Wikipedia is getting ready to see the creation of its one-millionth article in English this week, a milestone expected to be reached around Wednesday, 1 March. In terms of the number of articles, the English Wikipedia will have doubled in size in slightly less than a year, after reaching 500,000 articles last 17 March.
Among the preparations being worked on is a press release to be issued once the milestone is reached. The addition of a special banner to the Main Page celebrating the occasion has also been discussed.
Given the speed at which both new pages are created and others deleted, identifying the magic article is a challenge and was the subject of some disagreement at the previous milestone (see archived story). Sj said he hoped to get developers to provide a snapshot of the database that, combined with statistical analysis, could objectively identify the actual article in question. If not, an honorary millionth article may simply be designated as such.
While this milestone marks an impressive achievement in just over five years of Wikipedia's existence, size is not the only measure of accomplishment, and some have suggested it be de-emphasized as Wikipedia grows. As Jimmy Wales put it in last week's interview with The Signpost, "We should be tightly focused on the quality of our coverage and content. The goal of Wikipedia is to create and distribute a freely licensed high quality encyclopedia."
Among the tools anticipated to help with this are new features currently being worked on by the MediaWiki developers. These include a feature that allows readers to review and rate articles, and another that would allow a particular revision of an article to be marked as a "stable version". Both of these features could help efforts to publish print editions based on the English Wikipedia, similar to those already involving the German Wikipedia (see archived story).
Work is also being done toward a "single login" feature, so editors can have one account that works on all Wikimedia projects. It is hoped that this will encourage more people to help out across project boundaries and foster a greater sense of community. However, the transition will probably create some disruption as well, due to the technical difficulties of dealing with possible conflicts between existing accounts.
If expectations hold, the winner of the Million pool to correctly identify the date on which this article would be created should be András Mészáros. The next closest guess was 28 February by Kaizersoze, who might still win if it comes more quickly than expected. The pool was declared closed when the half-million article mark was reached.
A couple of incidents last week highlighted the difficulty of balancing outside complaints regarding articles with the views of Wikipedia editors. Partly at issue was the implementation of a relatively new policy that provides for the Wikimedia Foundation, which normally does not exercise editorial control at the level of individual articles, to intervene in such cases when deemed necessary.
These interventions, covering such things as protecting a page pending further investigation, or deleting possible copyright infringements, are designated as Office Actions. They may also involve reducing the content of articles drastically to stubs, a practice Jimbo Wales has said may occasionally be necessary to deal with complaints, especially involving biographies of living people. Wales created the policy earlier this month as something Danny Wool, his executive assistant, could cite when taking action on an urgent complaint.
Two recent cases underlined the tension between "caving in" to outsiders and "abdicating responsibility" for the content of the website. One of these, another occasion in which congressional attention has been directed at Wikipedia, was the biography of U.S. Senator Harry Reid (Democrat-Nevada). The second was Brian Peppers, about a disabled man whose photograph was promoted as a meme on the YTMND website.
In both cases, a personally interested party directed a communication to the Wikimedia Foundation complaining about the content of the page and/or its existence. Reid's article was protected by Wool on Thursday, 16 February, and remained that way for six days while the situation was sorted out. The delay, caused in part by the weekend and the fact that Monday was a government holiday in the U.S., prompted several people to express their displeasure on the talk page. The second case was not actually handled as an Office Action but done by Wales on his own initiative. Last Tuesday, he deleted the much-disputed Peppers article with instructions that it should not be recreated for a year, saying, "if anyone still cares by then, we can discuss it".
This eventually led to an extended discussion on the wikien-l mailing list about these actions. The debate over Peppers also extended to other issues, such as whether previous deletions or recreations of the article were valid, whether he was actually notable enough as an internet phenomenon to warrant coverage in Wikipedia, and whether this should override his interest in privacy even though he never sought any publicity. Meanwhile, the Reid situation posed the dilemma of what the subjects of articles can do, given that criticism may ensue whether they edit themselves or direct their concerns to the Foundation instead.
The practice of using Office Actions has been designated as official Wikipedia policy. Wales emphasized this last week with the addition of a note that reverting an action taken under the policy "may be grounds for blocking", although he avoided recommending that blocks actually be used in such cases.
The English Wikipedia reached 1,000,000 users on Monday, just a few days before the anticipated 1,000,000th article. The millionth user is believed to be Romulus32, though it is not easily possible to find the exact user with complete certainty. Jimmy Wales however has noted that such a stat is really insignificant, due to inactive and sockpuppet accounts.
Wikimania organizers this week called for volunteers to join the Program Team for the 2006 conference, scheduled for 4 August–6 August at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Team members will help reviewing proposed presentations, inviting speakers, and coordinating other aspects of the conference program. A call for participation from potential presenters was also distributed recently; deadlines for initial submissions are 30 March and 15 April, depending on the nature of the presentation.
The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation held its annual meeting last Saturday in Frankfurt at the site of the original Wikimania conference. As the organization is growing and having to deal with various pressing matters, such as litigation or partnerships to redistribute Wikipedia content, it was concluded that more professional support is necessary. Over the course of the year, the chapter will look to open a physical office and hire an experienced executive to run it. According to Kurt Jansson, one of the chapter's two chairpersons, "The needs of the organization have become so broad and complex that volunteer leadership alone is no longer enough to address them." The chapter reports that it now has about 250 members.
