The recent block of Wikipedia access within the mainland People's Republic of China (see archived story) continued this past week. Meanwhile, new information began to appear, suggesting that PRC internet regulators may be using this opportunity to support the launch of a fork of Wikipedia content. At the same time, technical workarounds for the block have been devised, although reports indicated that they were not effective for very long.
On 29 October, Ting Chen (User:Wing on the Chinese-language Wikipedia) pointed to the existence of www.wikicn.com, a site calling itself Wiki China that has copied much of the Chinese Wikipedia. The copying extended to user and talk pages, but gave no indication of the source and apparently did not comply with Wikipedia license terms. Reportedly some politically sensitive pages were excluded. Investigation showed that the domain was registered to an address in Dallas, Texas, but the site host's IP address indicated that it belonged to a Chinese ISP and traffic was being routed through China Telecom.
Both Ting Chen and Andrew Lih indicated that the timing for this site's appearance was, as Lih put it, "an interesting coincidence." The site was reportedly renamed from sopai.org just a day or two after Wikipedia was blocked. Ting Chen provided an update on 30 October, indicating that someone had apparently vandalized Wiki China and posted about it on the Chinese Wikipedia. However, attempts to access the site tend to produce errors, and the possibility was mentioned that it may be preventing access from non-Chinese IP addresses.
Wiki China's home page apparently indicated that it receives some kind of government support, which combined with the timing raises the possibility that this may be related to the blocking of Wikipedia. On the two previous occasions where Wikipedia has been blocked in the PRC, plausible explanations for the action have been found. One came near the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, while the second incident apparently was fallout from the shutdown of a political BBS. In this case, however, no such reason is evident, thus fueling speculation about possible hidden explanations such as the Wiki China connection.
A technical measure to deal with the block against Wikipedia was found for a brief period over the weekend. This took advantage of the recently added server cluster in Korea provided by Yahoo. Developer Tim Starling indicated on Sunday, 30 October, that he had deployed load balancing using Linux Virtual Server for the cluster's squid cache, which had the effect of changing the IP address. Since traffic from East Asia goes through the Korean cluster, this would potentially make Wikipedia accessible from mainland China again.
Starling reported that he had subsequently tested access to Wikipedia using a looking glass server in Beijing. Reports coming from actual Wikipedia users in mainland China confirmed that this was briefly successful, but apparently the PRC then blocked the new IP address as well. Starling added that the IP address change was made for technical reasons, not as a deliberate attempt to circumvent the block, since this might jeopardize petitions to have the PRC restore access.
Meanwhile, since this method has not proven effective, Wikipedia users in the PRC can resort to other options, such as the Tor network. Starling has also written some instructions on how this can be done, since Tor proxies are frequently banned to prevent vandalism.
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
Note: Due to the changes announced regarding the election procedure (see previous story), this week the Wikipedia Signpost will examine the many proposed reforms for the ArbCom.
Ever since the beginnings of the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, there have been calls for reform and many proposed changes not only to the ArbCom, but to the entire dispute resolution process. Along with the criticism of the committee, various proposals and reforms have been suggested since the ArbCom began operation.
One of these proposals involves creating a lower branch in the "judicial system" — in other words, have a body under the ArbCom that would screen cases, with the ArbCom hearing all appeals. Various names for this lower body have been suggested, the most recent being "magistrates". Proponents of this change argue that this would significantly lower the workload and stress for the ArbCom, as the lower body would resolve trivial disputes and rule on some matters that would not be appealed. In addition, supporters argue that the magistrates could be more easily replaced, as they would not occupy a seat as important as that on the ArbCom.
However, critics contend that having a lower-tier would indubitably introduce bias and unregularity into the dispute resolution system. They claim that nothing prevents disputants from appealing every case to the ArbCom; as a result, not only would the ArbCom have an increased workload from having to review the lower court's ruling, but the process would be extended out ever further.
A recent proposal by Michael Snow builds on those ideas. However, Snow proposes that magistrates would be appointed by Jimbo Wales, while the Arbitrators would be elected by the community. Because magistrates could be appointed at any time, the number of people serving in the lower-tier "court" could be expanded according to the needs of the community at the current time. However, Geni commented, "To be honest, this looks like an attempt to force a role for Jimbo into an area where he isn't really needed."
Another proposed reform requires increasing the number of Arbitrators. The theory behind this proposal is that the larger the ArbCom, the less work each individual member has to do. In addition, proponents say that this would effectively lower burnout and also make resignations and departures less likely to significantly affect the current operations of the ArbCom. Critics, though, say that an enlarged pool of Arbitrators will do nothing but increase bureaucracy, red tape, and inefficiency, while all Arbitrators will still have to review the same amount of material.
