This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | → | Archive 10 |
On a related topic, the Grok stats say Barack received 913.2k views on 20 Jan (UTC). Stats for other related articles, in thousands:
(Incidentally, only 559 people cared about Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama.) -- Zanimum (talk) 02:11, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
Based on the criteria from WikiProject Orphanage, 29.7% of qualifying articles (mainspace articles minus redirects minus disambigs) are orphans - that is, we have 756,557 articles with less than three incoming article links. Of these, only 5.1% currently bear the {{orphan}} template. I've created some scripts on the toolserver that analyze the database and produce a list of all orphans on a daily basis. In the course of my development I came across these staggering numbers. If there's any interest in making a story about this, I can provide lots of facts and figures - and of course the list. I'll be handing the data over to the Orphanage in a few days; I was hoping an article about the multitude of orphans would drum up interest. --JaGatalk 23:36, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
The problem is, so few people are creating red links today that people have had to resort to importing large dumps of red links, IE Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. I'll note that my experience with Wikipedia:Stanford Archive answers has been somewhat disheartening - basically nobody works on these things. Raul654 (talk) 07:26, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I've compiled the data, but I'm not sure how to present it, so here it is raw:
Stepping back and looking at all this, I see what I'm driving at is pretty complicated, and would be tough to present properly. I was going to not bother posting the links here, but I said I would, so here they are. As far as I'm concerned, if this isn't really what Signpost is looking for, that's OK with me. --JaGatalk 07:19, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0.--ragesoss (talk) 17:56, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
John Gill, Wikipedia founder's scholarly web venture plays host to a war of words, Times Higher Education. According to a former head of the philosophy content at Citizendium, "the experts it used were even less likely to reach consensus than the amateurs who contribute articles to Wikipedia." But according to Larry Sanger, "our disputes tend to be far more tractable, far less acrimonious and not at all Kafka-esque in the way one so often finds in such disputes in Wikipedia."--ragesoss (talk) 19:01, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
For people not following Foundation-l, the Wikimedia-wide vote regarding the adopting of GFDL / CC-BY-SA dual licensing has been tentatively scheduled for February 9th to March 9th.
Dragons flight (talk) 21:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
I wouldn't normally push something that was focused on myself, but the Columbia Journalism Review is the most prestigious journal of American journalism, and that they wrote a two page article about Wikinews material, much of which is used on Wikipedia articles, I think bears a Signpost mention. It is some of the highest acknowledgment of a sister project's attempts, and for those who thinks "News belongs on Wikinews, not on Wikipedia" this is a good way to trumpet that work over there gets recognition. They also mention the Wikipedia photography. --David Shankbone 18:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
See Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. Also see [4]. Mike Peel (talk) 20:44, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Mozilla and the Wikimedia Foundation are working together to improve support for Ogg Theora and Vorbis media formats. This will hopefully lead to better support of these formats, so that proprietary technologies like Adobe Flash are not necessary for streaming media. (They aren't strictly necessary now, but tend to be the default for web developers and content providers outside the free culture movement.) According to Erik Moeller, "The $100,000 grant will be used to support the work of long-time contributors to the Ogg Theora/Vorbis codebase and related tools, such as libraries for network seeking. The improvements will be made over a 6 month period." Built-in support for Ogg media will be in Firefox beginning with version 3.1.
--ragesoss (talk) 23:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
It would be great to give Signpost readers a preview of this global event (so they can get ready to participate), which will run throughout February 2009. BTW, the first public event day is February 1 at London's V&A Museum.--Pharos (talk) 04:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
Jessica Alba recently used Wikipedia as her source for a statement about the neutrality of Sweden [5]. Cla68 (talk) 06:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
The USA Network honored Jimmy Wales as "Character Approved", which is a new program to recognize those who have "positively influencing American culture". Others honored include Charles Best, David Chang, Jennifer Siegal, Lupe Fiasco, Patrick Robinson, and Shepard Fairey. Along with the award, the USA Network is donating $10,000 to the recipient's charity of choice (The Wikimedia Foundation).
--Aude (talk) 16:50, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Durova found that a picture taken at the time of the massacre of Wounded Knee was more relevant then would be appreciated from the meta data of the Library of Congress. After restoring the image, the picture showed corpses hidden under a blanket. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 09:26, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
This doesn't happen every day. DurovaCharge! 20:45, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
A story in the Wall Street Journal, "Test for Dwindling Retail Jobs Spawns a Culture of Cheating" by Vanessa O'Connell, describes the use of standard personality tests in the hiring process of many retailers. One part of the story is about an administrator who used his access to deleted revisions to obtain a key of suggested answers for a Unicru test after being turned down for jobs that used the test; he then posted that key on Facebook.--ragesoss (talk) 00:02, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
VisualWikipedia.com is a new Wikipedia value-added site, which presents articles along with a visual representation of what links to and from a given article and YouTube videos related to the article. Seems like it violates the WMF "Wikipedia" trademark, though.--ragesoss (talk) 18:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Lord of the universe quits wikipedia - from The Register. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:01, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Could the post do a segment on the Wikimedia Commons? I think that greater knowledge of Commons - what it's for and what goes on there - would help Wikipedians and enhance the overall goals of the WMF. -mattbuck (Talk) 00:01, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
I think that would make a good story. Raul654 (talk) 00:11, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Rather out of no where, but just in case its of minimal interest. -- Zanimum (talk) 18:33, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Dutch bureaucrats working at the Justice department have made controversial changes to the Dutch article on Mohammed. Edits include "In werkelijkheid was Mohammed een oorlogshitser die er niet voor terugdeinsde onschuldige mensen te (laten) doden om zo hun bezit in te kunnen pikken". (In reality, Mohammed was a warmonger who didn't object to kill innocent people, or have them killed, to steal their possessions) and "Islam is de meest moorddadige ideologie aller tijden" (Islam is the most murderous ideology of all times).
