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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2012-01-30. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Five open cases, voting on proposed decisions in two cases (0 bytes · 💬)

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-01-30/Arbitration report

Featured content: Featured content soaring this week (3,805 bytes · 💬)

  • Personal preference - I don't like the panorama picture view. It seems to distort the image in an unpleasant way. MathewTownsend (talk) 01:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
  • What stood out to me in the list of new featured articles were the nationality descriptors: American, American, Canadian, Australian, Irish, American, American, British. There were certainly some great topics among them, but they were conspicuously confined to the Anglosphere. —tktktk 04:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
    • en.WP is biassed towards the anglosphere. It could hardly be otherwise. The other WPs are similar, I think, although a brief survey would reveal more. Mathew, I asked for the "widescreen" view at the bottom to be reverted if anyone didn't like it. I guess this was fairly late in the process. Tony (talk) 13:26, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
      • That is a personal preference and may not be shared by others. MathewTownsend (talk) 15:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
      • It oughtn't be. Whereas with languages such as Finnish or Thai you can safely assume the reader will be Finnish or Thai or at least widely familiar with Finnish or Thai culture, you can make no such assumption with English or Spanish. 31.6% of readers of en.wiki come from places other than North America, the British Isles, or the Antipodes. ― A. di M.​  11:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Tktktk, as you say, the topics are various:
  1. rhythm and blue pop song, Grammy Award winner (by African American Beyoncé Knowles)
  2. first female governor of the American state of Kentucky
  3. Canadian doctor and researcher
  4. Australian naval officer, who went down with his ship
  5. Irish composer, teacher and conductor, one of the founders of the Royal College of Music
  6. 1852 novella by American Stephen Crane
  7. sociologist, first African American doctorate from Harvard, peace and civil rights activist
  8. 18th century British warship
  • You could say two women and six men (including Crane) were covered, or you could say two articles were on military topics and five were biographies, or that there were two African Americans covered vs six non African Americans, etc. Seems to me that nationality is only one variable in looking at diversity. MathewTownsend (talk) 15:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Thank-you for parity in nationality descriptors. It is appreciated. Now if it could be equally applied to the rest of the project, which still sees the US as the default setting... 86.134.50.51 (talk) 15:56, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
    • A di M and Mathew Townsend: it was an observation, not an opinion. Tony (talk) 13:37, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

In the news: Zambian wiki-assassins, Foundation über alles, editor engagement and the innovation plateau (6,464 bytes · 💬)

I was very surprised at Fabrice Florin's statement "The vision is that over time, news reporters would get in the habit of posting updates on Wikipedia, after they have filed their story and shared it on social networks. It seems like a worthy goal and I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether this is a realistic scenario—and if so, how we might help make that happen." I consider this advice extremely dangerous, and I wish there would have been an area (i.e. not obscure comments) where I could have made it clear how ill-advised it is, in my view. Making updates on Wikipedia related to stories one has written runs a severe risk of being taken to task over charges of CONFLICT OF INTEREST!!! and SELF-PROMOTION!!!, and I would strongly recommend any journalist to avoid it except in extreme circumstances. I've gotten grief at times even for making talk-page suggestions (granted, usually for contentious topics, but the point remains - the aggravation is rarely worth it, or at least is a significant cost). It is not a realistic scenario at all, except in the sense that the negatives will be hidden to get free work before it blows up in the reporter's face. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 07:07, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Not to mention Wikipedia is not a news source. -- Bk314159 (Talk to me and find out what I've done) 02:59, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
Good page this week! Tony (talk) 10:57, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