Enlarging the number of Arbitrators is also included in proposals that would change how cases are assigned. Supporters of these changes say that all the Arbitrators should be ranked in a queue. When an Arbitrator goes on break or becomes inactive, s/he goes to the back of the queue. The most active ArbCom members (i.e., those at the beginning of the queue) would take on the next case. Arbitrators would be able to move themselves to the back of the queue at any time. This would lower the workload of each individual Arbitrator, and also lower burnout, supporters say. The different ArbComs that hear each case, though, open the system up for inconsistency, critics counter.
Yet another proposal also involves an enlarged ArbCom, but with a structure more similar to the two-tiered proposal involving magistrates and arbitrators. This proposal lets the ArbCom be divided into several pools randomly; one pool would initially hear a case. If the disputants wished to appeal, then the case would be heard by the full ArbCom. Though supporters maintain that this change would also reduce workload and lower burnout, the random assignment of a case to one pool also introduces inconsistencies in the system, critics say.
Finally, one radical proposal involves a theoretically limitless number of Arbitrators. Instead of having elections or appointments for a set number of Arbitrators, Quadell proposed having Requests for Adminship-like votes for Arbitrators, and each person succeeding would serve on the ArbCom. Critics, though, argue that this change would make ArbCom too much of a "popularity contest", and that there may be too large a pool of Arbitrators to effectively accomplish anything.
Despite the majority of calls for reform centering on the ArbCom, there have also been proposals for involving the rest of the dispute resolution process. Changes have been suggested to involve the Mediation Committee (MedCom), Association of Member Advocates (AMA), and the Requests for Comment (RfC) avenues more heavily in dispute resolution. In fact, some have suggested simply emphasizing the MedCom as more of a lower-tier body, but without binding powers. In addition, calls have been made to the AMA to provide more effective advocates that would help streamline the process and thus reduce the workload for the ArbCom. In addition, the idea of having separate branches for content-related disputes and conduct-related disputes has also been proposed.
Throughout ArbCom's existence, there have been many calls for reform. As Wikipedia approaches the December 2005 elections, additional proposals to make the system more effective will undoubtably be presented.
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
Faced with growing uncertainty about the ArbCom elections process, Wikipedians both added their names into the candidate pool and withdrew their candidacy. This week, PZFUN (statement) and Tony Sidaway (statement) announced their candidacies, while Linuxbeak withdrew his candidacy, citing a lack of time and a desire to focus on article writing and editing.
Jimbo did not give any more details regarding the changes in the election, but limited debate began on both the mailing list and elections talk page regarding the changes, with both positive and negative feedback.
MediaWiki developers have begun plans to implement a variety of changes to improve the handling of images on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. These include the addition of a new image server, along with some changes to the MediaWiki software in order to improve performance.
Due to increasing loads, the image server has become progressively more sluggish over time. A new dedicated server has been ordered and will hopefully improve response times for images and other media files. In the meantime, uploads from the Wikimedia Commons have temporarily been moved to a separate machine to reduce the load.
Wikimedia Chief Technical Officer Brion Vibber indicated on the wikitech-l mailing list that he would start working on some software changes that should also help the situation. One element proposed was to put different revisions of the same file at different underlying URLs, to facilitate caching. This would not affect the way file names work for normal use by editors; image description pages are distinct from the URL of the file itself. However, it would help by preventing situations in which readers see the cached version of a vandalized image even after the vandalism has already been reverted.
The proposal received a generally positive reception. Tim Starling suggested that this might be a good opportunity to add an archive of deleted images. Doing so could reduce complaints about image deletion by allowing mistakes to be rectified easily; image deletion is one of the few actions administrators can perform that is not reversible. Vibber also posted some of the technical details regarding his proposed changes, which would become part of MediaWiki version 1.6.
The media continued its dissection of Wikipedia quality this week with a story in The Guardian, which brought in several experts who assigned ratings to an article apiece. On a scale ranging from 0 to 10, the ratings ranged from 0/10 at the very bottom to a more forgiving 8/10 at the top, with most coming in a bit below that mark.
The article, published on Monday, 24 October, was entitled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" Introducing the reviews, the story alluded to the recent coverage of Jimmy Wales' admission that some Wikipedia articles are "a horrific embarrassment" (see archived story).
