Hagia Sofia.
    The Ayasofya Mosque in 1852, before it was partially converted back into the Hagia Sofia.
  • A geisha in her "natural habitat".
    A geisha in her "natural habitat".


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2014-07-02

Indigenous Peoples of North America

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By Mabeenot

This week, we visited WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America. Started in February 2006, the project has grown to include over 8,000 articles, including 15 Featured Articles and over 60 Good Articles. We interviewed Montanabw, CJLippert, RadioKAOS, Maunus, and Djembayz.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America? Are you related to any of the continent's native inhabitants?
Montanabw: I live in Montana which is home to seven reservations, and I also have some educational background in this area. I don't have a drop of Native ancestry, but I am cognizant of some of the issues facing Native People today.
CJLippert: I live in Minnesota, which is a cross-road of where the Indian Removal Policy ended and Reservation Policy began, and where the old and small Reserve system and the new and large Reservation system intersects. I work for a Native American tribal government, though not Native but also not "White", I have the privilege of participating as the 3rd party between the two. But this also means I get to see both the strengths and weaknesses of both in the relations between the Native Americans and the majority population. As that 3rd party, trying to help to close some gaps in understanding is what led me to participate in Wikipedia, and then to join the WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America (WP:IPNA).
RadioKAOS: I live in the vicinity of Fairbanks, Alaska. Fairbanks is an intersecting point for a variety of distinct groups of Alaska Natives due to its status as the state's second-largest community, a commercial center for a vast trading area and the home of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the historic center of higher education in Alaska. I am white, but have a young daughter who is Gwich'in on her mother's side. I have near-daily contact with a great many Natives who live not only in Fairbanks, but surrounding villages, primarily Athabaskan and Inupiat people.
Maunus: I am a linguist and anthropologist specializing in the indigenous peoples and languages in Mexico. I am related to American native people through my wife and children. Not that it matters.
Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured or Good Articles? What unique challenges does the project face when promoting articles to FA or GA status?
Montanabw: I have contributed a minimal bit to Ex parte Crow Dog, and some other articles on legal cases; legal articles appear to be a significant number of the GA and FA-class articles in this project. The number one problem facing this project is that on articles related to culture a lot of material that would fit the normal criteria of WP:V and WP:RS is flat out wrong, often failing to understand the actual culture of the people that are discussed, and loaded with systemic bias. A lot of material that IS accurate exists either in hardcopy books of limited distribution, or in forms unacceptable to Wikipedia, such as chat forums and blogs.
CJLippert: I have contributed to several FA and GA articles. The main challenge has been to support the primary contributor's excellent presentation, but finding time-relevant sources, as too many WP:IPNA-related sources are either buried in academic journals or are horribly out-dated by a century!
RadioKAOS: I am more interested in what is called WikiGnome-type work than in seeing that articles become GAs or FAs. Most of what I've tried to contribute to the project is in filling in gaps in coverage and seeing that relevant articles are tagged for the project.
Maunus: I have contributed to two FAs about indigenous languages, one about the Natchez revolt, and to some GAs related to indigenous history and language. The main challenges I have had is that some sources are hard to come by even with access to university libraries, and that some reviewers consider that if a topic has few sources, old sources, or sources of low quality, written about it that topic doesnt deserve to be an FA regardless of the quality of the article.
Are some tribes or nations better covered than others by Wikipedia? How does coverage of the First Nations of Canada compare to Native Americans in the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere? What can be done to improve coverage of all indigenous peoples of North America?
Montanabw: I think that while there are probably more articles in sheer numbers about Native People in the United States, the First Nations articles may be of overall more consistent quality. Articles on the people whose tribal groups became well-known due to the Indian Wars of the post-Civil War area tend to be better-covered, possibly because they have interest to the Military History WikiProject. Coverage of Native People of Mexico is quite poor, and those of Central America even worse.