I should be able to fish out the diffs where it happened from nl.wiki if people are interested. It has been featured on most major Dutch national newspapers and other news outlets. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 20:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
PediaPress actually went live on Wikipedia before this edition went out, the script has been fully functional since October 27, 2008, it was deleted on December 28 and restored by Jimbo on January 10. On January 9 User:Pediapress "was indef blocked, and userpage deleted, on an accusation of "spamming"." That followed with a discussion at AN. The account is operated by User:He!ko and the extension is usable through a JS detailed at the User: page. §hep • Talk 22:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Yahoo! has started linking directly to sections within Wikipedia articles from search results. See coverage at TechCrunch or see for yourself.--ragesoss (talk) 18:53, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/01/15/jimmy-wales.html http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2009/01/wikipedia_replacement_for_the_1.html http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/qpodcast_20090115_10927.mp3
Based off a radio interview Jimmy Wales did with CBC Radio One's Q. -- Zanimum (talk) 17:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
There's a story in the Guardian about a conquential minor hoax the person behind User:Masalbugduv was probably responsible for.[6] Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 00:21, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
The latest issue (Jan 31 2009) of Frontline magazine (www.frontline.in) on page 34, uses wikipedias definition of Enemy alien, as "A citizen of a country which is in a state of conflict with the country in which he or she is located." The article, titled Due Process is about the right of due legal process that Ajmal Amir Kasab, the Mumbai terror accused in entitled to. Sniperz11@CS 06:36, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Google now has an add-on called Googlepedia, available through download.com. Whenever you do a Google searh, on the right hand side it shows you the best matching Wikipedia article to your search terms. It's not perfect, but it is rather nifty.--King Bedford I Seek his grace 04:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has opened a Request for Comment regarding arbitration enforcement, including a review of general and discretionary sanctions. This is a fulfillment of the Committee's statement that such a request for comment would be opened, issed in the Eastern European disputes case. Vassyana (talk) 00:00, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if this is in the scope of the signpost, but for sister project news. Round 1 of the second annual Wikinews:Picture of the Year 2008 has started. There are 60 images, you can vote for as many images as you want. This round is used to narrow down the selection to about 10-15 finalists. The goal is to select a news worthy picture that is also of good quality (we use anything thats appeared in the news in pictures section of wikinews, so some images are of poorer quality than others.) All of wikimedia is invited to vote (assuming you have greater then 50 edits, aren't blocked and have had an account for at least two weeks. If you aren't a wikinews you are asked to merge your accounts before voting). See Wikinews:Picture of the Year 2008 Bawolff (talk) 00:33, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia May Restrict Public’s Ability to Change Entries, Noam Cohen, Bits Blog, New York Times, January 23, 2009, 5:46 pm.--ragesoss (talk) 03:07, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
Editorial row engulfs Wikipedia Willking1979 (talk) 15:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales calls for pre-approval of changes Willking1979 (talk) 20:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
Orderinchaos was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding flagged revisions. It's one of the country's leading newspapers.[7] DurovaCharge! 06:42, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Could something about WikiProject Vital Articles be mentioned, or does that not really fit the Signpost? I just recently started it, and was wondering how if/how it should be announced. Thanks! -Drilnoth (talk) 18:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Did some quick searches and found these. The bottom two are about flagged revisions, so if there's any additional information that could be incorporated from them, that might be good. I don't know if the other two merit mention, but here they are anyway.
—Hermione1980 20:28, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Good, accurate, insightful article in The Independent about Wikipedia's current situation [8]. Cla68 (talk) 06:17, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
More stuff:
—Hermione1980 22:23, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
On 30 January 2009, the day after Erdoğan's outburst at the World Economic Forum in Davos where David Ignatius was moderator (see Recep Tayyip Erdoğan#Israel and the Palestinians), several Turkish newspapers, including the major newspapers Radikal and Hürriyet, reported that Ignatius is a "Jewish-American" journalist. This (almost certainly incorrect) information was apparently based on unsourced information at the time in the Wikipedia article. Source: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/10911933.asp?scr=1. Hevesli (talk) 19:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
See also this blog for more information. Hevesli (talk) 19:48, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
A new RFC opened this week on the talk page at the 1.0 Assessment team concerning A-class and its implementation across Wikipedia. At the moment, the discussion is in its preliminary phase, but whats been typed and saved so far has been both animated and interesting. Full details at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. TomStar81 (Talk) 07:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Missed it at the time but aprently we managed to break Amarok.Geni 14:58, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
A newly published study, performed on Wikipedia circa November 2006, correlates the word count of Wikipedia coverage in several areas with factors such as recentness (for our year articles, Academy-Award winning films, Time people of the year, Artists with #1 songs), population (for country articles, revenue (for companies), and coverage in Britannica (for selected random entries found there). See Royal and Kapila, "What's on Wikipedia, and What's Not?", Social Science Computer Review, February 2009. Positive correlations were found for everything but Time people of the year, which seemed to follow a pretty random distribution in terms of coverage vs. year. The conclusion drawn by the authors is that "Wikipedia is more a socially produced document than a value-free information source", and demonstrates bias towards more coverage of recent events, big countries, big companies, and the coverage agenda of Britannica. Supposedly "this study uncovered important biases in information being presented on Wikipedia", although I'm not sure we would want an "unbiased" Wikipedia in this sense where every topic had the same level of coverage independent of the significance or relevance of the topic.--ragesoss (talk) 04:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I know there are. I am preparing a major new analysis related to Wikipedia. The last time I did something like this it got covered not only on Wikipedia but also in several actual newspapers (go figure). I'd like to consider giving the Signpost a head start if there is someone here interested in working on the story quietly while I finish writing up the project. My target date is the end of February. Dragons flight (talk) 05:28, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Could something be briefly mentioned about the new drive? Maybe it could drum up some more interest than there was in the last one. -Drilnoth (talk) 15:10, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
German Wikipedia has essentially completed its first pass on flagging every article (99.98%, with just about 150 unreviewed articles, presumably very new ones). Since reaching completion of flagging (nearly) all existing articles, the backlog of out-of-date reviews has shrunk considerably, from about 14,000 last week to about 8,000 now. The oldest out-of-date revision is now only about 14 days old (down from 17-21 days), and may be decreasing further. Keep an eye on de-wiki's progress here.--ragesoss (talk) 18:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
ABC News's Michael S. Malone has written an opinion column about the evolution and accuracy of his article. §hep • Talk 22:14, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Barack Obama had over 900,000 hits on inauguration day. However, there are over 100 redirects whos hits are not counted. Would anyone be interested in helping me create an article on the number of hits page views that he actually had.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 00:00, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
—Hermione1980 01:35, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
More news - Tories admit to Wiki-alteration (BBC) - UK Conservative Party staff changing Titian's Wikipedia article to appear as if they were right in a debate in the Commons. the wub "?!" 17:09, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
zOMG politicians (goes with the wub's link):
:-) Hermione1980 00:37, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia made the front page of yesterday's Guardian: Titian, the Tory and Wikipedia: a modern morality tale. Seth Finkelstein has also written an interesting article about WikiAnswers and Wikia's use of the Wikipedia "halo effect". What's in a name? Everything, when you're talking wiki value. Rje (talk) 10:01, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
Could do with some sitewide publicity:
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- Jarry1250 (t, c) 13:31, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
A MediaWiki meetup is planned for April 3.-5. in Berlin. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Developer_meet-up_2009 phoebe / (talk to me) 04:00, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Might be worthy of a mention: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7884121.stm – ukexpat (talk) 18:07, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Report here. Bladeofgrass (talk) 23:36, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
I recently blogged about the bizarre shenanigans going on with Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez denying her history and making things up on her biography. The blog post has led to some very good press for us about our diligence, policies and guidelines. --David Shankbone 04:53, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
story in 2/23 issue -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Larry Sanger has a recently published article in the journal Episteme, "The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia". As Sanger reports on the Citizendium blog, it is a work of academic philosophy discussing the limits of article quality on Wikipedia, in terms of social epistemology. There is a vigorous discussion of the piece (or at least, the abstract) on Slashdot.--ragesoss (talk) 07:34, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
Judd Bagley, a banned editor, has put together a compelling presentation detailing his experience combatting efforts by others to use the Internet to manipulate opinions about Naked short selling. A significant portion of the presentation describes his experiences with Wikipedia's administration. The presentation is here and the Wikipedia portion begins at slide 52, which can be accessed easily using the sliding toolbar on the left. Cla68 (talk) 03:27, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
