Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2014-10-29

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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2014-10-29. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Featured content: Go West, young man (By the way, there is a monster at the end of this article) (2,821 bytes · 💬)

Tis the season for arachniphobia, isn't it? GamerPro64 16:32, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Much more fun...

With spikes.

Draft? Why publish then? Simply south ...... sitting on fans for just 8 years 23:27, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Removing that tag is meant to be part of the publication process. Sometimes it gets missed by accident. This has been pretty much finalized since Monday. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 11:56, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

@Simply south: As to why we do that: You'll note that at the bottom of this article, there's a next button. If you click it, you'll find an article that is in no way finished - so we keep a draft notice on article until then. There's probably a better way to do this, though. Hmm. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:33, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Really enjoying the "featured terror" section header. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:03, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

• I don't know anything about cricket, but yes I would certainly believe that one hundred runs in one game is an accomplishment.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:00, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
  • @Vchimpanzee: I believe cricket tends to be quite a bit higher scoring than some types of games - the method of racking up points is switching between the wickets, so you can score multiple times on one hit - but a century is still very good; you'll note the list is not hugely long. However, there's often a lot of unstated background to sporting articles - and I really don't know that much about sports - so if I can't find someone else to do it (and I usually can't) I'd rather be chatty and slightly tangental than risk misleading. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:02, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

In the media: Wikipedia a trusted source on Ebola; Wikipedia study labeled government waste; football biography goes viral (3,840 bytes · 💬)

• Both the third and fourth sentences of the article in the New York Times, a US newspaper, mention the World Health Organization (WHO) website as well as that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national public health institute of the US. The Signpost story does not mention the WHO website at all. The current Ebola epidemic has caused at least 4,922 deaths, of which one has been in the US. Qwfp (talk) 20:41, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Qwfp, while it is true that the New York Times (NYT) does discuss WHO, the summary that I wrote concentrated on comparing page views for the CDC & Wikipedia. The NYT did not report any page counts for the WHO. I was also writing late at night to ensure I made Wednesday's deadline. If I had more time, I may have written a fuller account.

I have the utmost respect for the WHO. Until recently, I was a part-time reference librarian at a university with a nursing school. When nursing students came to me for international statistics for their epidemiology papers, I always gave them a Google query, like this one for Ebola statistics: (site:who.org OR site:int) -site:wipo.int ebola statistic*. Of course, who.int always was prominent, with a few other international sites appearing further down in the results. In case you were wondering, the "-site:wipo.int" excludes the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), since pages from that source pretty much only refer to drug patents.

While the summary may have come off as North American-centric, I do not think that page views of en.wikipedia are exclusively from that region. The 840,000,000 English speakers (first & second language) is more than double than the combined population of Canada & the U.S.

In the future, I will try to remember the international reach of Wikipedia & include that perspective when appropriate. I also invite you to look at anything that I have written before publication in Signpost. I find that my imperfect work benefits greatly from the polishing of other editors.

Thanks, Peaceray (talk) 05:52, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

• Regarding your story "Biography of teenage footballer becomes viral sensation", now the article has been deleted after discussion and overwhelming consensus at that. So viral no more? Newspapers still may mention him, but when you go to see what they are all talking about in Wikipedia, there will be no trace but this sad page: page 1. By the way all history on the page has been removed as well. So you can't go back and see the earlier history at least. But at least we've got his photo in Signpost... werldwayd (talk) 00:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

• Is anyone else seeing a lot of white space? I tried to fix it but then the politician ended up in the section on the footballer and the footballer got moved to another section.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:25, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Maps tagathon: Find 10,000 digitised maps this weekend (1,960 bytes · 💬)

• We're just closing up the workshop now, with 9.1% of the books complete and 1500+ new maps found. Not a bad day's work! Andrew Gray (talk) 16:52, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

• Note: Unfortunately, due to the Signpost's queasy relationship with punctuality, this is now a historical piece. However, the day went very well, with thirty volunteers tagging nearly 1,500 maps from the British Library. Gingerdead Men were had and enjoyed by all. Happy Halloween! Serendi^podous 19:43, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
  • Not at all. The day at the British Library is over, but the images are still there, the status page is still being updated every ten minutes, and it would be great to see how many more maps we can discover by the end of the weekend.

  The BL labs group's big annual symposium is on Monday, jammed to with 270 people coming, with an hour-long discussion of this collection and what's been achieved with it in the last twelve months the finale item on Monday afternoon. 10% of the collection completed by 30 volunteers in a couple of hours is a fantastic start. Let's see what we can achieve now with everybody, by the time of that discussion on Monday afternoon! Jheald (talk) 20:20, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

  (And the collection is well worth a browse, just to see what's in it). Jheald (talk) 20:21, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Recent research: Informed consent and privacy; newsmaking on Wikipedia; Wikipedia and organizational theories (2,853 bytes · 💬)

"through a particular example discussed"

Should that be "though"? -- AnonMoos (talk) 03:36, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks! Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 04:59, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

"Which this reviewer finds disappointing..."

The final sentence before "Other recent publications" is missing a subject. The meaning does come through however as "I didn't like it." Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:01, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

I think it only had one comma too many, which I just fixed (the reviewer should be able to confirm this assumption). That said, I agree it's a review with a rather high opinion/information ratio - pointing out that a paper doesn't add much to existing research is fine, but I for one would have loved to also read a brief overview of that "number of valid arguments". Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

The valid arguments are restatement of the lit review; like summary of Reagle's book, etc. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:27, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

While I may not have expressed myself the same way that Piotrus did, I agree with him in his assessment of the publication. In particular, I found it disappointing that it contained so many easily-corrected errors, such as the number of arbitrators (there have been 15 since 2008, not 12 as the article suggests) and arbitrators have been serving 2-year terms since 2010 or 2011. It was at that point it became really clear that, despite the promise of a fresh look, it was a rehash of previously published materials. I also note that the "links" to various policies and significant pages, all dated 31 March 2014, were simply the http://en.wikipedia.org URL. Unfortunate. Risker (talk) 02:43, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

I got as far as The powers of these Stewards can only be revoked by the Arbitration Committee or Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and then I switched to skim mode. I can't see any of Geertz's thick description here so I want to call this more of an informed lit review than an ethnography --Guerillero | My Talk 00:01, 3 November 2014 (UTC)