CJLippert: Definitely some tribes or nations are better covered than others on Wikipedia. Part of this is due to the availability of free reference contents on the internet, though many of those are about a century out-of-date, but it often serves as a starting point. Additionally, in both US and Canada, larger tribal groups are well covered, but smaller tribal groups are not. Additionally, due to many more US contributors, US tribal groups are far better represented than the Canadian First Nation groups. Additionally, due to references available for English-speaking communities generally focus in tribal groups in the US and Canada, other indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially North America (the focus of WP:IPNA), are missed, leaving us with substantially less information for tribal groups in Mexico and rest of Central America. WP:IPNA members have been slowly working on improving coverage in Canada. However, for Canadian First Nations related articles, repeatedly the Tribal Group, Tribal Government, Tribal Reserve, Tribal Community, and Tribal Organisation information are not clearly distinguished, causing some articles to muddle them all into a single article, and even in those articles, the distinctions are not made, giving a false impression of the group, government, reserve, community and organisation to be one and the same. It will take more editors to systematically go through First Nation articles to clean them up. As for Mexico and Central American tribal groups, what may help facilitate better coverage would be to have a dedicated Spanish to English translation, even if initially bot-populated. Then, there are non-Status tribal groups or communities in Canada and the State-recognized and non-recognized tribal groups in the US, where some are legitimate tribal groups for whatever reason do not have Federal-recognition, but these become more difficult as there are also many groups that claim as being a tribal group but without anything to substantiate their claim, and even some of them have made enough noise that among the Native American community, would be considered notable though not truly tribal.
Maunus: I am one of the only people doing dedicated work on Mexican indigenous groups, but I have been focusing on languages and I agree that Mexican indigenous people require much improved coverage compared to their Northern neighbors. I dont think however that translating from Spanish would be a good idea, there are some articles in the Spanish wiki with very high quality, mainly because of the work of one editor, but a lot of other articles about indigenous people are of very poor quality with either romanticizing or discriminatory undertones. They also tend to use very low quality sources.
Do you specialize in any particular aspects of native history and culture? Are there any resources that are hard to access but would be especially beneficial to your endeavors?
Montanabw: I have the best ability to work on articles related to the people of the Great Plains and Pacific Northwest Cultures, in part due to access to resources that are local to me or nearly so. I wish material from the Library of Congress was easier to access online, as there exist some decent resources there.
CJLippert: I focus primarily on Anishinaabe communities, but due to their spread and interaction, I often also contribute to articles that cover Cree and to other articles relating to Algonquian peoples. Geographically, this mean I'm focused mainly in the Great Lakes region and southern Manitoba, but do venture outward to the Canadian Great Plains, western Quebec, Kansas and Oklahoma.
RadioKAOS: As far as this project's content is concerned, I focus on Alaska Natives almost exclusively. Because a large part of what constitutes sourcing on Wikipedia is web-based and/or corporate media-based, coverage is hamstrung by the lack of any media outlets in scores of small, rural communities throughout Alaska. Look at the "coverage" of many of these communities and you'll see that the articles are little more than a dumping ground for Census Bureau and other US-PD data, and/or are hijacked by the agendas of other WikiProjects, and provide little or no insight as to what life there is like. To give an example, you can see that WP:AIRPORTS has been busy the past few years creating articles on rural airports in Alaska. First off, by maintaining them as separate articles, it belies the fact that in the case of communities unconnected to the contiguous highway system, the airport is a crucial part of the community's fabric. Second, by inserting the same language in these articles as with urban airports, you see cluelessness such as "located one nautical mile (1.85 km) southwest of the central business district of (community name)", when in fact a great many of these communities don't have a central business district. In some cases, there are communities which don't even have businesses, aside from a "store" operated out of a room of someone's house, or business activities which are illegal in nature (read: bootlegging) and therefore are not going to attract mainstream attention aside from what is filtered through law enforcement agencies. Most attempts to provide factual insights of rural Alaska wind up deleted due to lack of reliable sources. There does exist a vast body of reliably-sourced material pertaining to general, legal and political issues surrounding Alaska Natives, but much of this exists in books and journals. The hangup of "no URL = no verifiability" that many Wikipedians have, not to mention the extra time it may take to find and cite an offline source versus one on the web, has stood in the way of properly covering the subject.