in 2/23 N&N -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC) Created earlier this month, usability.wikimedia.org. Maybe a quick section in News and Notes, has a prototype area that I haven't checked out yet, but sounds interesting. §hepTalk 06:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
I found this sensationalist and highly problematic, but thousands (if not millions) heard this one-sided discussion by Eric Goldman on their commute this morning. Law professor argues Wikipedia is bound to fail, February 17, 2009. I wrote back a pretty strong comment in disagreement. --Bobak (talk) 15:56, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
A few months ago during the Internet Watch Foundation fuss, I wrote to my MP], Dr Liam Fox. I got a reply from Alan Campbell, the minister in charge of something, and thought you might like to see it. It's posted on my blog. The actual letter sent back is: page 1 page 2. Thought it might interest you guys. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:59, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
A request: could someone familiar with the flagged revisions discussions and Wikipedia policies in general pop over here and explain how we deal with vandalism and BLPs? Thanks, Hermione1980 04:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Audio available here:[9]. – ukexpat (talk) 14:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
The latest Wikipedia software upgrade has rendered popular javascript tools Twinkle and Friendly temporarily useless, as well as temporarily breaking a number of templates - resulting in ages displaying with several decimal points in infoboxes etc. The age template issue is now resolved, but at present there's no fix for Twinkle and Friendly. More details here. waggers (talk) 15:06, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
Archived memo here. §hepTalk 23:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
in 2/23 N&N -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
I do not know if this is within your scope or not, but if it is - Wikinews is holding its second (and probably final) round of voting for the wikinews picture of the year. Round 2 has 11 images, and any Wikimedian from any project (including wikipedia) with over 50 edits is invited to vote. See n:wikinews:Picture of the Year 2008 for more information. Thanks, Bawolff (talk) 00:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
in 2/23 BRION -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
[10] §hepTalk 04:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
in 2/23 ITN -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
According to The Patent Librarian's Notebook, a blog by librarian Michael White, citations to Wikipedia have been on the rise in U.S. patents. Wikipedia citations by patent examiners were banned in 2006, but references to Wikipedia by both applicants and examiners have nevertheless been on the rise. 477 patents issued in 2008 mentioned Wikipedia, compared to less than 300 in 2007 and just over 100 in 2006.--ragesoss (talk) 19:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
With the passing of FT nom the Iowa-class battleships become the first ships exclusive FT on Wikipedia. This is also the first Featured Topic for the SHIPS project. Although the first Featured topic this is not the first topic nom, a handful of ships specific GTs exist. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:01, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
in 2/23 N&N --phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
The Call for Participation for Wikimania 2009 has been released. Cbrown1023 talk 15:36, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
story in 3/2 issue -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:19, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Brion reports that PDF files of articles can now be generated for English Wikipedia articles (in addition to the smaller wikis that were enabled last week). On article pages, there is a "PDF version" link in the toolbox. Problems should be reported to the PediaPress bug tracker.--ragesoss (talk) 06:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
See also this story here on the Wikimedia blog. And the feedback for the tool is here. feydey (talk) 17:20, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
in 3/2 "in the news" -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC) See http://www.productplacement.biz/200902282995/News/Internet/skittles-product-placement-on-wikipedia.html and http://www.skittles.com. Quite interesting that they're relying on Wikipedia as the de-facto "official" source of info for its products; what happens if someone reorganizes the page? BuddingJournalist 22:23, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm really big fan of this weekly baby. The volume of the news is getting grow, sometimes I feel to read a well-formated pdf version during my lunch. You wrote about the pdf book tool is enabled, why don't you write down the single page for pdf? I want to download the pdf version already converted. --Cheol (talk) 01:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
Reported these issues. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 06:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
A repeat of everything we know, but publicity is publicity. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/2009/03/090304_wikipedia_funding.shtml --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
in 3/9 N&N -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
*From Commons:Press releases/4M
Wikimedia Commons, the multilingual free-content media repository managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, reached the milestone of four million uploaded files on March 4, 2009, less than eight months after it reached three million. This makes Wikimedia Commons, which was launched in September 2004, the fastest growing Wikimedia project. Since March 2007, Wikimedia Commons has routinely had over 100,000 files uploaded every single month. It is now not uncommon for tens of thousands of files to be uploaded in a single day. Wikimedia Commons now has an incredible 573,042 registered users, who have helped reach the figure of four million files.
The four millionth file is a photograph of a cloudy mountain scene at sunset, near Masca in the Canary Islands. It was taken and uploaded by a Wikimedia Commons user Kallerna, who graciously released the work into the public domain.
§hepTalk 22:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
in 3/9 N&N -- phoebe / (talk to me) 00:14, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Wikimedia Blog §hepTalk 22:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
People might enjoy my recent Guardian column "Inclusion or deletion? In the end, it's actually about money". Please note that the "money" part is meant to be a multilayered observation, connecting the two concepts explored - an examination of the costs that every article creates, and then going from there to the pressures of commercialization. Not something silly, like a potential strawman of deletionism being a plot to enrich Wikia's digital-sharecropping gains. I'm very careful not to say the link is dispositive, but rather that there are significant tensions and incentives. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 15:48, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
ITN March 9 -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
The BBC has a report on the interactions between UK politicians and their Wikipedia articles: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7921985.stm -- The Anome (talk) 11:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
N&N, March 9 -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
The basic structure of Chemistry Manual of Style WP:CHEMMOS has been ratified. The Manual of Style gives the Wikiprojects a roadmap: What constitutes an article? What areas should be discussed? What areas should be omitted? etc. Having ratified the MOS, efforts will now be directed toward assessment and improvement of articles within the projects' scope. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals#Article_assessment. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 08:23, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Jasonr_(reconfirmation) and its talk page, RFA's talk page, and the crat noticeboard. KnightLago (talk) 14:58, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
ITN, March 9.--ragesoss (talk) 03:16, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
-- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:57, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
The attribution survey, mentioned in March 2's Post, has its results available here with other notes. §hepTalk 04:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Another good old accusation of bias: Obama's Wikipedia Page Distances President From Wright and Ayers from Fox News, which is definitely a major news outlet. Bsimmons666 (talk) 20:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Already in this weeks'. Bsimmons666 (talk) 21:19, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
I just figured out exactly what this was. Wikipedia has up an advertisement for Wikipedians near San Francisco (Screenshot). It works via this, there is extended information on a mailing list here. The notice is set to be disabled 12 March, so maybe this shouldn't be covered? Or be popped into this week's n&n before publication. Thoughts? §hepTalk 21:30, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Hi guys, I would find a direct link to the previous issue terribly useful. --Elitre (talk) 21:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
Summarization using Wikipedia. Uses a lucene database of all wikipedia articles to create a summary of a text. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:52, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
ITN 3/16 --TheDJ (talk • contribs)
Interesting piece on how skittles had to change their webpage after they implemented the new "social tools" overlay. Wikipedia is now their homepage for they overlay, and it makes you wonder what will happen when the article becomes unprotected again. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
ITN 3/16
http://journalwatch.conservationmagazine.org/2009/03/09/open-source-ecology/
ITN 3/16
Quite the controversy about [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=91114 this article] by Aaron Klein. This story has made US headlines, and FoxNEWS is running around with it like a happy kitten that caught it's first mouse. But as first reported by ConWebWatch and later huffington post and wired, the story goes deeper with User:Jerusalem21. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
N&N 3/16
Wikibooks is publicly displaying a link to a Wikibooks Motivation Survey being done by the University of South Australia. It is advertised via their Sitenotice and reads:
Also, Test Wikipedia has some neat features on the Main Page and Sandbox, some sort of ratings system and review system (flagged revs I think), and they're asking for users to test their Aubuse Filter as well. They also have a CentralNotice running there about Wikimania presentation submissions, technical details here. §hepTalk 21:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
ITN 3/16
News in the "copy & paste from WP in unexpected places" department:
In the ongoing political struggle over the European Union's Telecoms package (a planned regulatory framework for the telecommunications industry in the EU), an amendment proposed by the UK government which is heavily criticized by advocates of network neutrality copied almost verbatim from the article Bandwidth management.