What exactly is a "hericidal Zambian cyberassassin"? Neither Wiktionary nor Google recognizes "hericidal" as an English word. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:14, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Hericide: "The murder of a lord or master." — http://wordinfo.info ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
A word that has arisen from/with a bio-chemical legacy.... Wifione Message 15:00, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm bemused that the Zambian government sought help from the US government in identifying the perpertrator of these misleading edits (the person made two), when a few mouse clicks shows that they came from Newcastle-upon-Twyne in the UK. (And a former boss told me last year that I'm not sufficiently computer literate.) -- llywrch (talk) 16:28, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  • When a major case of vandalism is reported in the Signpost, it should be standard practice to also document Wikipedia's response. Vandalism that is quickly reverted is less serious than vandalism that takes a long time to catch, and vandalism that results in an edit war followed by semi-protection is somewhere between the two. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:39, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree. I also think the article should have been more serious and sympathetic. True, the vandalism wasn't the end of the world, and they may have overreacted, but we should be able to understand why he was upset. Our response certainly could have been faster. The initial vandalism lasted 8 hours. Once it was removed, an editor (using an automated tool) actually reverted the change as vandalism, putting back the unsourced claim he had died. The claim was put in again, and it took a relatively long time to finally get the article semi-protected. Far from demonstrating "national governments' ineptitude", it mostly demonstrates a failing on our part. We can do better. Superm401 - Talk 08:27, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
  • As much as I try to avoid being snarky on the internet (as the sheer weight of snark on the internet is sooner or later going to cause the world wide web to implode), I must say, wiki-assassin sounds like an excellent title to put on my resume. Jztinfinity (talk) 17:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

"Foundation über alles"

Who is responsible for "Foundation über alles" as a headline? Extremely dubious taste.

That would be me. I don't see what's hesitant or in doubt about it; über alles is German for "above all", which in pithy headline-friendly parlance is what the Swiss journal considers the WMF to be in the ranks of NGOs. Skomorokh 17:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
The phrase has strong connotations of German nationalism due to its use in the first line of the World War II-era German national anthem; perhaps that was the commenter's concern. It additionally may seem a bit odd to use German in this case since The Global Journal appears to be written in English. Powers T 15:54, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
See Deutschlandlied. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:43, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
Precisely; it's no more of a Nazi thing than is the use of fraktur or the term "Deutsches/Deutſches Reich". Nyttend (talk) 03:38, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
Well Germany has rejected those words as its national anthem, taking the third verse, only. But really its not a big deal. 81.178.144.98 (talk)

News and notes: Update on Global Development, Wikipedia Day NYC is a success, JFK audio on Commons (7,196 bytes · 💬)

"A lack of due dilligence by the Wikimedia Foundation"? How surprising! Hopefully all the donations they collected this year will help buy them some due dilligence over all their projects. Cla68 (talk) 07:04, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

It's somewhat ironic that an initiative that partly aimed to help address problems with western-focused editing didn't take into account the academic culture of the editors who were recruited - though I do find it amazing and horrifying that Indian university students are apparently allowed to include plagiarised material in assessment items. It's good that there's been such a frank assessment of this though. Nick-D (talk) 11:09, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I believe the figure of 2000 students recruited (See Verdict delivered on the India Education Program above) is inaccurate. According to Tory Read's report and the quantitative analysis report, there were 1,014 students registered for the IEP of whom 665 (66%) actually made edits. Nevertheless, an absurd number for a "pilot" involving completely inexperienced participants, starting with the paid consultants who were running the program.Voceditenore (talk) 16:49, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
    • You're quite right, that figure survived from an early draft; I've corrected the error and will bring it to the attention of the editor responsible. Skomorokh 17:13, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Strange, the blog post said that "The program has not been oriented toward creating new Wikipedians, but has added almost 2,000 editors during the Fall 2011 semester, more than thrice the number from Spring 2011 (500+)." ResMar 21:02, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Actually, the 665 students refers to mainspace edits. A significant fraction of the remaining students had userspace edits, some of which contained copyvios. MER-C 01:08, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
  • It is not just India that has had problems with plagiarism. See here for a analysis of a Canadian effort [1] dealing with a class of 1700 students Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:02, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Although that class had 1500 students, only 317 students created a user account. Of those, only half went on to edit Wikipedia articles—158 students. The more discursive analysis, User:Colin/A large scale student assignment – what could possibly go wrong?, makes very interesting reading. Voceditenore (talk) 17:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Funny how nobody contacted me when I can offer help at a moment's notice since I'm on campus anyway. And the campus ambassadors are a joke (including one who's my high school friend). You assigned 4 ambassadors and none of them have more than 50 edits? Is WMF so desperate that they'll accept ambassadors with close to no experience? OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Has anything been learned from the India and Canada experiences? See: IEP/Welcome Mathew Townsend (talk) 01:42, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
    No, despite the efforts of many of us (spearheaded by Kudpung); their inability to recognize and acknowledge what went wrong is extraordinarily frustrating. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい)
  • I have reasons to believe that the described observations have nothing to do with how well or poorly the experiment was designed or conducted. From my accidental experience with relatively obscure articles related to India culture and geography and adited by Indians well before this experiment I had an impression that a considerable number Indian editors from India disregard all wikipedia rules about referencing. They just dump something either out of their head or from some Indian websites. A typical, randomply picked examples are Chaturvedi, Tiwari, Pathak. I bet the same will be for any page randomly picked from Category:Indian family names... Here...: "Ghatorhe". Try picking yourself now. Loggerjack (talk) 03:58, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Run a search for "...is a beautiful village"; more than half of them are Indian/Pakistani villages. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:30, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
nice catch! Johnbod (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Getting away from India, isn't there a paradox that the two main efforts of the WMF at the moment - more mobile uses and more editors - are likely to be pulling in different directions. Presumably people are much less likely to edit from a mobile? Johnbod (talk) 16:08, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Besides the occasional wikiholic on a smartphone, you mean. ResMar 22:59, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
There's been some effort to create better support for editing Wikipedia on smart phones. But if we can establish good means of turning readers into editors (which some of the new editor programs are aimed to do, although some of the new editor programs seem to be aiming to attract people who don't necessarily read Wikipedia), then getting mobile readers means when the person does sit down to a computer, then they will edit. Jztinfinity (talk) 17:56, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Recent research: Language analyses examine power structure and political slant; Wikipedia compared to commercial databases (733 bytes · 💬)

