I continue to get lots of positive feedback from many people about The Signpost, and it's gratifying to know that so many interested readers enjoy our efforts. Erik Zachte, who told me he only discovered The Signpost after I wrote an article about the return of his Wikipedia statistics, called it, "Another proof that Wikipedia is just too large to keep track of all new interesting developments." I might add, also another proof of why we need something like The Signpost.
As I've pointed out before, I can't do this alone, and I thank all those who have passed on news tips or written the occasional story. In particular, I appreciate Worldtraveller's dedication in writing regular articles about Wikipedia's press coverage. With all of the important news over the past week, much of this week's issue is his work.
One of the particular problems with anything that's a "one-man show" is how to continue the show without that person. After next week's issue, I will be traveling in Europe on vacation, and for about a month I won't have much computer access. That means I won't be available to write several articles each week as I have been doing, but I'm hoping that the community remains interested in keeping The Signpost going during my absence.
The primary goal of Wikipedia is to work on the encyclopedia, and I don't want to undermine that. One of the reasons The Signpost exists is to save people from having to spend as much time tracking down all of the community news personally, so they have more time for the real work. If several people would each commit to writing just one article a week for The Signpost, we could easily cover as much news as I manage to do on my own. Please contact me if you are interested in helping.
In an announcement this week, Yahoo! and the Wikimedia Foundation revealed that the search company was to provide substantial technical and financial support to the Foundation, the parent body of Wikipedia, Wikinews and several other Wikimedia projects. Yahoo! will be providing free hosting for Wikipedia content at one of its Asian facilities, a move that should greatly assist the growth of the project in the region.
David Mandelbrot, Yahoo's vice president of search content, was quoted by Reuters as saying that Yahoo's backing was worth "several hundred thousand dollars". Discussing the agreement in entry on Yahoo's blog, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation Jimmy Wales said "Yahoo's generous donation to our cause … will have a huge impact on our ability to get our message of sharing knowledge out to the world".
Wales also stressed that the donation was purely charitable, with no strings attached. "[There are] no requirements for us to show advertising, and no ownership or control of our work by Yahoo of any kind. Yahoo is simply enthusiastic about the goodness of our work".
At the same time as its support for the Wikimedia Foundation was announced, Yahoo was also starting to introduce a facility to provide abstracts of Wikipedia entries above normal search results. The return of 'shortcuts' to Wikipedia content above the rest of the search results was rolled out first on the French Yahoo (see this example), and will be extended over the next few weeks to other languages for users in Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the USA.
The reason this new feature was introduced on Yahoo's French-language site was because the idea came out of discussions between Wikimedia Trustee Florence Devouard and Yahoo staff in France. Jimmy Wales said that the integration of Wikipedia information into Yahoo search results was even more exciting than the hosting offer, saying that it represented "recognition of the value of our work in enhancing the experience of Yahoo visitors".
Previously, news had leaked that the Wikimedia Foundation was in talks with Google, Yahoo's competitor in the search engine business, with a view to arranging a similar deal (see archived stories). Jimmy Wales said that those talks still continue. Google has also recently begun to provide excerpts from Wikipedia articles with some search results – prefacing a search term with "who is" on google.com returns biographical details from Wikipedia where available; for example, Who is Ricky Tomlinson?.
In contrast with the Google negotiations, the Foundation managed to keep information about the Yahoo offer from getting out prior to the announcement. After the news was made public, Wikimedia Trustee Angela noted that "this offer had remained relatively private until today".
Yet another new article went rapidly to featured article status last week, as Automatic number plate recognition sped through the process in near-record time.
Started on 28 March at 00:40 (UTC) by Violetriga, Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) got some early exposure from being added to the "Did you know" template for the Main Page. Two days after creation, Violetriga submitted the article for peer review. After incorporating comments and making some additional expansion, she nominated it for featured article status on 3 April, and it was promoted last Friday, 8 April, at 03:19 (UTC).
Having completed this achievement, Violetriga wondered if ANPR had set a new speed record. Great Lakes Storm of 1913, which previously passed through after only 14 days (see archived story), was suggested as being the existing record. However, raising the issue prompted additional investigation to reveal several other articles that went even more quickly from creation to qualifying as featured.