If this amendment is successful, the definition of bandwidth management written by Cmw1 in April 2006 - which Horten, a communications and media research Ph.D. student and former journalist with a long history of covering these topics, says struck her by its "naive wording" - would form part of what she describes as "the most important piece of legislation concerning the Internet, currently going through the European legislature. It will determine, among other things, the way that the Internet will operate in the foreseable future".
Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
ITN 3/16
Those interested in being part of a podcast discussion should weigh in at Wikipedia:Wikivoices/Wikipedia assignments on the when and the what to talk about.--ragesoss (talk) 16:53, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
N&N 3/16
On March 12, WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles completed the notable films list. This list, created by Reflex Reaction in 2005, originally included 1,914 movies compiled from various third-party lists which did not have articles on Wikipedia. The final movie removed from the list was Death of a Salesman (1951 film) which was created by Scapler. Kaldari (talk) 16:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
ITN 3/16
(I have no connection to this, just thought it was interesting) Wikitruth Through Wikiorder - "Focusing on Wikipedia, we argue that the site's dispute resolution process is an important force in promoting the public good it produces, i.e., freely-accessible encyclopedia articles. We describe the development and shape of Wikipedia's existing dispute resolution system. Further, we present a statistical analysis based on coding of over 250 arbitration opinions from Wikipedia's arbitration system. The data shows that Wiki-dispute resolution ignores the content of user disputes, instead focusing on user conduct. Based on fairly formalized arbitration findings, we find a high correlation between the conduct found and the remedies ordered. In effect, the system functions not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting users, but to weed out problematic users while weeding potentially productive users back in to participate." - see also the blog post's hilarious flowchart -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 21:32, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
N&N 3/16 There has been a lot of fuss in the past month or two on Wikimedia Commons relating to images by Brazilian artist Carlos Latuff. Latuff has allowed his cartoons to be published free of copyright, and so they are eligible for inclusion on Commons. However, many of the cartoons are related to the Israeli / Palestinian conflict, generally taking the side of the Palestinians. These have triggered numerous deletion requests, on the grounds that the images promote hatred, violence and anti-semitic sentiment. This week, commons:File:Alan dershowitz by Latuff.jpg (see article) was deleted after a heated debate. It was subsequently undeleted, and promptly deleted again in a small wheel war, and there is an ongoing undeletion request.
As well as deletion requests, there has been edit warring over whether the images should be in categories about Middle East politics, and several users, including one who has contributed many featured pictures, have been blocked temporarily due to their behaviour. The cartoons have also prompted a rash of "If this is acceptable, then this should be too" user-created cartoons, which were deleted as being out of scope as user-created artwork with no educational value.
Relevant links:
-mattbuck (Talk) 22:28, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
N&N 3/16
The licensing update is starting to move. A committee is being formed (including myself) to help manage the process. The draft timeline has the vote starting at the beginning of April. Dragons flight (talk) 07:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Might want to make a brief note of this (though I haven't finished reading everything yet, so it may be moot?). §hepTalk 19:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
ITN, March 9 and March 16
— Hermione1980 22:43, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm looking for three editors to review The Wikipedia Revolution, Andrew Lih's new book, for the Signpost. If you're interested, please contact me with your mailing address and a very brief explanation of the main things you do on Wikipedia. I expect a fair number of editors will want to do this, so I'd like to get some diversity in terms of Wikipedia perspectives (e.g., one reviewer with extensive article-writing experience, another heavily involved in the administrative or policy-making side, etc.). Prior contributions to the Signpost are also a plus.--ragesoss (talk) 16:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Wikimedia Commons has begun accepting TIFF files. This makes Commons a much friendlier environment for image restoration. Until now, most restoration work needed to be uploaded in JPEG format, which degrades with attempts at additional editing. Now Commons is becoming more friendly to wiki-based editing by expanding the options to upload uncompressed files. The first TIFF file uploaded to Commons is the constellations Aries and Musca Borealis, restored from a hand tinted 1825 depiction. This is a major step forward for collaboration in restorations of historic images. More information is available at my blog.[13] DurovaCharge! 23:43, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
http://www.computershopper.co.uk/news/249605/iwf-staff-threatened-after-wikipedia-debacle.html --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:40, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
After the inconclusive earlier poll for a trial of flagged revisions, a new poll has started for a refined trial proposal that attempts to address common concerns voiced by those who opposed the earlier proposal. See Wikipedia talk:Flagged protection and patrolled revisions/Poll.--ragesoss (talk) 00:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Related story: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-05-07/The key to Wikipedia
Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:05, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
The list even includes three pages on Wikipedia itself. --- RockMFR 16:14, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
Portions of Wikileaks, Wikipedia blocked in Australia, 20 March 2009 --ragesoss (talk) 00:15, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
Follow-up to Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-03-16/Discussion_report: The described Proposal to introduce non-commercial licensed photos on Wikipedia has since been declared closed by one of its initiators, citing comments by Mike Godwin to the effect that these licenses would not be legally compatible with the free licenses that Wikipedia is using presently. Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
User:Werdna has announced that he enabled the Extension:AbuseFilter on the English Wikipedia. This extension allows all edits to be tested against regular expressions. There's already a whole bunch of people working on creating new filters and monitoring the hits. (see Wikipedia:Abuse filter) - Mgm|(talk) 19:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Released in today's Wall Street Journal. It's more of a summary than a review, and it can be found here. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 20:15, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
Hey all. Recently investigation has uncovered some users who contributed thousands of articles before it was uncovered that all or most of their contributions were copyright violations. The community and particularly User:Moonriddengirl have invested enormous effort in cleaning up these problematic contributions. Here are some sources:
As a consequence of this Moonriddengirl has been working on a new WikiProject called Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup. I think it would be great to get the word out about this kind of copyright violation disaster (many still don't know this kind of thing occurs) and the new project. Thanks for any help, and if you choose to interview anyone, make it Moonriddengirl as she's worked more on all this than everyone. :-) Dcoetzee 06:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
The library ezine Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large has an article that critically explores the near-monopoly status of Wikipedia as a casual online general reference: Net Media: Beyond Wikipedia (beginning on page 23). Beginning from the question "Why do we love monopolies so?", Cites & Insights author Walt Crawford comments on Knol, Citizendium and Wikia as potential alternative models of online reference content creation.--ragesoss (talk) 22:51, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
--ragesoss (talk) 23:04, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
The results of this twice-annual election have previously had a mention in the Signpost. The current election ends at 23:59 UTC on 28 March. This can wait until the issue after the conclusion of the election.
Thanks -MBK004 06:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
It might be nice to interview Brion or someone else involved with GSOC to find out what projects are in the works for this year, what's been accomplished in the past, what they hope to get out of it, etc. Might need to wait til the summer when the students actually show up. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 15:12, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
I note that you said you'd interviewed all the Abrahamic Religion projects. Unfortunately, I think you missed one, Wikipedia:WikiProject Bahá'í Faith. Granted, it's a small group, but it's had a solid portal for longer than a lot of others.