The reviewers chosen were journalist Mike Barnes for Steve Reich, Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman on Haute couture, author Mark Kurlansky on Basque people, two biographers of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Pepys (Anthony Julius and Clair Tomalin, respectively), magazine editor Derek Barker on Bob Dylan, and Robert McHenry for the Encyclopedia article. McHenry, a former Encyclopædia Britannica editor whose best-known comment about Wikipedia has been to compare it with a public toilet, gave this article a 5/10, describing it as "a school essay, sketchy and poorly balanced."
In his critique of the article, McHenry commented that the equivalent Britannica article was about 26,000 words long, as compared to 2,000 on Wikipedia, noting the omission or inadequate treatment given several notable examples of the encyclopedia genre. However, Snowspinner argued that Wikipedia might actually have more content, since it has a number of separate articles on the encyclopedias discussed in Britannica, where they generally do not have their own articles. David Gerard added that this reflected Wikipedia's traditional 32KB limit (approximately 6,000 words), once enforced for technical reasons but still "a very good stylistic limit" according to Gerard.
Shulman was harsher about Haute couture, giving it a 0/10 rating and saying, "a few correct facts included, but every value judgment it makes is wrong." This prompted some renewed attention to the article, which received 25 edits over the past week. However, these produced very little change in the substantive content, and until recently the article remained flagged as needing expert attention. All of the other articles also got additional attention from editors as a result of the story, with varying results. Bob Dylan, to which Barker gave the highest grade of the group, was actually the most frequently edited afterwards as well. The article on Reich witnessed probably the most substantial improvement over the past week, while others saw more tinkering along the lines of Haute couture.
With respect to Basque people, there was some debate over whether Kurlansky had correctly understood the article in making one of his criticisms. His comment suggested that he thought the article was challenging the linguistic consensus that Basque is a language isolate, with no relatives among other living languages. In reality, the passage in question, which mentions an Aquitanian language, is referring to a dialect of Basque in ancient Roman times (there is no modern Aquitanian language; aside from French, the primary regional languages are Basque and Occitan).
Meanwhile, McHenry also published a separate article covering Wikipedia last week. At Tech Central Station, where his original critique also ran, he included Wikipedia as evidence of what he saw as a pattern in society — the pattern being the decline of instruction in useful knowledge, in favor of what he called "The Education of Gesture", a focus on symbolic but meaningless self-expression. He highlighted as an example part of the philosophy of Project Galatea, an initiative launched only just over a week ago designed to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles.
A comment from another tech news site indicated that it would look at rating articles for its evaluation, much like The Guardian. CNET editor Rafe Needleman stated that his site would also be running a comparison of Wikipedia with two other (unspecified) DVD encyclopedias in the near future. A similar test was run last year by a German computer magazine involving the German Wikipedia, along with Brockhaus and the German edition of Encarta; Wikipedia generally came off rather well, except for an observation that it was lacking in multimedia content.
31 October — for many, the day conjures images of trick-or-treaters knocking on doors and other images of Halloween. However, in Wikipedia, the day is also designated a holiday — Tim Starling Day.
On 31 October of 2003, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales decreed the day as a holiday after Tim Starling, a developer who had recently rewritten the Wikipedia parser so that it was twice as fast. This drastically improved efficiency and speed, and a "big hullabaloo" was raised. As a result, Jimbo established the holiday in honor of Tim.
"Dude, you rock," Jimbo wrote to Tim in 2003. "I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that today (Oct. 31) shall forever be known as Tim Starling Day. Wikipedians of the distant future will marvel at the day when the new parsing algorithm dawned upon us. Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should say a toast to Tim and his many inventions. In countries that celebrate Halloween, children will first say 'Trick or Treat' and then, when they get the candy, they will say 'Secure and Split' and run away, in honor of Tim's work in this area."
However, the holiday remains virtually unknown and uncelebrated among Wikipedians. There are only three other Wikipedia holidays, with one not officially decreed by Jimbo. 15 January was proclaimed as Wikipedia Day in tribute to Wikipedia's founding on that date in 2001. However, though this holiday is widely recognized, Jimbo has never officially decreed it a Wikipedia holiday. 25 January is designated as Magnus Manske Day, commemorating 25 January, 2002, when Wikipedia switched to Mediawiki software. The day is named after Magnus Manske, who helped write the original PHP script that evolved into the MediaWiki software and was also an active participant on Nupedia. Finally, 1 June was proclaimed as Brion Vibber Day in 2004 to recognize the work of Brion Vibber, Wikipedia's lead developer.
