Although it has reached neither the scale nor the public attention of the congressional staff edits to Wikipedia, agencies of the U.S. federal government continue to be identified editing Wikipedia articles about themselves and their activities.
The latest to be traced was someone at the Department of Energy editing the article about a nuclear security clearance. Reports have also appeared that the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an arm of the National Institutes of Health, was involved in editing the article about itself last year.
An IP address assigned to the Department of Energy has been discovered trying to remove an image from the Q clearance article. The image was of a badge designating that the bearer has such a clearance, and the editor claimed several times in edit summaries that it was illegal to display the badge. These edits were soon reverted. Other editors tried to open a discussion on the talk page, asking how the image (taken from a publicity photo and not useful for realistic copying) could be unlawful, but got no response there. The original source image, from Los Alamos National Laboratory, was later edited to censor out the badge photograph.
There are actually two IP addresses that have been repeatedly removing the image from the article since it was added by Fastfission on 9 January. WHOIS reports for the first IP address were not as clear, as it belongs to MCI, but the customer appeared to be the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (the IP address edited that article immediately prior to editing Q clearance). The DNFSB is an independent agency created to oversee the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex, and thus would have a direct relationship to Q clearances as well.
While the efforts to remove the Q clearance image were relatively obvious, the edits by the National Institute on Drug Abuse took longer to clear up. The edits were made in August and September of 2006, but apparently were not discovered until January, even though the talk page for the IP address has been marked as registered to NIH since last May (presumably shared by multiple users, it has been warned several times about vandalism). The activity was first reported in The Politico, a fledgling print/web periodical aiming to provide a journalist insider's perspective on Washington and national US politics. A spokeswoman for NIDA said the changes were made "to reflect the science."
The edits removed sections discussing "controversial" research and cannabis growing, replacing them with a more public relations-oriented text. An initial try was reverted as vandalism, so the editor returned with a slightly altered version. This was removed as "advertising copy", but the other material was not restored until after The Politico's report. For several months, the article remained a brief two paragraphs.
An observation made by Wikimedia Foundation chair Florence Devouard at a conference last week, commenting on Wikimedia finances, was picked up by the blogosphere and transformed into reports that Wikipedia would run out of cash and have to close within a few months. While the comment reflected the organization's financial challenges as a charity coping with ongoing growth, some of the more alarmist and inaccurate reports left Wikimedia to reassure people that its demise was not imminent.
Devouard was the keynote speaker Thursday, 8 February, at the opening of the LIFT conference on new technologies held in Geneva. Another conference participant, Philippe Mottaz, wrote a brief note about this on his blog. Mottaz attributed the following statement to Devouard: "At this point, Wikipedia has the financial ressources [sic] to run its servers for about 3 to 4 months. If we do not find additional funding, it is not impossible that Wikipedia might disappear" (quotes in original, since edited and partially stricken).
A number of blogs seized on the supposed quote "might disappear", interpreting it to mean that a shutdown of Wikipedia was being contemplated. Conference organizer Laurent Haug responded to rebut the rumors. Haug, who conducted a Q&A with Devouard as part of the presentation, provided a transcript of the discussion that apparently sparked it:
Haug: "When we prepared this speech, Florence told me that Wikipedia has enough cash to pay for its server for the next..."
Devouard: "Three months. Roughly."
Haug: "and if we don’t do something, Wikipedia won’t be here in three or four months. That’s a radical idea, it’s not going to happen but...".
Devouard: "...three months is a bit negative. [...] We have somebody making plans for two years in the future, I think we will survive in the next three months".
By this time, however, the warped version of the story had made the front pages of Slashdot and digg. Mottaz subsequently admitted to having used hyperbole and said, "I did a lousy blogging job." Devouard pointed out that the blogosphere reaction was rather out of proportion to the response at the conference itself, which was attended by a number of reporters, none of whom initially seized on it as a newsworthy revelation.
Some at the conference, notably Bruno Giussani, tried to restore the focus on the actual statements and evaluate the claim that Wikimedia has 3-4 months of cash. Considering that Wikimedia recently concluded a fundraiser that brought in just over $1 million, whereas the operating costs reported (for the year ending 30 June, 2006) in its most recent financial audit were somewhat less, this would seem a fair question.
However, the growth of Wikipedia traffic and the development of the organization means that expenses have been rising as steadily as donations, if not more. As reported by Devouard, Wikimedia's current cash reserves are roughly equal to the amount brought in by the fundraiser. Setting aside for a moment the issue of projecting future growth, the challenge can be illustrated with a simplified snapshot of the current situation.
With no growth at all, reported annual costs for bandwidth and hosting would come to about $300,000. Current staff expenses would be about $450,000 (this estimate includes salary and taxes, but not employee benefits, which could add significantly to future costs). Depreciation figures, which were reported as part of the audit, could serve as a rough proxy for the cost of replacing equipment as it breaks down—that would produce an estimate of $250,000. The result is that the $1 million would be exhausted just to keep the organization and the sites running for a year in exactly the condition they are now.
Already this fails to account for plans such as hiring more staff, notably the intention to add an Executive Director (unless he or she takes no salary, and the recruiting firm helping with the search works pro bono). Wikimedia would have no resources to pursue new initiatives or fill currently unmet needs. And above all, considering the persistent growth of its projects, there would be no servers to handle additional traffic. Following the present growth trend, and given that accommodating this would not only require more hardware but also increase the other costs as well, exhausting cash reserves in 3-4 months, 6 months at the outside, is a plausible characterization.
