After a post on Wikipedia criticism site "Wikipedia Review", in which he discussed offering deleted article revisions containing personal information to an indefinitely blocked user, long-time contributor Everyking was desysopped on Sunday.
WordBomb, a Wikipedia Review contributor blocked from this site, posted a thread inquiring about the article on Gary Weiss, which was semi-protected on August 29, along with the deletion of several article revisions. In response, Everyking posted "I looked for you, but when you look at deleted revisions it doesn't show you the changes (or if so I don't know how to access them). I guess I could just post the full text and you could work out the differences yourself."[1]
In a post on the administrators' noticeboard, arbitrator Dmcdevit stated: "Recently it was brought to the attention of the Arbitration Committee that administrator Everyking has posted to an external site in the process of trying to determine the contents of inappropriate material, sensitive personal information, deleted from an article. Everyking looked up the deleted material using his administrator privileges, and offered to post the deleted content publicly...We view this as a serious misjudgment and a betrayal of the trust the community has given him in adminship. As such, Everyking has been immediately desysopped."[2]
Everyking responded almost immediately, saying "This is shocking and I call for it to be overturned. I didn't actually post anything (being worried that SlimVirgin might get pissed) and even if I did I don't see how it could be a betrayal of anything." When Dmcdevit mentioned his willingness to post personal information as a "liability", Everyking replied, "Personal information? I didn't even know what the content was. I still don't know. I sure as hell would never post anybody's personal information."
Significant debate ensued on the noticeboard, with many users supporting the desysopping, and others questioning it. Tony Sidaway said: "This was a gross and obvious violation of Administrator trust. Let us all remember that we have the power to do great harm, and we must resist the temptation to do so at all times. Private information is not ours to disclose; we only have administrator powers for one purpose: to improve Wikipedia. We cannot usually do that by publicly compromising private information."[2]
In defense of Everyking, Phil Sandifer said: "I will say, given the clearly stated suspicion on the page that the subject was a Wikipedia editor, some more care might have been in order. But honestly, I'm skeptical that this is in and of itself grounds for an emergency desysopping. It seems more like a case of the arbcom seeing an opportunity to justify a penalty they've wanted to put out for quite a while."[2]
Everyking is allowed to attempt to regain adminship by community request according to this message sent out by Sam Korn.
Five images uploaded by Publicgirluk led to debate over how appropriate the images were, and whether they were legal or not. In the end, the images were deleted and Publicgirluk was indefinitely blocked after Jimbo Wales suggested that she was trolling.
The images were uploaded in July and August, and were used in some of Wikipedia's articles on sexuality. However, concerns were expressed about the images. One concern was the legality of the images; to comply with United States law, including the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, "sexually explicit" images must be documented with proof that the subject of the photo was over the age of 18 when the photo was taken. The definition of "sexually explicit", and the Act itself, are vague, leading to an uncertainty over the photos.
Debate on the issue started on the administrators' incident noticeboard, but was moved to a separate page. Cyde suggested that Publicgirluk have a picture taken of herself, holding up a sign to prove that she was the person depicted in the photo. Later, Voice of All deleted four of the images on August 27. In a later post, Publicgirluk maintained that she was over 18, that the photos were of herself, and that she had permitted them to be used; but she refused to have a photo taken of herself to prove it, believing such a move insulting. As a result, she said she no longer gave permission for any of the images to be used and wished to no longer contribute to Wikipedia.
After the incident, Jimbo Wales commented on the incident, saying ""Publicgirluk" should have been indef blocked and the images speedied without so much as a how do you do.". As a result, and after further discussion on the issue, Publicgirluk was blocked indefinitely by Nandesuka. The block was removed for a short while, but reinstated by Dragons flight.
As of 3 September, 2006, the Italian-language Wikipedia consisted of about 192,000 articles. Since September 2005, when it counted 68,173 articles, Italian Wikipedia's article growth index has been 182 percent.
Among these, 176 articles (approximately 1 in 1090) are considered voci di qualità ("Voices of quality," the Italian Wikipedia equivalent for featured articles ). The Italian language Wikipedia as yet has no equivalent for the good articles page in the English or Lesenswerte Artikel in the German Wikipedia.
The latest six additions to the list of voci di qualità are Catania, Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library of France), Lalla Fadhma, Adelboden, Campanile di Giotto (Giotto's Bell Tower) and Santa Reparata.
As of 3 September, 2006, the total number of registered users is approximately 88,000, while active users (editors with more than 100 edits per month) is currently estimated at approximatly 300 people. 53 users of the Italian Wikipedia have been appointed as administrators. This makes the sysops of it.wiki 0.06% of all users, a comparable percentage to the English (0.05%), German (0.08%) or French Wikipedias (0.08%).