The list of 1911 Encyclopedia topics has been thoroughly examined and edited by a devoted team from WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, who have verified that Wikipedia now has an article or proper redirect for every single article which appeared in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, the content of which is now in the public domain. On the project page, Alba took pride in "declaring the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica to be, at first draft level, merged into Wikipedia."
A new project has begun at WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/1911 verification to ensure that all 1911 material has been properly updated to the 21st century.
Henna has taken over the maintenance of the Vandal Fighter tool, a spin-off of CryptoDerk's VandalFighter.
Ask.com has revamped their search page, removing the Ask Jeeves interface and including Wikipedia results. A ZDNet report states "the new tools also include encyclopaedia search, for the US version of the site, that displays direct answers from Wikipedia and others at the top of the results page."
A new third-party search mechanism called Qwika is in development; it aims to provide searchable machine translation between different Wikipedia languages.
Upon a request by Raul654, Gmaxwell created a list of the top 100 most edited user talk pages (Note - a user's edits to his own talk page are not counted). Not surprisingly, the page most edited was Jimbo Wales' talk page. The other four talk pages in the top 5 were those of Tony Sidaway, Curps, Cool Cat and Mistress Selina Kyle.
Media Monitors Network, a self-declared anti-media-propaganda site, published a long article by book author Abid U. Jan, entitled "Wikipedia: A tool for expediting the clash of religions" on 22 February. Jan states that:
In reply to a letter from Wikipedian gren, Jan published another detailed article in the editorial section of the Al-Jazeerah Information Center (unrelated to the Al Jazeera TV channel), entitled "Wikipedia: Good Intentions, Horrible Consequences" on 27 February, in which Jan says:
Public relations magazine PR Week published "Analysis: Wikipedia-friend or foe on the net?", (subscription required), in which the author, Adam Hill, asks how PROs (public relations professionals) can use the online encyclopedia to their advantage. Raul654 was interviewed for and quoted in the article. Interesting quotes in the article include:
Author and Electronic Frontier Foundation alumnus Cory Doctorow, aka User:Doctorow, who has previously defended Wikipedia in print (see archived story), was interviewed by the The Harvard Crimson college newspaper in "Doctorow Pushes for ‘Free Culture’". He mentions Wikipedia briefly:
In "Nature has Wikipedia in its cites", The Scientist discusses Wikipedia's history, the Nature study of its accuracy, and a few of the ideas Jimbo Wales has for the future.
The Sun Herald in Mississippi also published a balanced overview of Wikipedia in "Wikipedia open to interpretation".
"Wikipedia war over Sue Kelly" in The Times Herald-Record in New York State documents an edit war over the article on U.S. Congresswoman Sue W. Kelly.
The A.V. Club, the non-satirical entertainment section of The Onion newspaper, published "Inventory: Five Truly Useful Websites", putting Wikipedia at number five:
Four users were granted admin status last week: Kmf164 (nom), Alex Bakharev (nom), ESkog (nom) and Cohesion (nom).
The latest portal to reach featured status is Portal:Tropical cyclones.
Eleven articles were featured last week: Uma Thurman, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Invasion, Arthur Ernest Percival, 3D Monster Maze, Kargil War, Sun, Katie Holmes, Bangalore, 1996 U.S. campaign finance scandal and 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: Sheffield, Raney nickel, History of merit badges (Boy Scouts of America), Panama Canal, Flag of Mexico, Médecins Sans Frontières and History of Portugal (1777–1834).
Articles that were de-featured last week: Freemasonry, Euro, Jazz, Mandarin (linguistics) and Gene.
One list reached featured list status last week: Swedish football champions.
Eight pictures reached featured picture status last week:
|
|
 |
Server-related events, problems, and changes included:
The Arbitration Committee closed three cases this week.
A case brought against Sortan was closed on Saturday. As a result, Sortan was warned regarding Wikistalking Jguk. Jguk, the complaining witness, was banned from editing any page or article to change era notation, an extension of a provision in his November 2005 case. Both Jguk and Sortan were heavily involved in edit warring over era notation. Sortan left Wikipedia on 22 December 2005, shortly after the case was opened. Jguk went on a wikibreak on 5 February 2006.
A case brought against Tommstein was closed on Sunday. As a result, Tommstein's ban, imposed by administrator NicholasTurnbull, was endorsed by the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, Central was placed on probation and personal attack parole, and Duffer1 was warned regarding civility and edit warring. The dispute, which primarily involved articles relating to Jehovah's Witnesses, was marred by personal attacks and failure to assume good faith.
A case regarding the articles WebEx and Min Zhu was closed on Monday. As a result, both Larvatus and Henryuzi were banned from editing any articles relating to WebEx or Min Zhu and his daughter, and placed on probation. Additionally, FeloniousMonk was admonished not to use administrative tools and warnings in content disputes that he is involved in, and FCYTravis was admonished not to use the "rollback" button in content disputes. Both Larvatus and Henryuzi were involved in strong point of view editing on the articles.
A case was accepted this week involving Agapetos angel (user page). It is in the evidence phase.
Additional cases involving Tony Sidaway (user page), editors on Shiloh Shepherd Dog, and Bible verses are in the Evidence phase.
Cases involving Lapsed Pacifist (user page), Jason Gastrich (user page), users IronDuke and Gnetwerker, Instantnood (user page), Leyasu (user page), Boothy443 (user page), Dyslexic agnostic (user page), and Zeq (user page) are in the voting phase.
A motion to close is on the table in the case involving VeryVerily (user page).