Maunus: I specialize in linguistics and ethnohistory topics. Even though I am an anthropologist I am not very much into writing the ethnographic side because it is very complicated to write about peoples in a way that does not stereotype or judge. Especially when many of the sources are written in periods where as creating stereotypes was almost the aim of anthropology. Today anthropology focuses much more on indigenous rights and on how public cultural representations of indigenous peoples perpetuate political inequalities. That is something that I have contributed a little about, but as I say I am more interested in ethnohistory and language which is easier to write about in many cases. There is also some tensions among the editors regarding the relative value of academic sources relative to indigenous oral accounts or the use of internet sources published by different indigenous groups. I tend to stand on the side of not compromising with our sourcing policy, because it is usually the case that there are reliably published sources that represent indigenous viewpoints that can be used without having to recur to hearsay, personal experience or low quality sources. I think we must accept that for some topics we have a choice about either waiting to write about the topic untill better research is published or to find a way to write about it using dated research, for example by making sure that data collected in 1890 by a European explorer is not presented as if it represents facts about whatever culture he reported about, but rather to make sure that the text attributes the text to the specific conditions of its collection.
Djembayz: I add resources for people interested in learning Native American languages, and expand biographies and stubs.
How difficult has it been to find images and audio to illustrate articles about indigenous peoples of North America? What can be done to collect multimedia materials from museums, reservations, and families for use on Wikipedia?
Montanabw: Get the various state historical societies to digitize their photo collections and release them under a free license. Also encourage the tribes themselves to make resources available in the same manner; many have tribal colleges or other centers of education that might be interested in such a project.
CJLippert: It has been very difficult to find appropriate media. However, due to past media collections by ethnographers, use of Federal and State media can pose intellectual property problems with Tribes. A better input (contribution) on what the Tribes what represented, from the past to the contemporary, would be helpful to ensure Self-determination while education the general public through Wikipedia.
Djembayz: More GLAM projects with cultural institutions and tribal organizations for images.
Does the project collaborate with any WikiProjects covering other ethnic groups or geographic regions? What can be done to encourage more cooperation along these lines?
Montanabw: A little bit of cross-pollination occurs with the state wikiproject, WikiProject Old West and some of the military history folks, though minimal actual collaboration, probably due to lack of numbers.
CJLippert: There has been collaborations, with many projects, but none have been strong. Probably it is due to lack of knowledgeable and encouraging editors.
Maunus: When Wikiproject Mesoamerica was active there was quite a bit of collaboration regarding Mexican indigenous topics, but that project is almost defunct now. There is also some collaboration with editors from WP:Languages, although sometimes that have led to minor conflicts due to different norms for nomenclature and perspectives on what is the most important aspects of describing indigenous groups.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?
Montanabw: Eliminating systemic bias in existing articles and providing better sources and references. My first concern is use of language and phrasing that treats Native People like they are merely interesting historic figures instead of a living, modern people with current issues and current leaders. My second concern is uninformed and at times inadvertently insulting use of terminology in articles. For example, not all Native leaders are called "chief," yet many biographies so labeled certain people this way even though it was not an appropriate title for that person.
CJLippert: Funny that you ask this. Recently at the Native American Literature Symposium, this very issue was brought up to the forefront. The project's most urgent needs are to have articles that are relevant and accurate without bogging down the reader. This becomes a challenge when readily available sources are over a century out-of-date, have extinctionist language, have relevant information buried in not readily available journal articles, have verification process biased towards the dominant society's opinions to the detriment of tribal groups, etc. Then there are tribally-appropriate focus on an article topic that is not considered appropriate focus by the general public, such as in the case of Maple syrup, where from a tribal perspective tree sugar from maples, regardless of form, is considered appropriate but the non-tribal editors focus was exclusively on the syrup form of the sugar, gutting out the historical relevance of this sugar product.
Maunus: Better sourcing and references all over. And better use of low quality sources by writing in a way that shows the reader where the information comes from and how its provenance may impinge on its interpretation.
Djembayz: We need help updating articles with breaking news from sources like Indian Country Today Media Network, Indianz.com, and the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity newsfeeds.
  • Adding the languages of southern Mexico to the articles about the towns where they are spoken. This information is available in Ethnologue.
  • Add illustrations from Costumes of the Plains Indians, and other public domain sources.
  • Take photos for biographical articles.
  • As in all WikiProjects, pitching in with infoboxes and article assessment improves quality, and frees up the subject specialists for the more complex articles.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Montanabw: Respect for a living culture and living people is not "political correctness," and it is frustrating to run across that attitude.
CJLippert: I agree with Montanabw. And this becomes even more frustrating when search engines such as Google or Bing heavily relies on Wikipedia, for quick information access, thus even more quickly present that unwanted attitude.

