After weeks of discussion and wishes from the Wikipedia community, the developers unveiled a new log for Wikipedia this week. The new-user creation log, developed by Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, lets Wikipedians monitor when someone registers an account. The new log can be accessed at Special:Log/newusers, and also appears in the Recent Changes.
The response to the log was immediate and positive. "Wonderful," Shimgray called it at the village pump. Antandrus commented at the administrator's noticeboard, "I love it! [It lets you] swat the baddies as they go by."
The community had been clamoring for such a log for many weeks, because of the Willy On Wheels presence. Willy's tactics involved creating multiple accounts, most with "on Wheels" or "Milk" in the user names. The accounts would then be left alone for a certain time period, until the accounts could move pages. (A page-move restriction was introduced to combat Willy; new users must wait a certain amount of time before they have the ability to move pages.) Many of the so-called "sleeper accounts" would then be activated at once, and then the page-move vandalism would start. Thus, with the new log, the accounts can now be spotted easily and blocked before the time period for moves has elapsed, giving the vandal no chance to incur much damage.
The log was proven effective immediately, as several new users (including reincarnations of Willy on Wheels and Milkman) were banned moments after they created accounts. In addition, the new-users log also allows welcomers to more easily greet new Wikipedians as soon as they have registered.
There were multiple new developments in the fight against mass vandalism this week. In response to the well-known Willy on Wheels vandal and the Love Virus vandal (who has been identified as MARMOT, a user banned by the Arbitration Committee), several tools and methods were created, all designed to combat the vandalism.
The first development was the creation of a new user log (see related story), which enables Wikipedians to monitor account creations and registrations, and then subsequently block all vandals. Another development was implemented days before the user creation log; Curps programmed a bot that would automatically block any user who attempted a certain number of page moves per minute.
This bot was designed to stop Willy on Wheels automated page moving. While the bot faced controversy, mainly because it did not undergo the official bot registration process, others argued that it was an emergency, and that it called for drastic action. The bot proved effective as well, blocking several Willy on Wheels accounts soon after they started moving pages at a fast rate. However, the bot was also responsible for blocking at least one legitimate user who was reverting page moves. As a response, the bot's minimum page move per minute level to block was raised.
Also, Lupin began promoting his navigation popups, which can be added to a user's monobook. The pop-ups allow a user to hover the mouse over a link and produce a pop-up, with the opening paragraphs of the article or user page, and also have tools, such as move, watch, block, and protect. Thus, the pop-ups make blocking, protecting, and other maintenance functions easier to perform. The pop-ups can easily be installed and can be customized, leading to their growing popularity. Nichalp stated, "Nice tool... Wikipedia will never be the same again." Scimitar reflected Nichalp's comments, calling the tool "awesome". However, there were some initial bugs reported, though most of them were cleared up immediately.
After many pleas from new users to make the addition of copyright tags simpler, and from the experienced users forever trying to catch up with the number of untagged, unsourced images, Eloquence has announced on the Village Pump news section that Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason has added a new feature to MediaWiki: When users upload a file, they now have the option to choose the license they want to use from a dropdown box. The licenses available can be edited at MediaWiki:Licenses, as a structured list which lists licenses in the form template name|descriptive label.
Users are invited to help to complete this list to include the most important image copyright tags.
The Wikimedia fundraising drive ended late Thursday, with the final tally of $243,930 USD, more than 20% over the initial goal.
A minor edit war resulted after the goal was surpassed, when administrators argued over whether linking to the Red Cross or other charities from the fundraising sitenotice was prudent, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The argument ended when Jimbo Wales removed the links, and ordered other users not to add it back.
The fundraising drive started on 19 August, aiming to pay for the significant server costs, which have risen dramatically recently.
Wikipedia entered the Alexa Top 50 recently. Alexa is a company that tracks traffic for all users using their toolbar. As of press time, Wikipedia was sitting directly in 50th place, ahead of sites such as MapQuest, the Japanese MSN portal, and Overture.
The Wikiversity project, which currently resides on Wikibooks, is entertaining a vote to move to wikiversity.org, which currently hosts a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. The vote will last until 1 November.
Reuters featured "News junkies find Wikipedia more than encyclopedia", a 6 September article about how "the rising status of the site as the Web's intellectual demilitarized zone, the favored place people look for background on an issue or to settle a polemical dispute, also poses challenges for the volunteer ethic that gave it rise." It includes quotes from Jimbo Wales. Many other news agencies, including CNN Online and The Register, ran the article verbatim or wrote articles derived from the Reuters piece.