Very thorough job with this report. Pinetalk 08:14, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Second that. Nageh (talk) 08:32, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. Very nice work providing explanations of these studies! Kaldari (talk) 22:27, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes, very interesting; great work collecting the information and putting this together. MathewTownsend (talk) 01:09, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Technology report: Why "Lua" is on everybody's lips, and when to expect MediaWiki 1.19 (11,841 bytes · 💬)

  • So to write templates I need to learn a new language. This could be interesting. I hope that it has more documentation then the current language --Guerillero | My Talk 04:45, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
It strikes me that it's profoundly unlikely to be worse. As a programming language, ParserFunctions is horrible. At work this month I've been doing large and complicated things with ant ... I've nicknamed it mod_brainfuck. Turing complete is actually a sort of curse - if all you have is a hammer and it's Turing-complete, you will use it as a screwdriver, spanner, soda siphon, nail ... - David Gerard (talk) 08:28, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I remember LUA from the old days scripting my World of Warcraft client (they it for the same reasons: security and light weight). It's not a bad language (even if I found it a bit confusing). -- Luk talk 09:27, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  • "The potential for bias within the survey was not examined." what is the point in writing about useless surveys? Bulwersator (talk) 09:51, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
    • It's not useless, you just have to take it for what it is: a survey of Wikipedia readers, not a survey of the population in general. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 13:42, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Moving to Lua will reduce the programming complexity of templates, which is good, but it will increase the resource utilization of the scripts, so somehow limitations will need to be introduced to limit script cpu time. Does Lua make this easy to do?Jeff Kubina (talk) 23:08, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
    • One of the positives of Lua discussed was the ease with which memory limits can be imposed to prevent accidental/deliberate massive memory allocations taking down whole servers. (Note that I would not be so sure average resource utilisation will go up rather than down: some templates are very resource-intensive at present.) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 23:19, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Excellent! Thanks Jarry. So then in terms of current templates I agree, I suspect many of them would run much more efficiently in Lua. What I suspect will happen though is that templates will evolve to provide much more (better, useful) information using about the same amount of cpu time that they use now to be generated (and be easier to write); so it is a long term win situation. Jeff Kubina (talk) 04:12, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
        • I think that would be a very apt analysis. There will of course also be some widespread templates for which no new functionality is available, which would therefore see definite drops in resource intensity ({{convert}} perhaps?) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:22, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
          • A lot of the complexity of {{convert}} could be solved by exposing a printf type facility, to do all the fussy rounding of numbers. Many layers templates are needed to mimic this functionality.--Salix (talk): 13:41, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Since when is Lua "relatively unheard-of"? --cmelbye (t/c) 00:21, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Of course "relatively unheard-of" a subjective term. Since it's an issue that interests me, I thought I might as well do some digging:
      • On Github it ranks at #18 for number of repos and #17 for number of users, way behind JavaScript, which was also considered for this role, and PHP, the main language of MediaWiki itself (source).
      • Probably due to the fact that it is mainly known in game programming circles, it did not rank in a 2007 survey of job adverts
      • It was not included in this top-ten of programming languages by book sales
      • In this comprehensive analysis it ranks at #15 by Yahoo! searches, #21 for job adverts, #26 for book sales, and #15 for projects.
    • Of course, I have used ordinals, but I could have used cardinals. I agree that maybe people have heard of it (literally speaking) but the point I was trying to make was more figurative, and relates to the fact that Lua is an unfamiliar language to virtually all wiki admins and even a considerable percentage of the "hard core" of WMF techies. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 00:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
  • As a programmer, I look forward to this. I don't know any Lua, but I've heard good things about it, and I'm sure I can pick it up. I'm also confident it will be more satisfying to work on than ParserFunctions-based templates. Superm401 - Talk 22:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I am very excited about Mediawiki supporting a real programming language for extensibility. This will dramatically reduce complexity and improve readability and maintainability, and remove a lot of very annoying limitations due to template nesting limits. It'll also enable new things that heretofore were considered too complex or inefficient to undertake. Dcoetzee 03:33, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
  • This sounds great! I can't wait to get my hands on Lua capabilities in my Semantic templates. Jamie (blog | hello) 03:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Lua is a very nice programming language, that isn't that hard to learn. I'm looking forward to being able to use it in templates, ect. If you want documentation, you can look here. I presume for output, we'll use print("Hello World"), and stuff like that. It will be interesting to see what gets removed, and what stays when they update. (FYI, people get picky when you call it 'LUA' as it's not an Acronym, or when you call it 'lua', as 'lua' is portugues for moon. Make sure you call it Lua. :D) Idofen (talk | contribs | February 2) —Preceding undated comment added 07:39, 2 February 2012 (UTC).
  • Lua has no native Unicode string support. How will this be addressed? 67.6.156.62 (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
    • At a guess, indicates that an extra library would needed such as Selene. With such a library, it's not likely to remain a big issue, though one that should be given considerable thought, so thanks for pointing it out. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 00:30, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
    • Lua can store UTF-8, UTF-16 or whatever binary "strings". The APIs may be designed so that more advanced features (like comparison) can be performed on normalized unicode strings -- typically loading these strings from unicode files. More at Lua and UTF-8 - zertyz —Preceding undated comment added 22:01, 23 February 2012 (UTC).
  • Is there any example comparing the MediaWiki parser function and Lua? Thx. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 13:14, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
  • The ability to construct complex if statements will certainly be of great value. With ParserFunctions, the only real option at present is to resort to writing code such as this which looks more like obfuscated code than anything else. Having to write code this way also means it is extremely difficult for many people to understand and modify.

