With the arbitration caseload whittled down, activity was relatively slow last week with only one new case accepted and none of the existing cases being closed. (Since this column was missing for a few weeks, it will also briefly report on items that have yet to be covered).

On 4 May, the Arbitration Committee issued its decision in the case of Netoholic, which was opened as a separate case after a significant amount of evidence focusing on Netoholic's conduct was added to 172's case. The complaints focused on revert wars and non-productive behavior on a variety of issues, such as the use of meta-templates and a proposed system for de-adminship.

The arbitrators found that Netoholic engaged in revert wars and consistently assumed bad faith on the part of those disagreeing with him, thus creating "a bad working atmosphere". They also acknowledged that on the meta-templates issue he "was arguably completely technically correct — but he interacted so negatively with others that he actually convinced people he was not". Because the disputes generally involved questions of policy development, the arbitrators avoided settling the underlying issues, leaving those for the community or the developers to resolve. Instead, the decision focused on Netoholic's "editing habits and interactions with others".

The Committee enacted, with full agreement from all parties, an innovative remedy which the arbitrators called a "mentorship". The ruling provided that three mentors would have the authority to restrict Netoholic's editing as they deemed necessary, but that they should also work to assist Netoholic's communication and interactions with other editors. The mentors assigned are Grunt, Kim Bruning, and Raul654 (Grunt and Raul654, both Arbitrators, had both recused themselves from the case itself). The agreement indicated that the mentors would have a "free hand", and recommended that any future problems be referred to the mentors before taking action. Should mentorship prove unworkable, a contingency was included which would restrict Netoholic to one revert per day and prohibit him from editing the Wikipedia and template namespaces. This is suspended while mentorship is in effect.

The one new case opened last week was a complaint against Wareware, in which deeceevoice alleged that Wareware had directed a series of racial insults at her. Even with this, the Arbitration Committee currently has a total of only six cases open.

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The German Wikipedia this week became embroiled in something of a political scandal in the run-up to regional elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The elections were widely seen as a barometer of nationwide public opinion in advance of federal elections later this year, and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took the win from the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) after some 38 years in opposition in the region.

The scandal surrounded the Wikipedia entries for CDU Prime Ministerial candidate Jürgen Rüttgers and, to a lesser extent, SPD incumbent Peer Steinbrück. The entries saw a very large number of edits in the run-up to the election, many from anonymous IP addresses, and a number of passages critical of Rüttgers were removed by the anonymous users. In particular, sections of the article reporting a controversy in which the politician expressed his view that Catholicism and Christianity were superior to other religions were subject to removal and alteration.

Investigation of the IP address via reverse DNS look-up revealed that many originated within the Bundestag (German Parliament) in Berlin, with a substantial number also coming from Düsseldorf, capital of the region. All the edits looked to be attempting to insert a point of view into the article in an attempt, perhaps, to influence the election, breaking Wikipedia's policy on neutrality.

The edits from within the Bundestag led to the suspicion that party workers themselves were behind the attempts to manipulate Wikipedia content for political ends. However, tracing those responsible further than their location proved impossible, because of the way the parliament assigns its IP addresses. One IP may be used by any of the 600 members of parliament or their 6000 members of staff.

One attempt to pin down the suspect apparently didn't take this into account, and incorrectly pointed the finger at CDU parliamentarian Ole Schröder. Schröder was forced to issue a statement denying any involvement, and said those who had accused him of being responsible were 'uninformed'.

High-profile elections are always likely to trigger a flurry of edits to articles relating to them, and to prevent a similar kind of attempt at manipulation in the future, some Wikipedianer proposed that relevant political articles be protected during the week prior to the election. However, the idea did not gain favour, with others saying it was too severe a solution, and that instead, users should simply add the articles to their watchlists and monitor them carefully for signs of biased edits. Temporary protection of articles was not ruled out though.

Mathias Schindler asked on his blog that people back away from the gamesmanship and find better ways of occupying their time. Among his suggested alternatives was translating the respective articles into other languages instead of fighting over them; so far, no article exists in English for either candidate.

Wikipedia is unlikely to have played a crucial role in the outcome of the election, as Rüttgers defeated Steinbrück by a decisive margin of 44%-37%. The result was a blow to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has now said that he will call federal elections later this year, much earlier than originally expected.