Winds of change in the Italian Wikipedia community: last July the community chose a brand new layout for the Main Page that went on-line on July 20; furthermore a new structure for the Bar (the Italian equivalent for the Village Pump) has been adopted during the first days of August. There will probably be a poll about this new version during the first weeks of September.
Every month, the community sets up one or two Festival della qualità (that stands for Quality Festival) in order to improve the quality of selected articles and pages.
The aim of the current Festival (from 5 August to the end of August) is to create new quality articles concerning words which are commonly used in the Italian language. Up to 22 August, 61 new articles of this kind have been written. This is a good result, considering that the month of August is commonly the height of vacation period in Italy (lots of wikipedians are still in "Wikipause").
The previous Festival (held from 20 July to 3 August) was dedicated to the articles tagged as da wikificare (articles that need to be wikified in en.wiki). As a result of that festival 785 articles were wikified.
On 14 December 2005, the Italian Wikipedia has been awarded with 2 premi WWW (WWW prizes) by the Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. The first prize was for the Istruzione e Lavoro (Educational and Work) category, for being the new landmark in Italy for online knowledge. The second prize was for the Internet Educational category because it is a free encylopedia, made by a collective intelligence, enhancing knowledge dissemination and its free access.
The Italian Wikipedia is often quoted on Italian media, as shown in the Rassegna stampa page (same as the en.wiki Press coverage). In recent months, Italian media has increased it.wp's coverage and interviewed some of its administrators. The last interview of an Italian sysop has been broadcast, on 14 August, by Rai Uno, the main channel of RAI, the Italian public broadcasting company.
The second Wikimedia Italia Meeting took place on 2 September and 3 in Valentano, near Viterbo. During the meeting, members of Wikimedia Italia (the Italian local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation) renewed social charges and approved the yearly budget of the association.
This "official" meeting is not the only one for Italian contributors. Actually, they meet each other quite often: the last Wikiraduno (Wikipedia:Meetups) took place in Milan on 6 August. Other remarkable Wikiraduni that took place during last spring and summer were in Piacenza, Zurich, Vicenza, Genova and Bologna, some of them as part of bigger meetings or conventions.
Apart from the Wikipedia, there are several Wikimedia projects in Italian language. They are Wikinotizie (like Wikinews in English), Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikizionario (like Wiktionary in English).
There are also a large number of younger sisters of the Italian Wikipedia, like Wikipedias in Arpitano, Catalano, Corso, Friulano, Latino, Ligure, Lombardo, Napoletano, Piemontese, Romancio, Sardo, Siciliano, and Veneto languages. They are local languages that are spoken in the nearby regions of Italy and Switzerland.
On 2 September, Wikipedia reached another important milestone when Angela promoted Xyrael (nom) to admin status. This marked the 1000th administrator on the English Wikipedia, a number which has doubled in little over a year (see chart, left). Xyrael was nominated for adminship by Petros471 and was supported by 54 Wikipedians.
Xyrael's promotion marked the 1000th administrator on the English Wikipedia, giving approximately[1] one administrator for every 1,345 articles and 2,157 registered users. Furthermore, there is one administrator for every 111 users who have made at least ten contributions, according to Erik Zachte's Wikipedia Statistics website, which was last updated using June 2006 statistics.
Nae'blis pointed out on the requests for adminship talk page that there are between 35 and 40 former administrators, so the English Wikipedia probably passed 1,000 administrators ever promoted sometime in mid-July. However, this is the first time that there have been 1,000 user accounts with admin access at the same time.
Upon his promotion, Xyrael said: "The fact that we've broken the barrier of one thousand sysops is far more exciting for the community than the promotion of myself. I'm happy to think that we've continued to develop the number of people who have the deep interest in Wikipedia that administrators do enough to reach this figure. Wikipedia is growing and changing every day and this is how it should be. We can always improve, and I hope that I live up to your expectations as an admin."
The Wikipedia with the second-highest admin count is the German Wikipedia, with 225 admins. Third and fourth place belongs to the French Wikipedia, with 109 admins, and the Polish Wikipedia, with 98 admins, respectively.
Voting in the Board of Trustees elections started this week. The voting, which will run until September 21, began on Friday and uses approval voting, where each voter can vote for an unlimited number of candidates.