ALoan compiled a table showing the quickest promotions, including their time of creation, the nomination for featured article status, and the time they were each promoted (see the talk page for the full table and discussion). The recordholder for shortest elapsed time proved to be Pioneer Zephyr, one of the train articles developed by slambo and other train enthusiasts, which was promoted after only 6 days, 0 hours, and 13 minutes of existence. ANPR was only fourth on the list, behind also Kreutz Sungrazers and Japanese toilet.
Worldtraveller observed that Pioneer Zephyr had been promoted after an abnormally brief stay on the featured article candidates page. Pioneer Zephyr received featured article status 2 March, only three days after being nominated (possibly due to someone forgetting that February is shorter than other months). In comparison, the second-fastest promotion, Kreutz Sungrazers, which he himself worked on, had remained on the page for five days, which is the normal minimum time period. Worldtraveller concluded that "if PZ had been left for the normal 5 days, I'd be the true winner by a day and a half".
Joining in the good-natured rivalry, Bishonen added her comment, "When I saw the heading [the section heading on the talk page was "New→featured record?"], I naturally assumed excellence was imputed to the longest time from new to Featured". Presumably she felt that articles which took longer to ferment and develop could be considered even more superior. Anyway, Bishonen pointed out that some of the articles she had helped bring to featured status dated back as far as 1911 (since they had replaced original text from the Encyclopædia Britannica's 11th edition).
The competition also prompted some concern about people holding back contributions in order to compete for this "record", and losing the benefit of more time for collaboration. Others mentioned that any work to produce more featured articles should be inherently positive for Wikipedia. The pros and cons of tracking who has produced the most featured articles were also discussed. In the end, either is much like edit counting, and not worth worrying too much about.
ZDNet.co.uk reported Archived 2005-04-07 at the Wayback Machine this week on the efforts of the English Wikipedia to produce a DVD release of the encyclopaedia. Wikimedia Foundation president Jimmy Wales told the magazine that a lot of work remained to be done before a DVD release would be possible, but he hoped it would be available by the end of 2005.
The German Wikipedia is ahead of the English in terms of off-line releases, having produced its first DVD edition last year. Its second edition has just been released, selling on Amazon for €9.90, and the site received over 8,000 pre-orders in advance of the release date. The DVD is currently the 8th best seller on German Amazon, and German Wikipedianer are planning to release further DVDs every six months.
Jimmy Wales said it was easier to produce a German edition from a size perspective, as all the text and images in the English Wikipedia would barely fit on two DVDs. The English DVD edition is likely to omit stubs and also omit or reduce the size of most images, to allow the content to fit on one disk.
The Boston Herald this week looked at the Wikipedia phenomenon, in a column by its 'bookmark diva' Stephanie Schorow. The column confused its etymology, stating that wiki software took its name from Wikipedia rather than the other way round, but Schorow seemed impressed that Wikipedia had not collapsed into anarchy due to competing know-it-alls. She described it as a "friend to scholars, bar-bet settlers and high school juniors on Sunday night with papers due Monday", and a "big beautiful Internet group hug".
Schorow praised the self-selecting contributors to the self-correcting encyclopaedia, but also had a quick look at Uncyclopedia, a satirical take on Wikipedia, where "like those other wikis, readers can add or edit their entries, with gleeful disregard of fact".
An article in British newspaper The Guardian gave a nod to Douglas Adams' role as possible inspiration for Wikipedia. The article which was discussing the tortuous 20-year journey of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from book to big screen, also looked at some of the multi-talented author's other projects. h2g2 was described as his labour of love, and the column suggested it anticipated the rise of Wikipedia, describing itself as "like an encyclopaedia only better, because all the entries are written by people like you".
The scope and influence of Wikipedia spreads ever wider. This week, an article in the New Straits Times of Malaysia [1] cited the case of an MP who, struggling to recruit researchers, was doing his own research on Wikipedia. Tan Kok Wai, the member for Cheras in the state of Selangor, was making use of a Wikipedia article on global warming in advance of a parliamentary debate on the subject.