A proposal to change Wikipedia policy on the format for presenting calendar years resulted in an apparent stalemate last week, ultimately leaving the status quo apparently unchanged despite lengthy and sometimes heated debate.

The basic suggestion was to adopt a style guideline that when identifying years, using BC and AD "represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view." Otherwise, the proposed guideline recommended that BCE and CE should be used instead.

The main policy proposal was formulated primarily by Slrubenstein as a potential addition to the Neutral point of view policy. He elaborated his ideas and presented the arguments both for and against it in considerable detail at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate, trying to rebut the arguments of the BC/AD side. The broader proposal grew out of a debate on Talk:Jesus about how to handle the problem of dates there. Many of the basic arguments had already been raised in that discussion, along with points specific to the Jesus article.

As implied by its presentation, the primary argument made for changing the policy was that the literal meanings of the abbreviations BC ("Before Christ") and AD ("Anno Domini") were ultimately not neutral. It was also claimed that the BCE/CE alternative was increasingly prevalent, or had already become standard, in scholarly academic writing.

Opponents of the proposal expressed doubt that BCE/CE was actually neutral, contending that it too promoted a particular viewpoint and in any case merely papered over the system's Christian origins. Accordingly, they argued that considerations of neutrality favored using BC/AD as the most widely recognized system, similar to the way naming conventions are typically handled. Silversmith cited an email she had received from the Encyclopedia Britannica explaining their policy. It stated, "Britannica uses the BC-AD method of designating centuries because it is the most commonly accepted and widely used system for most of the world", noting a few special circumstances where exceptions are made (Encarta uses BC and AD as well).

Rapid editing during the discussion produced some edit conflicts and a few flare-ups over how the page was maintained, while the debate also extended to the mailing list. The latest results of the voting showed a slight majority favoring BC/AD, or at least the existing practice whereby both forms are allowed. By contrast, a similar poll on Talk:Jesus had the majority running the other way.

An alternative technical solution of allowing different dating systems to be displayed according to user preferences was also brought up, and later even voted on in a separate poll. As Eloquence pointed out, however, "Voting on features on the wiki is unlikely to get anything done." He advised instead that anyone interested pursue this as a feature request on Bugzilla, although it is uncertain whether any developers would actually want to work on this.

Unless something new develops, it appears that the situation with BC/AD vs. BCE/CE may settle into a rough compromise, in much the way spelling variations among different forms of English are handled. That is, either form would be acceptable so long as the usage is consistent, and one would only be preferred over the other when appropriate to the topic at hand (thus, an article dealing with the history of a non-Christian religion might prefer BCE/CE, assuming the dates go back far enough that disambiguation is even necessary).

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Amid considerable debate among librarians about their experiences with Wikipedia, a new WikiProject to coordinate their efforts as Wikipedia contributors started last week. The project attracted additional discussion and a significant number of participants have already joined in.

The immediate impetus for the debate came from librarian-blogger Jenny Levine, who related her negative experience in trying to add an external link to a Wikipedia article about The Da Vinci Code, one that would allow readers to find libraries with a copy of the book. Comments on the subject spread to other blogs and mailing lists, and eventually a WikiProject for librarians was started by Peter Binkley last Monday.

In addition, Jeff Pomerantz, a library science professor at the University of North Carolina, had earlier posted some reflections on a presentation held at the school about Wikipedia. Pomerantz said the presentation changed his thinking on the subject when he realized that collaborative editing fundamentally resembles the academic peer review process. Observing that people will undoubtedly continue using Wikipedia, sometimes naively unaware of issues about its accuracy, he concluded that librarians have a "professional responsibility to make Wikipedia a reliable information source."

Luke Rosenberger recounted how the discussion prompted him to become an active Wikipedia contributor. Word continued to spread and a number of other people signed up for the WikiProject, both old hands and those new to Wikipedia. Pomerantz also signed up, commenting, "I have just joined this project, and so should you." Several other librarian-bloggers posted about the project, and it has even gotten attention from the media, as both Binkley and Rosenberger were contacted by producers at the new public radio program Open Source for its show on Wikipedia (see related story - although they were not used in the segments actually aired).