Also, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the ArbCom is currently reviewing, again, the content and conduct relating to another religion, Scientology. There are probably several editors in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Scientology, like maybe myself, Cirt, ChrisO, Justanother, Spidern, and maybe others who would be willing to talk with you if you so saw fit. In fact, one of the proposals in the current ArbCom is trying to run something in the Signpost to draw more attention to the articles. Let me and maybe some of the others know if you'd like to run a piece on the group. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 20:36, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia: The missing manual is a new and interesting piece of wikipedia. We who have intrest in this manual would like you to report this in your next edition. As well, wwe'd like to report on our desire for editors to assist with improval and upkeep.--Ipatrol (talk) 03:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
When the new program officer is hired, we should try to do an interview with them as this is a community-facing position. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 20:40, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
- BanyanTree 02:51, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
"Wikipedia: A scientific and educational opportunity" - interview with University of Florida professor (with link to published paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution)
Part of the paper was quoted in wikien-l:
"As part of a graduate seminar on plant–animal interactions, we set out to assess the quality and content of Wikipedia entries with an ecological focus. To do so, we critiqued entries on five major categories of plant–animal interactions: frugivory, herbivory, pollination, granivory and seed dispersal. We found that the entries were generally limited in both breadth and depth, included only cursory lists of citations and occasionally devoted attention to topics that were at best marginally relevant (one memorable example was the discussion of ‘fruitarians’ – people who consciously adopt a strictly frugivorous diet – in the entry on frugivory)."
"We found the process straightforward and efficient, particularly once we learned the protocol for proposing and implementing changes. Editing was also simplified by adhering to Wikipedia’s clearly established framework for page organization, reference management and the inclusion of tables and pictures...We were occasionally frustrated by interactions with an intransigent author who rapidly and repeatedly reverted our revisions – something that might be common when editing entries on controversial topics. However, we nonetheless found the experience to be rewarding, similar in scope and time commitment to writing a more traditional term paper (Figure 1) and extremely valuable as an exercise in critical thinking and communication skills."
"Although we recognize that the time, professional incentives and public recognition for doing so are limited, we believe that improvements to this now ubiquitous reference source are particularly important given the increasingly public debates on ecological and evolutionary topics. The revision of Wikipedia entries can easily be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate courses, the service activities of student organizations, laboratory meetings, extension programs and the annual meetings of professional societies."
-- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:40, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Some new data visualisation gimmick. Wired had a story about it. Skomorokh 19:32, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
—Hermione1980 22:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
NY Times article that looks at Wikipedia and how it compares to large cities. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:43, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
User talk:Jimbo Wales#Update on BLP / Flagged Protection / Flagged Revs might be worth a mention? §hepTalk 02:39, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
See message at the village pump. The global vote on the WMF licensing update proposal will be starting several days from now. Dragons flight (talk) 04:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
--ragesoss (talk) 17:55, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
This poll is set to end on April 1. A summary of the results should probably be included in April 6's Signpost. Hermione1980 01:30, 30 March 2009
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2010/Bids/Public_meeting_log
The city hoasting Wikimania 2010 will be chosen soon. 87.207.83.232 (talk) 11:11, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
See announcement here and Wired story here. Although the MS announcement didn't mention Wikipedia, everyone else on the internet did. Raul654 (talk) 22:57, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Wikimedia Deutschland has worked out an arrangement with Saxon State and University Library. They're going to donate 250,000 images to Commons under a CC-BY-SA license. See here (More details forthcoming tomorrow, March 31). Raul654 (talk) 22:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Andrew Lih discusses his new book in a 3:45 piece on The World and replaces the ant hive metaphor with a piranha feeding frenzy metaphor. He takes over The World's Technology Blog (237) and World in Words (47). - BanyanTree 23:54, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Jimbo's wiki-based search site is to close because of limited uptake and profitability. CNET News Wales' blog PretzelsTalk! 18:35, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
this edit to the russian wikipedia happened about 10 minutes before the news broke that the person in question had been attacked. See here.Geni 22:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/05/digital-media-referenceandlanguages --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:31, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
A tip for DRaMA/Centralized discussions:
(This is an attempt at a sample NPOV prose that you can copyedit at will, of course. — The Little Blue Frog (ribbit) 20:55, 5 April 2009 (UTC))
May be of interest, about a Wikipedia page: The making of a wiki page, April 5th, 2009. --Chriswaterguy talk 21:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
http://www.wikimedia.it/index.php/Wikimedia_news/numero_24/en#What_will_happen_next_month
Ars Technica reports that a U.S. federal court issued a ruling on the copyright case Golan v. Gonzales, finding that it violates the First Amendment for a law to move works back under copyright after they have passed into the public domain. While copyright activists such as Lawrence Lessig and Anthony Falzone hail this as an important victory, further appeals are expected.--ragesoss (talk) 22:24, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
A Wall Street Journal in the April 6, 2009 edition entitled Wikipedia's Old Fashioned Revolution. Article mentions Lih's book, Encarta, and how administrators monitor the site as well as how they are elected. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Since the Military History coordinator election was mentioned in last week's edition, I'll also point out WP:FILMS' recent election completed on March 29, with 7 elected coordinators. --Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if this would be possible or plausible, but it would be nice if there was a mention of well-known users who retired in the week before the Signpost came out. If that's too much, then just admins would be fine. Thanks, Genius101Guestbook 22:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that "U. of Richmond Creates a Wikipedia for Undergraduate Scholars". The website, called History Engine, is a forum for collecting, tagging, and curating short topical essays on history. Described as "Wikipedia for students", "[e]xcept better", History Engine is an attempt to solve the problem that "the volume of historical scholarship get[s] in the way of our ability to make sense of history". It provides a venue for participating college history classes to publish assigned essays. According to the History Engine website, the project "subjects its contents to a careful academic screening process on the part of library staff, archivists, professors, and teaching assistants", essentially establishing an undergraduate analog to traditionally published historical scholarship.--ragesoss (talk) 01:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
This is really interesting. Locr lets you build photobooks online, adding maps and other geo related information to them, including relevant excerpts from Wikipedia articles. http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/Locr-intros-location-enabled-travel-photo-book_a1453.html There is a youtube video there that illustrates the process. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:46, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Wikimedia UK - the local Wikimedia chapter covering the United Kingdom - has been reformed and is holding its first AGM on 26th April. Elections for the first permanent Board of Trustees are currently underway. AndrewRT(Talk) 23:14, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
The Arbitration Committee has prepared a provisional draft of an updated arbitration policy for initial community review. All editors are invited to examine the text and to provide any comments or suggestions they may have via one of the two methods specified on the draft page.
[[Sam Korn]] (smoddy) 11:42, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
(translated from Dutch by MacGyverMagic) Spits News, April 8, 2009:
The "Wikipedia-youth" is not ready for a university education. First-year students are immature, rely too much on internet sources like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and they expect success without making too much of an effort. That is the outcome of a Canadian poll of 2000 professors.
Over 55 percent of them believe students are less well-prepared than three years ago. " They see something on the internet and copy it," says professor Brian Brown in the Canadian newspaper Ottawa Citizen. According to him solid research is hard to find among students. Brown is the chairman of the confederation of universities in the Canadian province of Ontario.
The current youth culture of self confidence, which makes the youths believe they can handle everything, means they no longer know the word 'failure'. They think that because their curiculum is paid for, they 'earn' good grades.