    Probably the thing I find the most unusual about Lua is the use of and and or instead of && and || for logical operators. I'm sure there was a reason these keywords were chosen for logical operators, but these and the end keyword still seem odd.

    If we are finally going to implement a real programming language, I also hope we end up with some support for true regular expressions (and not just pattern matching). Regular expressions would simplify far too many things to count. --Tothwolf (talk) 14:02, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

    • You can also have complicated datastructures. For example, instead of having a 100 input thing for a input you can use tables. (I presume this stuff will be formatted as a function). It would look like this:
 function List(...)
 for _, Text in pairs({...}) do
 print([==[
 <div>
 ]==]..Text..[==[
 </div>
 ]==]
 end
 end

Which takes in every single input , and puts it in a <div </div> . Idofen (talk | contribs | April 26) —Preceding undated comment added 02:10, 26 April 2012 (UTC).

    • Looking over some of the FAQs, it looks like Lrexlib might be an option for regular expression support. --Tothwolf (talk) 14:09, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I was wondering, will this Lua implementation include the math library? I.e. can we implement inline calls like log10 or power functions? Regards, RJH (talk) 23:26, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
  • At last, only... four years to reach a decision? Rich Farmbrough, 03:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC).
    • Four years isn't that bad...in fact, for Wikipedia that is probably a new record. At least we won't have to wait 15 years like we did for Duke Nukem Forever. --Tothwolf (talk) 22:39, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Lua isn't "relatively unheard of". It's viral, at least in the programming and games industry. Czech is Cyrillized (talk) 14:24, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject report: Digging Up WikiProject Palaeontology (430 bytes · 💬)

  • I agree with Smokeybjb that the "history of study" is a really interesting part of these articles (when its there). And appreciate the images that the project does get. MathewTownsend (talk) 00:33, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


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