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2014-07-02

In memoriam: the Toolserver (2005–14)

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By Jarry1250
A presentation describing the Toolserver given in 2009 by developer Daniel Kinzler

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Wikimedia Germany's Toolserver project was switched off, marking the end of one of the Wikimedia movement's longest running Chapter-led projects. The Toolserver, which was in fact a collection of servers, first came online in 2005, hosting hundreds of webpages and scripts ("tools") made available for use by Wikimedia readers, editors and administrators.

The Toolserver is survived by its spiritual successor Wikimedia Tool Labs, part of the broader "Labs" project begun by the Wikimedia Foundation as far back as 2011 (see previous Signpost coverage). Tool Labs already holds some 800 tools, many of them migrated from the Toolserver and diverse in their nature. Particularly popular tools, many of them familiar to regular editors, include the Wikidata Game, CatScan (for finding articles in multiple categories) and GeoHack, a tool for placing article subjects onto maps. A full index is also available.

In contrast to the Toolserver, which operated a more relaxed policy, all tools hosted on Tool Labs must be open-source, allowing for a more obviously collaborative development environment. In exchange for access to the Wikimedia Foundation’s technical infrastructure, tools must be open-licensed, allowing them to be redistributed and remixed in a similar way to on-wiki contributions.

The Tools project is, however, just one part of Wikimedia Labs, which also incorporates a broad array of more than 150 other standalone software "projects" (collections of one or more virtual machines). The growing need for these other projects, which include test versions of Wikipedia and its sister projects, provided one motivation for a changeover which at times has been far from uncontroversial (see previous Signpost coverage).

Over recent weeks, the Toolserver continued to receive millions of hits per day and users are advised to keep an eye out for broken links and missing functionality as developers adjust to the new environment. In some cases, tools may need new owners to migrate and/or adopt them over the longer term. A page on MediaWiki.org records notable absences, and a table has been created to show replacements.

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks. "In brief" incorporates text from Tech news, a global community-led publication prepared by tech ambassadors (subscribe or unsubscribe).

  • MediaWiki updated: The latest version of MediaWiki (1.24wmf11) was added to test wikis and MediaWiki.org on 26 June and non-Wikipedia wikis on 1 July, and will be deployed to all Wikipedias on 3 July (calendar). Users are unlikely to notice any significant changes.
  • New search engine to complete its rollout: New search backend CirrusSearch was enabled on June 30 as the primary search method on 34 new wikis, including the Czech (cs), Danish (da), Finnish (fi) and Hebrew (he) Wikipedias. The team behind it is now targeting the remaining 11 wikis in order of increasing size, with the English (en) Wikipedia the last to receive the update on August 27 (wikitech-l mailing list). Although focused on sustainability, the change also tweaks and extends the availability of features including wikitext and regular expression-based searching.
  • Perfect forward secrecy enabled: As of 1 July, all Wikimedia wikis have perfect forward secrecy enabled (see also bug #53259). The protocol strengthens the integrity of encrypted communications in the context of later exploits and has assumed particular significance in the wake of the Heartbleed bug and NSA spying revelations.
  • Global renames coming: Starting on 9 July, it will be possible to globally rename global (SUL-enabled) users (wikitech-l mailing list). The feature is regarded as an important step before SUL finalisation can be implemented, since it prevents unified users from later fragmenting their accounts (a point noted as early as February 2012: see previous Signpost coverage). The project to achieve finalisation has been underway since April 2013 but had been stalled.
  • User is blocked notice extended: Users will soon see block information when they visit the contributions page or try to edit the user page or user talk page of a user who is affected by an IP range block (bug #20790).

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