You might want to have something in the Signpost about the change; see Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion#Proposal to change the length of deletion discussions to 7 days, which passed today. –Drilnoth (T • C) 03:03, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Physics-based paper on arXiv investigating the "Scale-free topology of the interlanguage links in Wikipedia" by Łukasz Bolikowski: [15]. Mike Peel (talk) 15:17, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
The licensing update vote has begun. Because of issues with how central notices function, not everyone is yet seeing the announcement but the vote is live and can be accessed via Special:SecurePoll/vote/1. Dragons flight (talk) 20:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Foundation, together with 18 other public interest groups, library associations, and trade associations representing the technology, consumer electronics, and telecommunications industries (among them the Internet Archive, Public Knowledge, the American Library Association and Educause) has signed an open letter to U.S. president Barack Obama expressing concern that
(Wired indicates that two of these are the former Recording Industry Association of America attorneys Donald Verrilli Jr. and Tom Perrilli who were appointed to two of the highest ranking positions in the US Department of Justice (Associate Deputy Attorney General and Associate Attorney General), which subsequently already sided with the RIAA in an important lawsuit [16].) The letter asks Obama
Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Wikia, which had been silent on the issue until now, has mooted the possibility of updating their licenses from GFDL to CC-by-sa. See http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Licensing_update .--ragesoss (talk) 16:15, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Not sure WHERE Sue actually announced this, but sounds interesting regardless. http://wingphilopp.blogspot.com/2009/04/letter-of-support.html --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
The Foundation has announced the hire of Jennifer Riggs as Chief Program Officer, a position responsible for "all non-technical program activities such as volunteer recruitment and public outreach."--ragesoss (talk) 14:07, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
The bidding procces was due to be closed on or before 16th April. [17] Either the Wikimania 2010 jury are following a much more strict decision making process, or they are having a hard time chosing beetween the bids. IMHO Amsterdam and Gdańsk currently have made the most well organised and interesting bids and it might be difficult to choose between one of them, with the Oxford bid being slightly behind.Mieciu K (talk) 12:57, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Via wikitech blog. Reported on wired, El Reg and others. Nanonic (talk) 14:22, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Only 13% of Wikipedia editors are female, and the average editor is a twentysomething. Skomorokh 17:39, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
The Augmented Social Cognition Research Group at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC): "What topics are the most well-represented? Where topic areas have the most conflict?"
Turns out that "philosophy" and "religion" have generated 28% of the conflicts each. This is despite the fact that they were only 1% and 2%, respectively, of the total distribution of topics.
-- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Slightly OT but relevant to us, I think: [18]. This happened last week but I'm going to put off writing about it for a week, no time to properly research atm. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 03:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
http://www.nieuwsuitamsterdam.nl/en/2009/04/volunteers-put-art-online-wikipedia --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:37, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
"Nearly 50% of US physicians going online for professional purposes are visiting Wikipedia for health and medical information, especially condition information" and "only about 10% of the 1,900 physicians surveyed created new posts or edited existing posts on Wikipedia, the study found." http://www.mmm-online.com/Docs-look-to-Wikipedia-for-condition-info-Manhattan-Research/article/131038/ (mmm-online.com) - BanyanTree 05:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
I wouldn't want to make this a story to be included anytime soon, but, yeah, it's happened. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Workshop#Participation of newly registered users and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Greek nationalist canvassing off-wiki. And I'm one of the lucky parties involved in this one. Oooohhh my head.... John Carter (talk) 19:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Apparently the WMF is suing some artists for cybersquatting [19] . Samuell Lift me up or put me down 21:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
In the news, [20],[21], i guess 2008 was the last year with volunteer donations..... Mion (talk) 20:15, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
←The WMF has more money now rather than less (money is now available for some individual WMF chapters), and if they start running out, I'm sure they'll let us know. I don't see the mechanism that would corrupt, or even influence, Wikipedian content as a result of taking money from Orange. None of the people who write and improve articles care what Orange is doing, AFAIK. - Dank (formerly Dank55) (push to talk) 03:41, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Comment. What exactly is "co-branding" in the context of this Orange Wikimedia partnership? Maybe the Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost can flesh out some of the details in their next newsletter. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:19, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
Abstract, comment from Wikimedian. Skomorokh 04:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Somewhat tangentially-related: nearly half of American doctors researching conditions online use Wikipedia. The article contains more interesting factoids. Skomorokh 05:14, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
A ruling that Wikipedia could be relied upon as a source is overturned in New Jersey.[23][24] Skomorokh 05:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
According to this article in the LA Times, shortly before human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov was assaulted on Mar 31/Apr 1, his Russian Wikipedia entry was edited to say that he had been killed in an attack. Here's the article history for his Russian article. I can't read Russian but perhaps someone who can could look at it and verify if this actually occurred. Cla68 (talk) 23:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
bibliomaniac15 The annual review... 23:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I don't know where to add this link: Parallel article writing contest in 3 WPs. Avjoska (talk) 20:00, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
The April update of all content policy, deletion policy and enforcement policy pages and all the general style guidelines is done, and I'll try to get the updates done on the first of each month from now on. - Dank (formerly Dank55) (push to talk) 03:45, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
People may be interested to hear the role the article Taman Shud Case is playing in an attempt to solve the 60 year old case. The case itself has everything: The Cold War, mysterious ciphers, red herrings aplenty, a strange cast of characters and at the centre of it all, a dead man with no name or even a cause of death. I'm the main editor of the article and have been trading information on the case with a team of Adelaide University academics as they seek to crack the code and exhume the body to solve the case.
My day job is hack journo so I can write the article although I would be referring to myself in the third person, which could look odd. Otherwise someone else could write and interview Professor Derek Abbott (who is leading the Adelaide Uni team) and me. Any questions, fire away. --Roisterer (talk) 05:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
Just in case you managed to miss that headline, relayed at WP:ANN. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 15:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
A Wikipedia hoax by a 22-year-old Dublin student resulted in a fake quote being published in newspaper obituaries around the world. The quote was attributed to French composer Maurice Jarre who died at the end of March."[26] Lectonar (talk) 12:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Yesterday, I gave a presentation on Wikipedia for journalists and bloggers at the Portland WikiWednesday, which was followed by a panel including myself, Pete Forsyth and two local journalists. Today, my slides from the presentation are featured on the front page of Slideshare. Steven Walling (talk) 21:17, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
"Citizen Sanger" I will simply quote their summary - "In an exclusive interview, LARRY SANGER - widely credited as co-founder of Wikipedia - takes issue with a number of comments made by ex-colleague Jimmy Wales in Hot Press recently, and explains why his new online encyclopedia, Citizendium, will eventually conquer cyberspace." (paywall'ed) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 20:01, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
How Consumer Generated Content Is Changing Advertising - A video of an Interview with Jimmy, WebProNews discusses advertising in the age of user generated content. A small blurp on Wikia Search is also present. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:20, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Compare the people at the bottem of File:Rodina mat zovet.jpg and this bbc image.Geni 22:41, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
See today's strip. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 03:27, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
User:Tinucherian has been promoted to become a member of the BAG. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 11:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
A small scale report has been published : introduction, findings. It builds on work done in January 2007 and looks at changes that have happened between. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 11:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
WP:CHEMS has been working with Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society) for over a year now to free up some of their information. We have now got the go ahead to shout about it [27], so we shall do. Myself or Walkerma for more details, although I'll obviously try to add them here as well! Physchim62 (talk) 21:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
There's a new Someecards satirizing Wikipedia (direct link). Steven Walling (talk) 00:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
Contest winners for Wikipedia Loves Art held in February have been announced. [28] --Aude (talk) 04:15, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
There was an article on this week's Digital Planet about the history of Wikipedia and trying to predict its future. There is no transcript available but the audio can be obtained at this link. Orderinchaos 13:01, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
Brion gave a quick update on wikitech-l on the status of flagged revisions for English Wikipedia:
Quick update:
- Yes, we do plan to roll out an English Wikipedia test setup for Flagged Revs.
