Ongoing disputes over the policies to be applied to biographies of living persons picked up steam this past week with some controversial attempts at intervention. The issue of deletion for particularly sensitive cases has turned the deletion process as well as deletion review into focal areas for the debate, and the controversy was further stoked when a longstanding contributor was briefly blocked over his involvement in the matter.
Deletion review, with its emphasis on procedure rather than the substance of articles, has a curious position within Wikipedia's deletion policy. It also does not necessarily follow the emphasis on consensus decisionmaking of other Wikipedia processes, although Jimbo Wales recently removed a reference to majority votes when reviewing deletions, with a comment that "Voting is evil, this is nonsense."
The deletion review page provides a forum, among other things, for objections when articles have been deleted (either summarily or using Articles for deletion) for perceived serious violations of the policy on biographies of living persons. Recently, Badlydrawnjeff (whose user page currently calls him "the Vile Dark Lord of Inclusionism") has been one of the more active participants in objecting to such deletions. Mounting frustration seemed to have come to a head when, at 1:37 (UTC) on 23 May, Zsinj blocked him for 60 hours with the stated reason, "Disruption and threats; incivil actions in order to achieve personal goals disregarding community concensus; exhausting the community's patience."
Zsinj's explanation to Tony Sidaway began, "Per approximately two hours of IRC discussion, it had been determined that the disruption caused by that user outweighed any efforts to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia." In light of previous controversy over IRC discussion leading to questionable blocks of longstanding contributors, this was a rather provocative claim. Zsinj was referring to a conversation on the #wikipedia-en-admins IRC channel used mainly by administrators; his access to that channel was subsequently revoked in light of these events.
The actual conversation was mixed, and whether it could support Zsinj's characterization is debatable. There was some discussion of the problems with biographical articles about people known exclusively in connection with a single, often unflattering incident. Cases mentioned included the accuser in the Duke lacrosse scandal and a Chinese teenager whose photo became an Internet phenomenon several years ago. In the latter case, part of the focus was the conduct of Badlydrawnjeff in seeking to have the article restored and spearheading a request for comment on the situation.
Zsinj joined in after the discussion had already run for several hours and promptly suggested a block for disruption. After he continued to push the idea, a few others discussed possible justifications with him (among other things, pointing out that since Badlydrawnjeff is not an administrator, Zsinj's reliance on "wheel warring" was misplaced). Eagle 101 repeatedly warned against the proposed block, but this seemed to have little effect on Zsinj, who said, "If it ends my Wikipedia career due to being dramabombed to hell and back, so be it." Several other people in the channel were not paying much attention or did not take Zsinj seriously. Once the block was imposed, however, the tone of the conversation shifted to focus on its undesirability, and the block was soon overturned when Zsinj showed no inclination to reverse himself. Zsinj later apologized and accepted personal responsibility for "a relatively hasty and uninformed" decision.
The controversy over the block gave added impetus to the possibility of an arbitration case dealing with the situation. Badlydrawnjeff had earlier requested arbitration with respect to the Chinese teenager's article, which was rejected. Within a day, Doc glasgow requested arbitration over Badlydrawnjeff's continuing conduct in the matter. With the additional developments, a number of arbitrators now favor addressing the case, although it is not yet clear whether it will be accepted.
Norwegian Wikimedian, journalist, and author Tron Øgrim (no:User:Togrim) passed away last week. He was 59 years old.
Tron was one of the most influential persons in Norway's Marxist-Leninist movement in the sixties and seventies. He was one of the founders of the Workers' Communist Party, a party which strongly advocated the Chinese branch of communism. Tron was also central in the founding of the newspaper Klassekampen and in the publishing house Oktober.
Tron became a journalist after leaving politics in the eighties, having a technology column in the Norwegian edition of PC World. Tron was known for his distinct writing style, where he rejected standardized Norwegian and wrote just like he talked, in a working class dialect. He also wrote science fiction novels under the pseudonym Eirik Austey.
Tron was an early proponent of the Internet in Norway, traveling around Norway giving lectures. In 1995, Tron tried to get the Norwegian parliament on the Internet, claiming that “without politicians online, there is no such thing as a democratic IT policy!” Tron was also a supporter of the open source movement. In his book KVIKKSØLV!, Tron described Linux as “applied communism.”
Tron became a Wikimedian in December 2005, when libelous statements about a colleague appeared in a Norwegian (bokmål) Wikipedia article. Tron continued as a Wikipedia editor after the issue was resolved, writing about constructed languages through most of 2006. In the fall of 2006, his focus changed to Nepal generally and the history of communism in Nepal specifically (see Nepals kommunistiske parti (maoistisk) for an example of one of his articles.) Tron was known in the Norwegian wikicommunity for writing very long articles about somewhat obscure topics. Tron also cared much about smaller wikis and their progress. He was routinely posting messages about milestones at the Norwegian Village Pump, as well as participating on the Wikimedia News announcements page.
Tron was extremely important for the Norwegian wiki movement, and he was often interviewed by the press about Wikipedia. He gave a lecture about Wikipedia when Wikipedia's founder Jimbo Wales visited Norway in May 2006.
The Norwegian community, in recognition of Tron's work, decided to commemorate Tron by displaying a half-masted flag in front of the WP logo for a day. This was noticed by several Norwegian newspapers.
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. The comic can now be found on cartoon site Humorous Maximus.
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.
Volunteers at the English Wikipedia and SOS Children UK have today launched the Wikipedia Selection for Schools. The Selection is about the size of a 15 volume encyclopaedia, with 24,000 pictures, 14 million words and articles on 4625 topics. It includes the best of Wikipedia, and many thousands of pages of extra material specifically selected to be of interest to children who follow the UK National Curriculum and similar curricula elsewhere in the world.