At the same time, some people were voicing concern about the rhetoric of "invading Wikipedia" and how such attitudes might be received. Richard Akerman and Jessamyn West blogged about the need for librarians to adapt to Wikipedia's culture as well. One initial concern was the organization of Wikipedia:Book sources, which is linked whenever a book's ISBN number is wikified. It was generally agreed that the page is a "nightmare", and it was partially a misunderstanding over Wikipedia practices and the function of the page that prompted the discussion initially.

Another task for the project is rewriting the article on digital reference services, which participant Stephen Francoeur had previously complained was partially plagiarized from his website.

Joe Mabel noted that librarians have skills that can be helpful to Wikipedia both in terms of organizing information and evaluating whether or not sources are credible. Another area in which connections between Wikipedia and librarians are important is simply in terms of their using and recommending it as a reference tool. Although not himself a librarian, Mabel has worked on reaching out to librarians and helped start a guide to researching with Wikipedia last year.

Wikipedia's level of acceptance among librarians has long been a particular focus of attention, as librarians are frequently quoted by the media when discussing Wikipedia and they can have a special influence on perceptions of Wikipedia's credibility. Considerable discussion resulted last August when an article in the Syracuse Post-Standard quoted local librarian Susan Stagnitta on what she told her students about Wikipedia, using the headline "Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as a source".

Some libraries have already found Wikipedia a useful outlet to more widely distribute information they have special expertise in; for example, the library system for Barnet (a borough of London) reports having a project to add local historical information about the area to Wikipedia. As further evidence of interest in Wikipedia among librarians, project participant Neschek reported landing a librarian job "in part because of a well-received talk I made last year on Wikipedia and wikis in general."

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Additional data on Wikipedia's growing traffic was reported last week, as it showed the second-largest percentage gain among all internet sites for the month of April.

In a report from comScore Media Metrix, the Wikipedia sites showed a 40.9% growth in the number of unique visitors from March to April (5,413,000 to 7,626,000). In percentage terms, this placed behind only Major League Baseball's site at mlb.com, whose traffic increase can be explained by the opening of the baseball season.

The comScore data focuses only on internet activity for the United States. Based on comScore's figure of 164 million internet users, this means that 4.65% of all people in the US who used the internet in April visited Wikipedia (or 2.58% of the total US population, using the latest estimates).

With its information limited to US traffic, comScore shows Wikipedia coming in exactly at #100 when ranked according to the number of unique visitors. However, rankings that take worldwide internet traffic into account show Wikipedia placing higher, suggesting that its appeal is even greater outside the US.

According to Alexa traffic rankings, Wikipedia is now solidly in the top 100 internet sites, with its traffic over a three-month period standing at 88th. Furthermore, a number of the sites ranked by Alexa are not focused on the US and do not figure in the comScore report. Among English-language sites, Alexa now ranks Wikipedia in the top 50 at 48th.

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Do you like sharing what you know with eager young minds? Do you like the idea of writing for children? Are you looking for new ways to contribute to Wikimedia's work? If so, Wikijunior needs you. Wikimedia's project to create a series of educational books for children has stagnated after the initial surge of activity following its founding in November, 2004.

The project's story began when we were approached in October, 2004 by the Beck Foundation, which was interested in sponsoring educational materials for children. They offered Wikimedia a $10,000 grant to help in creating this content. The resulting project was tentatively named Wikijunior, and started in November 2004. It was decided that initially, we would concentrate on three books: Big Cats, South America, and The Solar System.

However, while the project has amassed a long list of interested participants, the number of Wikimedians who have made substantial contributions is small. The three initial books were intended to be only a starting point, but after six months none are near completion.

The Solar System project is closest. All of its pages have substantial content, and there is a standardized format across its pages. Some pages, like the glossary, are still incomplete, but most of the needed information is in place. Work still remains in polishing and fact-checking, and in making sure the pages are easy enough for kids to read.

Big Cats has made some progress, but still has a long way to go. Four out of its eleven pages have nothing but an external link or a picture, and all of its pages need expanding. South America has barely even started: only 6 of its 19 pages have any content at all, and one of those was written by your fearless reporter while researching this story.

What does this all mean? It means we need some dedicated editors to spend some time over on Wikibooks, helping get Wikijunior on its feet. This is a good opportunity to spread the Wikimedia name to a new area, and we've received a grant specifically for this work. We can't let it sputter out.

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