- There's not yet a fixed schedule for it, but I'd like to see it up and running in production before Wikimania. :) [August]
- Right now we're running round tidying up general things, getting the 1.15 release set up, and prepping to get our live sites updated to development trunk -- nice things are afoot like a total upgrade to the preferences backend which Werdna has done, yay!
- As we get back up to speed, we'll want to coordinate w/ Aaron to confirm that we've got a configuration planned and that it'll look good, and get that test config on en.labs.wikimedia.org and test.wikipedia for a while before we roll it to en.wikipedia.
I'd also like to see folks ponder a bit on the final terminology for things -- we'd also like to roll out the Drafts extension (for saving your in-progress edit page in the background so you can return to it if you accidentally close it or your browser crashes), but Flagged Revs also uses the 'draft' terminology sometimes. We want to make sure we're not going to be looking too confusing having both of those things in the system.
-- brion
--ragesoss (talk) 19:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
See http://wikialarm.com/ . Two related stories are the Jarre quotation hoax and the concept of "wiki circularity", where OR is picked up in reliable sources which are then used to source it. Some blog posts: [29] [30] [31] [32] Skomorokh 19:47, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
As Europeans will know, the Eurovision Song Contest is now over. The "Eurovision special," which we started in February, is now over as well. We interviewed 13 past contestants, which is a record number of interviews for Wikinews in such a short time. Of those 13 past contestants, six were past winners (Anne Marie David '73, Nicole '82, Charlotte Perrelli '99, Niels Olsen '00, Marie N '02, and Ruslana '04). In addition, we got freely-licensed photographs when possible, so all those biographies now have photos. Most of the other singers we interviewed, Edsilia Rombley, Chiara, Jessica Garlick, Ani Lorak, Sirusho, Tajci and Hanna Pakarinen have new media if not just the interviews. Mike H. Fierce! 22:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
It would be criminal not to include this funnier than The Onion "item" in the next Signpost :) --Goodmorningworld (talk) 13:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
An article from The Independent which mentions Wikipedia. ISD (talk) 14:40, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
The result of the licensing update poll has been announced: m:Licensing update/Result.
Dragons flight (talk) 05:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC) (for the Licensing Update Committee)
Tuesday's episode of Heresy, a comedy panel game on BBC Radio 4, had a section about Wikipedia and whether you can trust information on the Internet. David Mitchell made a spirited (and funny) defense. If you're in the UK, you can listen on iPlayer at [33] (available until next Tuesday). The relevant section starts at around 19m30s. the wub "?!" 17:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/a-marriage-thrust-into-the-public-eye/article1146437/
Khadr is a Canadian in Gitmo, and apparently his sister met her match on Wikipedia. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
This was the occupation that was given for a two day winner on this weeks Jeopardy...(05/19/ and 05/20/09.
Bug 6455 is closed as the StringFunctions extension is folded into ParserFunctions. After r50997 is pushed live to the Wikimedia wikis, templates will be able to make use of basic string-handling operations, such as len
(string length) and replace
. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:33, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
#len
: String length.#sub
: Generate substring specified by index and length.#count
: Number of times substring appears in a string.#pos
(#rpos
) : Position of first (last) occurrence of substring in string.#replace
: Replace occurrences of a target substring with a new substring.#explode
: Break string into chunks and return a specified chunk.Wikipedia was mentioned on The Museum of Curiosity last night. It was mentioned by John Hodgman when he donated "Complete world knowledge" to the Museum and covered several encyclopedias, including Wikipedia. The episode is on the BBC iPlayer here. ISD (talk) 08:12, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
100,000 articles on the Arabic Wikipedia [34] --Aude (talk) 17:15, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
I wondered if this ongoing discussion qualified as a tip, :-)
Please help determine the future of the Featured picture process. Discussions regarding the current issues affecting featured picture contributors can be found here. We welcome your input!
Maedin\talk 18:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
The wonder of wiki mentioned on Huffpost. Nice to see someone saying something nice. Darrenhusted (talk) 09:34, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
via techcrunch - Navify is a new site that lets users search for and display a Wikipedia article whilst also pulling in related Flickr and Youtube content. Something that has no doubt been attempted before but this one seems to work ok. My only complaint is related to 'Navify CEO Alan Rutledge says what triggered development was the thought: “If people around the world can help each other by building a free collaborative encyclopedia, couldn’t we make it more useful for everyone by illustrating it together?”' - which would be nice if we were the recipient of the images, but all it's doing is scraping content of various licences. Shame. Nanonic (talk) 22:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Bjørn Smestad, the creator of Wikipedia's first official logo (right), which was in use for about eight months in 2001, has come forward as User:Bjornsm. Smestad, a teacher of mathematics instruction in Norway, had responded to a logo contest held for Nupedia, the precursor to Wikipedia, in about 2000. However, his submission lost the Nupedia contest and Smestad, who states he was never very active on either Nupedia or Wikipedia, was unaware that Jimmy Wales had chosen his logo to replace the American flag placeholder image used when Wikipedia was started. It was not until User:Mosca dug through some old web archives to reconstruct the history of the logo that Smestad's role was uncovered and mentioned in March 2009, at which point Smestad stumbled upon his previously unknown claim to fame after Googling himself in May 2009. Smestad states, "The two black vertical lines were included in an effort to make the logo seem like an 'N'. However, it is ironical that while I probably didn't succeed too much in making it appear like an 'N', that may be precisely why it could be used for Wikipedia," and remarks, "this may therefore be one of my most welcome failures ever." (Smestad's blog post) - BanyanTree 01:32, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
The BBC used File:Dendroaspis polylepis head.jpg in their slideshow on the world's deadliest creatures. The photo, released into the public domain by User:TimVickers, was unattributed. - BanyanTree 07:15, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
From The Register -mattbuck (Talk) 08:18, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Anyone want to volunteer to write this up for the Signpost? It ought to have its own story.--ragesoss (talk) 05:00, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
An article from Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten which was reporting on The Dongle of Donald Trefusis mentioned the Wikipedia article covering the show, which is strange when you consider it was created yesterday. The quote is "På Wikipedia kan man lese at den populære Frys album er en blanding av podcast, lydbok og radiomonolog, og er både skrevet og lest opp av multitalentet Stephen Fry." It roughly translates as "On Wikipedia you can read that the popular Freeze album is a mix of podcasts, audiobooks and radio monolog, and are both written and spoken by multi-talented Stephen Fry." ISD (talk) 17:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
Microsoft's new bing.com search engine seems to have a taste for returning Wikipedia articles at the top, or near the top, of its search results listings for a wide range of terms. It might be interesting to compare this with Google's rankings for the same searches. -- The Anome (talk) 09:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
BBC Radio 4 is to broadcast a new comedy series called Bigipedia which is described as "a malevolent mix between Google, Microsoft and Wikipedia". Co-creator Nick Doody wrote that, "a piss-take of Wikipedia, with all the same inaccuracies, written by nutters". It is to be recorded next week and broadcast this July. More information is reported at Chortle.co.uk and Pozzitive (see news section). ISD (talk) 14:06, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
The Icelandic Wikipedia reached 25k articles recently - see [36]. -- Schneelocke (talk) 18:38, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm a little bit late with this, sorry... but this is kind of interesting. The folks at RationalWiki have been keenly following the user and IP range block statistics at Conservapedia - to put it in easily digestible vernacular terms, there's one sysop there who likes to eat breakfast and then kill a country. In May 22nd, they made a survey which also included the range blocks in Wikipedia. And made xkcd-inspired Peano-curve maps of the blocked IP spaces. Right here. Regrettably the images don't have licences specified so we can't just copy them here, but the concept was pretty neat, and the differences between the two wikis and the blocking policies are quite staggering =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 20:17, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