Naturally, this does not consider the potential to have a new fundraiser or donations received outside the primary fund drives. The one-year interval between fundraisers is unlikely to be repeated, as the last one was delayed partly to allow completion of the audit, so that this report would be available to donors. (Purchases such as an image server were delayed as well due to the cash shortage.) The audit was also needed in order to pursue most grants and matching donations, and the Wikimedia Foundation hopes to incorporate more of the latter into future fundraisers. Meanwhile, the ongoing trickle of donations brought in a little under $10,000 in the week prior to this incident, and the publicity brought a surge in contributions for a few days. As Devouard put it, "we are not going to disappear [but] we do need more money."
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In a message restating the Foundation's attitude toward media licenses, Kat Walsh of the Wikimedia Board of Trustees called for material relying on restrictive licenses to be "phased out and replaced". She indicated that the Board plans to publish a formal resolution on the issue.
The message, posted to the Foundation mailing list on Thursday, 8 February, was designed to clarify existing policies and explain the rationale behind the forthcoming resolution. To deal with confusion and questionable practices on some projects, Walsh indicated that the guidelines should apply to all Wikimedia sites. Although it covered established ground on such issues as noncommercial-use licenses and Wikipedia-specific permission grants (see archived story), the statement prompted renewed debate about the prohibition of these licenses.
Walsh's statement made some allowance for fair use of works "that are hard to discuss in an educational context without including the media itself." Media under restrictive licenses could be allowed if additionally supported by a fair use justification. However, non-free media generally should not be used if "it is reasonably possible to replace with free media that would serve the same educational purpose."
Many of the critics focused on this exception to lobby for allowing more restrictive licenses. Drawing a comparison between fair use and a limited permission to use, they maintained that they saw no distinction to justify allowing one and prohibiting the other. As Delphine Ménard contended, however, despite the fact that she opposes allowing fair use, it is arguably more free because the doctrine is available to those reusing Wikipedia content, while reuse would not be an option for with-permission content without going through the permission process all over again.
As a term of art, fair use is a US legal doctrine allowing certain reuses of otherwise copyrighted material. Related doctrines are called fair dealing or fair practice in other countries, although the application is often kept to more limited circumstances, such as a right of citation. Fair use is subject to local community policy, and many Wikimedia projects prohibit images that rely on it, in favor of exclusively free content. On the English Wikipedia, efforts have been underway for an extended period to ensure that fair use images comport with the guidance restated by Walsh (see archived stories).
The issue of fair use has been a matter of debate for some time. One focal point has been the featured article criteria, which include the need for an accompanying image, prompting complaints that some articles would be incapable of qualifying because no freely licensed image is available and none would satisfy Wikipedia's fair use criteria. Walsh's message prompted additional discussion about how to address the issue in the standards for featured articles. Further discussion of the general issues raised in the message can be found on the administrators' noticeboard.
WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential.
Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Williams works as a visual journalist for the US-based The Tampa Tribune, a daily newspaper in Tampa, Florida. He also has worked as an illustrator and designer at newspapers in Dubuque, Iowa, and Dayton, Ohio.
The Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year competition has begun. In the first round, which lasts through Wednesday, 14 February, users with at least 100 edits on any local project or Commons can vote on up to 5 of the 321 pictures. 10 finalists will be selected for a final round of voting from 15 February through 28 February. A gallery of images likely to make the final round can be found here.
A new noticeboard has started operation after being suggested by Durova. The Community noticeboard is intended to serve as a forum for community input and decisionmaking. It serves as a counterpart to the administrators' noticeboards; these are also open for all members of the community to participate, but tend to see less participation by non-administrators on account of their names.
Nine users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Gilliam (nom), Picaroon9288 (nom), Kafziel (nom), Carabinieri (nom), Geniac (nom), Arjun01 (nom), AnemoneProjectors (nom), Shadow1 (nom), and Garion96 (nom).
Nine articles were promoted to featured status last week: Jack Sheppard, Nick Drake, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Climate of Minnesota, Aaron Sorkin, Jogaila, Galaxy, Campaign history of the Roman military, and Supernova.
Five articles were de-featured last week: Rainbow, Evolution, Gold standard, Henry VIII of England, and Father Damien.
Two lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Saskatchewan premiers and 2002 NFL Draft.
One sound was promoted to featured status last week, the first of its kind: .
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Scouting, Alison Krauss, Vancouver, Scottish Parliament, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Able Archer 83, and Make Way for Ducklings.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Static line jump, American Wigeon, Upper Thracian Plain, Sahara, Gare Montparnasse train wreck, Dragonfly, and Regensburg.
Ten pictures were promoted to featured status last week:
Various interface messages that by default used to contain links such as "Project:Policy" no longer do, and instead use variables from the content language (such as MediaWiki:policy-url). The difference is that if, for instance, an administrator on the English Wikipedia used Bulgarian as his interface language, the Bulgarian version of MediaWiki:Confirmdeletetext would be used, pointing him to the nonexistent page Project:Линия на поведение for information about project deletion policy. Now it uses MediaWiki:policy-url, which is always from the content language and so will point to Project:Policy (or whatever it's changed to) for any interface language on an English-content site. Also, links of dubious utility to non-Wikipedia projects (such as "IP address") have been unlinked for the default interface text. The changes have been completed for English and all supported languages whose ISO 639 code begins with A, B, or C. (Daniel Arnold, T10846, r19724 et al.)
On image pages, the link to upload a new image no longer shows the "external link" arrow. (Raimond Spekking, r19856)
An error that would cause whitespace to vanish under certain circumstances for some languages was fixed. (Brion Vibber, T10897, r19802)
Some updates were made to non-English messages, specifically:
Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to Mediazilla.
The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, and closed no cases.