"Wiki Mania" is the cover story in the September issue of Florida Trend, "The Magazine of Florida Business". The article includes a profile of Jimbo Wales and an examination of the history and significance of Wikipedia and Wikicities.
Three articles about Wikipedia were printed in prominent French newspaper Le Monde in September. "Wikipedia, une encyclopédie libertaire sur le Net (Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia on the Net)" examines the history and philosophy of the project. "Trois questions à Jimmy Wales (Three questions for Jimmy Wales)", asks why Wales founded the project, what the wiki system is, and how the community resolves ideological differences. "Un défi pour les dictionnaires Larousse ou Robert (A challenge for the Larousse or Robert dictionaries)" discusses the competition Wikipedia may present to traditional French reference sources in the future.
FindLaw's Writ ran a commentary by John Dean on 9 September entitled "Doing Legal, Political, and Historical Research on the Internet: Using Blog Forums, Open Source Dictionaries, and More". Dean discussed the utility of "open source information", including Wikipedia, blogs, and the TPM Café. He also mentions an alleged error in his own article, which has since been properly attributed and described by Ummit and an anonymous user.
JURIST used Wikipedia as a background reference for the Posse Comitatus Act, in their 9 September article "Katrina response has US lawmakers reconsidering Posse Comitatus Act"
During Hurricane Katrina, private homeland security blogger W. David Stephenson said, "there's also a prominent disclaimer: '[...] Do not decide whether to leave your house, shelter, or vehicle based on Wikipedia information.' True enough, but I can also visualize a situation, if things get worse and the conventional media are knocked out, where the Wikipedia posts might be the most accurate." Public wisdom: Hurricane Katrina wikipedia article growing rapidly.
Editorsweblog.org discussed "How Wikipedia's rising recognition may affect newspapers" on September 9.
Alexandre Enkerli writes about "Deep Change in the Media? (Truth and Trust, Information, Knowledge)", mentioning the Wikipedia/Britannica comparison in debates of trust and authority.
Wikipedia was cited in the last week in the following publications:
9 users became admins and 1 was promoted to bureaucrat this week. Meanwhile 10 articles gained featured status.
Two requests for bureaucratship came to a close this week. Linuxbeak's nomination was unsuccessful, ending with 22 support votes, 13 oppose votes and 10 users remaining neutral. Many of the opposing and neutral voters cited his lack of time on Wikipedia as a reason. Nichalp was promoted with 46 support votes, 4 oppose votes and 3 neutrals.
Nine users were granted admin status this week - Phroziac (nom), Ulayiti (nom), Joolz (nom), Splash (nom), JIP (nom), Angr (nom), Ral315 (nom), Cedar-Guardian (nom) and Nickptar (nom).
Ten articles were featured this week - Ann Arbor, Michigan, Black Seminoles, History of Alaska, Pan American World Airways, Thunderball, Makuria, Formula One, KaDee Strickland, BBC television drama and Swedish allotment system. After the non promotion of the controversial Terri Schiavo article (currently protected) the discussions over its suitability for featured status and possible conflicts of interest continue on the featured article candidates talk page. Meanwhile the ever divisive Gay Nigger Association of America (nom) article is facing several objections, as well as objections to the objections.
There were 9 new featured pictures this week.
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There were no new featured lists this week.
The Arbitration Committee closed one case this week, after two consecutive weeks without a closed case. Also, a case was accepted against Ed Poor.
A case against Gabrielsimon (now editing as Gavin the Chosen) was closed on 4 September. The result was that both of Gabrielsimon's accounts, and any more that he may create, were banned for a month; also, a provision gave administrators the ability to ban Gabrielsimon for up to a month if they, "based on his edits and behavior, identify him and feel an additional month's ban may aid him him in gaining maturity." This provision expires after any six months without being blocked. A one-revert-per-article and three-revert limit per day were also added.
Gabrielsimon was accused of immature behavior (one instance included the insert of an HTML comment onto an article, where the comment consisted only of the word "Fnord"), edit wars, POV editing, 3RR violations, and revert wars. Gabrielsimon also was criticized for his lack of proper spelling and grammar.
A long running dispute over what critics say are "abuses of power" has gone to arbitration. The case, which originally started in the wake of Ed Poor's deletion of VfD (now AfD), has been taken up after another user, Fvw, offered to certify the basis for the RFArb (originally four users had done so, but three dropped their complaint after a conversation with Ed, leaving only UninvitedCompany as the sole initiator.)
Cases against -Ril-, Stevertigo, Rainbowwarrior1977, and an IP dubbed DotSix are in the evidence phase.
A request against Ultramarine has garnered four votes, the bare minimum for a RFAr to be accepted.