There were also a number of changes in the field of candidates late last week, which were only added to the Signpost's coverage after press time. Two candidates, Cerejota and NicholasTurnbull, were disqualified from the race prior to the start of voting by general counsel and interim executive director Brad Patrick because they had not confirmed themselves by providing required paperwork and identification to the Wikimedia Foundation office. In addition, there were also several candidate entries in the hours before the deadline, and one candidate, Hadraj, also withdrew from the race, bringing the final number of candidates in the elections to 17. All but one of the candidates had also responded to the "interview" questions the Signpost asked, and their replies were subsequently added to last week's article. The only candidate not to reply yet was Linuxbeak, who cited that "several severe situations" had come up, preventing him from finishing his replies. The Signpost will update the candidates' responses when his reply is received.
Two new election officials were also appointed this week. A resolution by the current Board, passed with supporting votes from Michael Davis, Angela Beesley, and Florence Nibart-Devouard, confirmed that James Forrester and Jon Harald Søby were to become assistant election officials immediately, joining Aphaia, Datrio, and Essjay as election officials. Aphaia is also an assistant election official, while Datrio and Essjay are officially inspectors of the election. According to the resolution, the appointments were aimed to reduce the current workload of the officials, at least one of whom has become inactive publicly over the past few weeks.
An announcement by the election officials also clarified several issues relating to suffrage before the voting started. The notice amended the suffrage requirements, which state that a user must have at least 400 edits on one Wikimedia project prior to 1 August, 2006 and have started contributing 90 days prior to that date, by defining whether or not blocked users may vote. Users banned or blocked indefinitely from any Wikimedia project may not vote, but those blocked on a certain project may vote on another project where they are eligible or vote after their block expires or is removed, if voting is still ongoing. This clarification, according to the officials, does not change any of the previous requirements but instead puts in writing the "oral tradition" that has been used for several elections.
Voting for the most part ran smoothly, even though there was initially some confusion from a limited number of users about where to vote, stemming from the fact that all the election pages are located in Meta. As of September 2, according to statistics compiled by ArnoLagrange from the public list of voters, there were nearly 700 votes already, with approximately a third of those votes coming from the English Wikipedia. More recent statistics compiled by Digitalme on September 6 show 1347 votes, with around 43% coming from the English Wikipedia.
Votes on proposed logos for Wikiversity, Wikibooks, and Wiktionary will begin this week on Thursday, 7 September. Each of the proposed logo pages has undergone much discussion about the changes, and voting will use approval voting. Voting will conclude toward the latter part of the month.
Statistics on Wikimedia Foundation projects were analyzed and released this week by Kelly Martin, with technical assistance from Gregory Maxwell. The data shows that approximately 48 percent of all edits occurs on the English Wikipedia, and that out of those edits, a little over half originate from the United States. Approximately 15 percent of edits on the English Wikipedia, meanwhile, come from the United Kingdom, with the rest coming from other countries such as Canada and Australia.
Wikipedia passed several new milestones this week. According to Alexa, Wikipedia, inclusive of all language versions, reached 50 million unique visitors in one day for the first time. In addition, the English language Wikipedia also became the first Wikipedia to surpass 1,000 administrators (see related story).
Eight users were granted admin status last week: Teke (nom), Guinnog (nom), Runcorn (nom), Xyrael (nom) (the 1000th administrator (see accompanying article)), Netsnipe (nom), Winhunter (nom), Carnildo (nom), and JPD (nom).
With his promotion to administrator, Carnildo joins the ranks of WP:100, the 45th RfA to do so.
Everyking was desysopped involuntarily after an emergency ruling by the Arbitration Committee (see related story).
Sixteen articles were featured last week: Diary of a Camper (nom), Larrys Creek (nom), Kochi (India) (nom), Everton F.C. (nom), Pericles (nom), Chicago Bears (nom), 2003 Pacific hurricane season (nom), Adi Shankara (nom), Point Park Civic Center (nom), Caffeine (nom), Rhys ap Gruffydd (nom), St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery (nom), Frank Klepacki (nom), History of the Philippines (nom), Ketuanan Melayu (nom) and Fuck the Millennium (nom).
Ten articles were de-featured last week: The Beatles, Thunderball, The Giver, Economy of Africa, Metrication, Olympic Flame, Middle-earth, Max Weber, Commonwealth of Nations and Fred Phelps.
The following portal reached featured status last week: Portal:Indonesia.
One list reached featured list status last week: List of Prime Ministers of Canada.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Sequence alignment, History of Central Asia, Talbot Tagora, Chew Valley, Gremlins, Atomic line filter and Corinthian War.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as the pictures of the day: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Sandstone, Fielding positions of cricket, Dante and Virgil in Hell, Walschaerts valve gear, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and Moai.
Three pictures reached featured picture status last week:
The Arbitration Committee opened one new case this week, and closed four cases.
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