The first segment on The Colbert Report for June 4 was about the Scientology arbitration decision. Colbert mocks the usernames of arbitrators Carcharoth, FloNight, Newyorkbrad, and Wizardman, and says "They're just like the Supreme Court, only their robes are bathrobes."--ragesoss (talk) 13:56, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
"The research looked at the companies of the S&P Mib 40 index of the Milan stock exchange to see how well they were covered on the English language Wikipedia." The [report contained] pointers ... as to how companies can better engage with the Wikipedia community in order to improve their profiles." (The executive summary, available online lists the "top five tips".) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Stuff.co.nz reports that a New Zealand Parliament IP was blocked after attempts by a staffer for New Zealand MP Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga to remove material the MP's Wikipedia article. Asked for comment, Lotu-Iiga described Wikipedia as "an open forum for people to sabotage or write remarks about politicians".--ragesoss (talk) 04:39, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for mentioning the proposal to move the [edit] button in the Signpost of 25 May. I'd appreciate it if another mention could be given in the next edition of Signpost. I appreciate it may be too late for tomorrow's edition, so would be happy with next weeks edition. This issue needs the input of as many editors as possible. Mjroots (talk) 06:05, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Another article on the David Boothroyd story. Currently the 2nd most read article on independent.co.uk, and wrong in countless ways. Choice quotes include "Wikimedia UK, the British arm of the American company" [37] the wub "?!" 09:50, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
I haven't been following the Scientology case in much detail, or, indeed, The Signpost's coverage of it, but a link on Milhist took me to this New York Times report, published yesterday (Sunday), which seems (to me) to be more balanced that some of the reports that came out in the hours after the decision. They've got interviews, and seem to be more factually correct (blocks vs. bans; right to appeal). - Jarry1250 (t, c) 11:40, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
Don't know if anyone noticed or if I should go elsewhere with this one. User:Jeanfuzzy made their first and so far only edit on Talk:Main Page at 01:36 on 8 June 2009. The edit in question concerned "some articles" about Picasso, "such as some erotic drawings and a picture of three naked women standing up". The user asked if they might keep them or dump them and said they had received them after a friend had passed away... innocent enough, until I read this less than twenty-four hours later. Obviously I'm aware that the user may have indulged in a prank or maybe has no relationship with this at all but I thought I would point it out nonetheless... the theft was apparently discovered today though... the item has since been removed from Talk:Main Page by another user who felt it did not have any connection to the Main Page... --candle•wicke 23:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if you saw it, but Google News is apparently experimenting with links to Wikipedia. -- Luk talk 13:04, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
RfC and Register story. Cla68 (talk) 05:48, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Wrote a post for ReadWriteWeb on the design/mockups from the initiative, and the potential for improvements to affect more than just Wikipedia. (Read here) Steven Walling (talk) 23:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet hails Wikipedia's up to date coverage and admonishes universities and colleges to allocate resources to improve Wikipedia.[38] Siawase (talk) 11:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
This recent report (or a summary) might be interesting to your readers: User:Aetheling/Vandalism survival. —Aetheling (talk) 18:31, 16 June 2009 (UTC).
[39] (CNN). hmwithτ 14:54, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
This massively increases the number of topics Wikipedia can now cover in accordance with the WP:GNG. Free access for UK students, some public libraries and some foreign institutions. Skomorokh 08:22, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
-- Taku (talk) 02:27, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
An up and coming project aiming to cover and index every element of human knowledge. Outlines function like a contents, outlining all wikipedia has to offer on that topic. Having created outlines for all main topics and countries and US states etc. we plan to continue building, in collaboration with relevant wikiprojects and slowly link outlines into the mainspace.
For a list of hundreds of outlines, see Portal:Contents/Outline of knowledge. For more information (including why does Wikipedia need outlines? and what are outlines?) see Wikipedia:WikiProject Outline of knowledge, contact me or speak to User:The Transhumanist.
Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 11:30, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
On the offchance that Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Self electing groups is going strong by the time of you next issue, could you include it please? I'm conscious that not everybody reads the village pump or other notcieboards where I've just spammed this. MickMacNee (talk) 15:19, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Two IP editors (69.226.103.13 and 213.214.136.54) raised the alarm that a bot (User:Anybot) have created thousands of algae articles with incorrect and/or factual information errors. OhanaUnitedTalk page 15:34, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
If anyone is interested in writing it, I think it might be useful to have a Signpost piece about MeatballWiki and its relevance to the Wikipedia community. Lots of newer users are not familiar with it, so a sort of guide or overview of important insights would be worthwhile, I think.--ragesoss (talk) 17:09, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
As well as drag and drop video placement, according to MIT's Technology Review. Already picked up in Reuters. I imagine that there is discussion on some email list. I'm mainly interested in hearing how the devs plan on implementing this without massive 2 Girls 1 Cup vandalism. - BanyanTree 23:30, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
Sanford to Minneapolis? Not really more than a mention, but... -mattbuck (Talk) 09:47, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Since you guys are going to cover the license switch, I thought you might be interested in this. Don't know if it is needed; CZ has only about 1000 approved articles, and many of their counterparts here in Wikipedia are already well-developed. (The exception being for instance Ancient Celtic music and Augustin Louis Cauchy, two articles greatly expanded with CZ materials.) -- Taku (talk) 10:54, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
There is an RFC about a proposal for a bot to unlink some dates. There is already discussion in the RFC, but we could sure use some fresh voices. Date delinking has a small effect on each article, but affects many, so it is something the community should be aware of. --Apoc2400 (talk) 11:43, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Due to Michael Jackson's death, various websites were overloaded from numerous visitors. This CNN article talks about Jackson's Wikipedia article and the number of revisions in the first 24 hours as well as vandalism to his page. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 18:56, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anybot's algae articles resulted in the deletion of 4077 articles; possibly the largest successful bulk AfD ever? Hesperian 00:38, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Very interesting article in The New York Times about their efforts to keep news of reporter David Rohde's kidnapping by the Taliban in May 2008 out of the press. The history of the David_S._Rohde (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) article is illuminating, as is the NOINDEXING of the article's talk page without explanation. Ominous portents. Skomorokh 04:00, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, if no other news organization has reported on the abduction, how can it be reflected in the BLP article without reliable sources? I think Wikipedia's policies would (or should) work here as it stands even without Jimbo's intervention. --seav (talk) 05:27, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Presumably everyone has noticed that we're approaching three million articles. Surprisingly there wasn't a three millionth topic pool, so I've created it: Wikipedia:Three-millionth topic pool. Stevage 05:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
On August 6-7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting the GLAM Wiki as part of the leadup Wikimedia Australia is running the GLAM Challenge. The challenge which is open to all editors not just Australians, purpose is to improve article content and we are offering real prizes which will be posted to the winners. Gnangarra 12:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)