Other citations this week included right wing website theconservativevoice.com quoting Wikipedia on the Separation of Church and State [2]; the Star Tribune making use of chinese wall in an article about the widening US trade deficit [3]; and the Hawaii Reporter quoting from Hawaiian Creole English in an article about the difficulties faced in Hawaii by those who speak the local Pidgin [4].
With no new cases accepted in the past week, the Arbitration Committee made some progress in terms of housekeeping to close a few matters, and also issued temporary injunctions in a couple of its current cases.
One of the injunctions came in the case against Irate, which had been accepted last week but not yet formally opened. Complaints about Irate's behavior had been ongoing for several weeks, leading to a request for comment and finally the request for arbitration. According to the statement of the complaint in the request for comment, Irate has a habit of "making vicious and highly insulting personal attacks" against a number of users with little or no provocation.
After the arbitration request was accepted, the situation escalated last Wednesday when Irate began alleging vandalising, through an IP address, categories related to Liverpool. On Thursday, he created his own requests for comment against several users, leading to a block, a flurry of discussion on the mailing list, and renewed activity on the arbitration case. Within minutes, the arbitrators passed a temporary injunction banning Irate from editing Wikipedia outside of his user and user talk pages, along with the arbitration pages related to his case. He was then unblocked in order to present his case.
Also, last Thursday the Arbitration Committee passed a temporary injunction prohibiting Netoholic from reverting pages in the Wikipedia namespace, requiring that he discuss matters on talk pages instead.
On Sunday, the Committee issued a decision regarding GRider, who had been accused of disrupting the deletion process in order to make a point. Judging from their comments, the arbitrators seemed to consider this a fairly mild case. They dealt with the matter relatively quickly and limited their ruling to covering only a few points.
The decision noted that GRider had made a number of frivolous nominations to delete articles, and had engaged in revert wars to prevent the results of decisions reached on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion from being implemented. As a sanction, the ruling provided that GRider would be "prohibited from editing any deletion-related page" for a year, subject to being blocked for up to a week for violations.
The remaining cases closed amounted mostly to cleaning up loose ends, as the matters involved had already been largely settled last week. For example, the list of sockpuppets associated with Osmanoglou still had to be compiled before the final ruling involving Tabib and Rovoam (see archived story) was issued.
The Wikimedia Foundation last week approved its privacy policy after two years of development. Although not a truly finished product, it apparently has progressed far enough along to be adopted officially.
On Sunday, Wikimedia Trustee Anthere reported that the Board of Trustees had approved the latest draft of the privacy policy at its last meeting. Translation of the policy into other languages is currently underway.
The privacy policy was originally drafted on Meta in February 2003, but progress in getting it adopted has been slow since then. At various points, efforts have been made to further develop and improve the policy, which has produced the current version of the text.
The policy explains what information is collected by the Wikimedia servers and how this information is handled. Most of the focus is on identifiable information that can be associated with editors, although it acknowledges that the viewing of pages is also logged, primarily for statistical purposes. It also explains briefly how IP addresses, user accounts, and the relationships between them are handled.
All of the information collected is available to the developers for technical purposes. The policy states that it will not be released except with permission, when legally required, under certain circumstances to deal with abuse, or when "necessary to protect the rights, property or safety of the Wikimedia Foundation, its users or the public."
Addressing the issues raised recently with some users disclosing their account passwords (see archived stories), the policy states, "All users are encouraged to select strong passwords and to never share them. No one shall knowingly expose the password of another user to public release either directly or indirectly."
Immediately following the announcement, a number of people read the policy and found various corrections that needed to be made. Trustee Angela explained that the adoption of the policy as "official" was intended "to encourage people to actually look at it and comment on it since it's been basically ignored for months". Appropriate changes will still be incorporated into the official text of the policy on the Foundation's website.
