Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/In the media
Server-related events, problems, and changes included:
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/Opinion
The French Wikiquote was taken down on Wednesday and replaced with the following notice in French and English:
Access to database dumps was also prohibited. The relaunch had been expected to take place immediately following the deletion, but after a number of French community members expressed concern about the lack of committed participants to prevent renewed problems, the relaunch was delayed and it is not certain when it will occur.
On Thursday, Raul654, the featured article director, announced that the daily-article-l list, which sends out the featured article of the day, had surpassed over 10,000 subscribers. The list sends the featured article of the day, which appears on the Main Page, via email to the subscribers.
Last week, the French Wikipedia elected seven users to the local Arbitration Committee. The 3rd election for the French ArbCom, each candidate had an average of 65 votes. Voting was conducted publicly on the site similarly to how the English Wikipedia's January elections were held: voters could vote support, oppose, or neutral for each candidate. Of the 14 candidates, 12 met the requirement of having greater than 2/3 support, and the seven candidates with the highest number of support votes were chosen to serve.
Pakistan blocked access to all Wikipedias this week, citing the images of the prophet Muhammad, especially in the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy article. However, the block was brief, lasting only approximately seven hours. Earlier in March, Pakistan had already blocked access to other websites also showing depictions of Muhammad.
A proposal for closing the September 11 Wikipedia, which was a wiki in tribute of the September 11, 2001 attacks, was initiated this week after much discussion. General consensus was to close and then move the site due to inactivity and the inappropriateness of the site as a Wikipedia project. Already partially moved to MemoryWiki.org, the content could also be archived again and be retrievable for those who wish to download it.
A MetaProject to overhaul Meta was started, with the goal of the project to "streamline Meta by eliminating irrelevant content, building infrastructure, rewriting documentation, and organising its content in an efficient, intuitive manner." However, the project soon came under criticism, with people citing that the project's participants were inappropriately deleting images and other useful pages and redirects. Discussion carried over to the English Wikipedia's mailing list, along with the Foundation mailing list.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/In focus
The Arbitration Committee closed three cases this week. Additionally, a motion has been made in a previous case.
A case against -Ril- was closed on Tuesday. As a result, -Ril- was banned indefinitely as a sockpuppet of the banned user CheeseDreams. Additionally, CheeseDreams' one-year ban under a previous Arbitration Committee ruling was reset. CheeseDreams was banned in March 2005 for disruption, including the use of sockpuppets. A previous case against -Ril- was closed in October 2005, banning -Ril- for a month and a week.
A case brought against Tony Sidaway was closed on Thursday. As a result, Tony Sidaway was placed on an administrative one revert limit, prohibiting him from reversing any administrative action more than once. Crotalus horridus, meanwhile, was banned from creating or editing userboxes, both in Template and User namespaces, and was placed on general probation. Tony Sidaway had wheel warred on numerous pages, while Crotalus horridus had edit warred and recreated inflammatory userboxes.
A case involving IronDuke and Gnetwerker was closed on Thursday. As a result, IronDuke was cautioned about using unsourced material, and Gnetwerker was cautioned regarding discourtesy and original research.
A motion has been made in the case against Lightbringer. In November 2005, Lightbringer was placed on personal attack parole and banned from freemasonry-related articles. However, sockpuppets have continued to edit the article, and through edit patterns and checkuser requests have been identified as Lightbringer. As a result a motion was proposed to formally ban Lightbringer Wikipedia-wide. At press time, the motion had five support votes with no opposition.
Two cases were accepted this week, with one involving Aucaman (user page), and the other involving Terryeo (user page). Both are in the evidence phase.
Additional cases involving Marcosantezana (user page), users DarrenRay and 2006BC, FourthAve (user page), Locke Cole (user page), editors on Depleted uranium, ZAROVE (user page), and Agapetos angel (user page) are in the evidence phase.
Cases involving administrators involved in a userbox-related edit war, Lou franklin (user page), and editors on Bible verse articles are in the voting phase.
A motion to close is currently on the table in a case involving Lapsed Pacifist (user page).
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-04-03/Humour