A mention of Wikipedia has recently been added to the Encarta article on encyclopedias. The relevant passage, which comes at the end of the article, reads as follows:
In the early 21st century a new type of online encyclopedia, known as Wikipedia, enabled readers to create and edit encyclopedia articles. A wiki is a type of server software that enables users to create or alter content on a Web page. Wikipedia was closely associated with the open source software movement and rapidly expanded to include hundreds of thousands of articles, many on popular culture topics, in a number of languages. The philosophy behind Wikipedia was that a community of volunteers could pool their knowledge and crosscheck their work to create a free encyclopedia. Due to Wikipedia’s openness, it is often the target of vandalism.
Encarta is one of the first traditional encyclopedias to acknowledge Wikipedia in an article. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the Brockhaus encyclopedia in German will give Wikipedia its own article in its new edition (see archived story).
The vote on whether to create a new Wikiversity project ended today. Wikiversity, which currently resides on Wikibooks, started a vote on 15 September to move to wikiversity.org, currently hosting a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. Discounting votes made after the deadline, the vote, unofficially, ended approximately 71% in favor of the project. A two-thirds majority and board approval is required to start a project beta period.
An October 24 article "Can you trust Wikipedia?" in the fold-out section of The Guardian's "G2" supplement analyzed Wikipedia's performance on several articles (see related story).
Andrew Orlowski wrote about Wikipedia in The Register again, this time in October 27's "Why Wikipedia isn't like Linux", summarizing some of the mail generated following last week's scathing piece on Wikipedia's quality (see archived story).
Graeme Edgeler wrote an October 24 piece called "Wikis at the Gate: Academics dissent over use of Wikipedia" for Salient, the student magazine of the Victoria University of Wellington. In it, he says "An increase in students using the on-line encyclopaedia Wikipedia in essays and research papers is causing concern among academics…"
The Beacon, newspaper for Wilkes University, posted a basic summary of Wikipedia's strengths and weaknesses in "Nothing But Net: Wikipedia" on October 30.
The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote about copyleft images in their article "Get free images legally via copyleft" on October 30. It includes discussion of Yotophoto, a site which began as an easy way to locate categorized, copyright-free images from Wikipedia. The article fails to mention the Wikimedia Commons, however.
Wikipedia was cited in the last week in the following publications:
Administration status was given to twelve users this week: The wub (nom), Titoxd (nom), Johntex (nom), Grenavitar (nom), Edcolins (nom), Sfoskett (nom), Reflex Reaction (nom), Tomf688 (nom), Dvyost (nom), Kirill Lokshin (nom), Alabamaboy (nom), and Acetic Acid (nom).
Eight articles were promoted to featured status: Cool (song), Ormulum, Sicilian Baroque, ATLAS experiment, Mário de Andrade, Felice Beato, Sverre of Norway, and Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works.
One list reached featured list status this week: List of lists of mathematical topics.
Three pictures reached featured picture status recently:
The Arbitration Committee closed three cases this week.
A case against Rainbowwarrior1977 has closed, affirming the indefinite ban imposed by Redwolf24 in September.
A case against DotSix has closed. DotSix was banned for one year. The Arbitration Committee cited DotSix's constant edit-warring, lack of positive edits, and "malicious comments" on user talk pages.
A case against Keetoowah has closed. Keetoowah was warned against making legal threats, and put on personal attack parole.
A case against Stevertigo for inappropriate use of administrative powers has been re-opened. Stevertigo was originally ordered to reaffirm his adminship at RfA; however, after many community members viewed the process of community de-adminship as wrong, the case was returned to the ArbCom. The dispute regarded Stevertigo's violation of the three-revert rule, and subsequently unblocking himself a number of times.
A case was accepted this week against Copperchair. It is in the evidence phase.
A request against Silverback has received 5 "accept" votes. A minimum of 4 votes is needed for arbitration cases to move forward.
Other cases against Ultramarine (user page), Maoririder (user page), numerous editors on Bogdanov Affair, REX (user page), Rangerdude (user page), numerous editors on Ted Kennedy, numerous editors on Polygamy, Lightbringer (user page), and Jguk (user page) are in the evidence phase.
Cases against Zephram Stark (user page), DreamGuy (user page), Everyking (user page), 12.144.5.2 (user page, a.k.a. Louis Epstein), BigDaddy777 (user page), Instantnood (user page), and Stevertigo (user page) are in the voting phase.
A motion to close is on the table in the case against Onefortyone (user page).