Microsoft Encarta this week announced that it was adding the facility for users to suggest updates and revisions to its encyclopaedia articles. In the first post to its new blog Archived 2005-04-09 at the Wayback Machine, editorial director Gary Alt said that by allowing users to contribute to articles, the company hoped to combine the advantages of the traditional publishing model, "with its emphasis on fact-checking, consistency, readability, and objectivity" to the "enormous knowledge of our vast user base". Encarta program manager Aaron Patterson said they were interested in creating "a thriving community of people that are passionate about building a great reference source". Information on the new innovation can be found at Encarta's feedback page.
Every article in Encarta's online edition now has a link marked 'edit this article', as well as a form at the bottom for feedback other than suggested edits. Although the process has superficial similarities to the wiki editing process at Wikipedia, there are some fundamental differences.
Edits will not show up immediately, unlike "open-content encyclopedias found elsewhere on the Web", as Encarta's announcement puts it. Instead, suggestions will pass through a review process, with researchers checking the facts, an editor assessing readability and organization, and proofreaders ensuring conformity with the encyclopaedia's style guide. Encarta has employed graduate students from the University of Washington Information School as fact-checkers, and says it may consider expanding the pool of researchers to the Encarta community.
The encyclopaedia estimates that for a suggestion to go live would typically take several weeks, and longer for substantial suggestions. Encarta do not guarantee that any contribution will be adopted, and cannot notify users if or when their suggestions are adopted. The process currently only allows suggestions regarding existing articles, but the possibility of allowing users to suggest new articles is "under consideration for the future".
Microsoft's information pages about the new process do not explicitly state the conditions of use granted by users who suggest changes, but their general site-wide terms of use Archived 2005-11-03 at the Wayback Machine specify that users providing materials to Microsoft grant the corporation permission to "use, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, modify, translate and reformat" the submission.
Encarta does not guarantee to attribute any suggestions it uses, and edits can be made anonymously, but users who provide a nickname may have their contribution noted on the encyclopaedia's "What's new" page.
A Wikinews article on the news from Microsoft contained an interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who said he doubted that the venture would pose any threat to Wikipedia's continually growing reputation. He was not convinced that many people would be tempted to make use of the new facilities, asking "Who wants to volunteer to make Microsoft even richer, when they can volunteer at Wikipedia and make the world a better place?". In a post on his blog, he noted the difference between submitting work for free distribution under the GFDL for Wikipedia, and signing away contributions for Microsoft's exclusive use. "I wonder what the most talented and dedicated people will choose. :-)", he said.
Wikipedians were also unpersuaded. In discussion on the wikipedia-l mailing list, Anthere said the review process was reminiscient of Nupedia's, while Pcb21 noted that the oblique reference on Encarta's feedback information page to "open-content encyclopedias found elsewhere on the Web" was "a not-so-subtle hint that this feature has been brought about by Wikipedia".
A thread on Slashdot discussed the news, with comments generally being unfavourable. Posts to Microsoft's blog on the topic were more varied. One user sarcastically said "Wow, letting users suggest changes to an encyclopedia is a really good idea. I'm surprised that no one else thought of this before!", while another said the idea was "a rip-off of Wikipedia". Other comments were more positive, with users saying it was "a really cool development", and "very interesting".
Wikipedia will be represented at another conference this week, as Wikimedia Foundation trustee Florence Devouard attends an event focusing on what some are calling the "dot-org boom".
Over the coming week, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland will host PixelACHE 2005, a "festival of electronic arts and subcultures". The main theme of the event is the "Dot Org Boom", characterized as a non-profit counterpart to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.
As part of the pre-festival activities, Wikipedia will be featured in a seminar at the Finnish Embassy in Stockholm on Tuesday, 12 April. The morning session, which is on "Amateurs taking the role of the journalists and experts", will include a presentation by Devouard on Wikipedia, along with a presentation from Muslim media activist Naeem Mohaiemen.
The main portion of the festival in Helsinki runs from 14 April to 17 April. The schedule for this Saturday, 16 April, also includes Wikipedia's participation in a seminar on the dot-org boom, along with several other participants including digitalopenandfree.org, a new project being launched as part of the festival.
Devouard indicated that Wikipedians are welcome to attend the events, and while registration is required it is free of charge.