There has been recent public discussion on the suitability of Wikipedia for UK schools. Many articles on the live Wikipedia website are of acceptable accuracy. This Selection aims to correct the remaining criticisms made of Wikipedia as a school resource:
Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, said: "The Wikimedia Foundation aims to encourage the development and distribution of reference content to the public free of charge: this project is an excellent example of free resources being offered to a particular audience which we warmly encourage, and are proud to support."
Dr. Andrew Cates, CEO of SOS Children (and himself a Wikipedia administrator) said: "Wikipedia offers a fantastic learning resource. We are delighted to have been able to play a part in increasing the number of children who will be able to benefit from it. We are indebted to the volunteers in our offices and on Wikipedia who helped check articles and to the Wikipedia community for their help with this project."
The Selection can easily be run on school intranets or in remote locations in the developing world where Internet access is a problem. A pilot version of this release has already been distributed to schools in South Africa by the Shuttleworth Foundation. It is intended to extend and update the Selection periodically.
Just a few days after the death of Norwegian journalist Tron Øgrim (see related story), a Belarusian editor passed away this week. Uladzimir Katkouski, a well-known and award-winning Belarusian blogger who also made more than 1,300 edits to the English Wikipedia and nearly 900 edits to the Normative Belarusian Wikipedia between 2004 and 2006 as User:Rydel, passed away on May 26, 2007. Katkouski mostly edited articles about Belarus; among the articles he edited were Orsha, White Russia, and Belarusian language. He was evidently hit by a fire truck, and died after being in a coma.
Wikipedia reached the 3-month Alexa rank of 9 this week, passing Tencent QQ, the website of a Chinese instant-messaging program. Wikipedia generally hovers at rank 9 on most days, falling to rank 10 or 11 on Fridays and Saturdays. Wikipedia still has a long way to go to pass the number 8 site, Orkut; on only one occasion, in February, has Wikipedia reached a daily rank of 8; this rise was probably due to the Chinese New Year, as this usually produces spikes in Wikipedia's ranking, as traffic to the main Chinese-language sites falls sharply at this time each year.
Notably, Alexa statistics also show that about 6.3% of internet users visit Wikipedia, and that as of late, Wikipedia accounts for nearly 0.5% of internet traffic, about 1 in 200 page views. Additionally, Wikipedia reaches more users than Orkut, 7th-ranked Baidu, and 6th-ranked MySpace; however, Wikipedia ranks lower due to the low number of pages visited by each user (5.0) compared to the other sites (38.7, 12.5, and 37.0, respectively).
Jimbo Wales appeared on The Colbert Report, a satirical television program hosted by comedian Stephen Colbert. Stephen's character of the same name interviewed Wales, talking about the project and joking about a previous segment of the show where Colbert encouraged viewers to edit articles to state "the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months." (see archived story). Colbert again encouraged various vandalous additions, including the phrase "librarians are hiding something". After a comment by Colbert's character that Spanish users should learn English, Wales joked that he'd have to protect the entire Spanish Wikipedia. The full interview can be seen at Comedy Central here.
The volunteers who will serve on the Board Election Steering Committee for the upcoming Board of Trustees election were announced by Wikimedia Volunteer Coordinator Cary Bass. They include Aphaia and Jon Harald Søby, both of whom were election officials last year, along with Tim Starling as technical adviser. Joining the group this year are Benjamin Mako Hill, Newyorkbrad, and Philippe Beaudette.
Twenty-two articles were promoted to featured status last week: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (nom), Surface weather analysis (nom), William Goebel (nom), Alfred Russel Wallace (nom), Dominik Hašek (nom), The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages (nom), Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (nom), Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (nom), Common Raven (nom), Paulo (Lost) (nom), Eris (dwarf planet) (nom), Making Waves (nom), B-52 aircraft crash at Fairchild Air Force Base (nom), Islam (nom), Bill O'Reilly (cricketer) (nom), Harriet Arbuthnot (nom), Building of the World Trade Center (nom), Kid A (nom), Jay Chou (nom), Verbascum thapsus (nom), Robert Garran (nom) and 3rd Battalion 3rd Marines (nom).
Four articles were de-featured last week: Parthenon (nom), Cristero War (nom), Dogpatch USA (nom) and Oxyrhynchus (nom).
Five lists were promoted to featured status last week: Frölunda HC seasons (nom), List of Colorado Avalanche players (nom), List of tallest buildings and structures in London (nom), 2007 NFL Draft (nom) and List of WWE United States Champions (nom).
One featured topic, The Simpsons (season 8) (nom) was promoted to featured status last week.
One featured portal, Portal:Fish (nom) was promoted to featured status last week.
No sounds were promoted to featured status last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Ellis Paul, Jerusalem, Tornado, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Diplodocus, Simeon I of Bulgaria, and Calvin Coolidge.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Poison gas in World War I, Montserrat (mountain), Cactus, Toledo, Spain, Lake Mapourika, Man and Limburger cheese.
Two pictures were promoted to featured status last week:
Seven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Bjelleklang (nom), Bobak (nom), Yamamoto Ichiro (nom), SpuriousQ (nom), PeaceNT (nom), Ocatecir (nom), and Christopher Parham (nom).
Eleven bots were approved to begin operating this week: DinoSizedBot (task request), hxhbot (task request), Rabbot (task request), MartinBotIV (task request), UncatTemplateBot (task request), MetsBot (task request), ENewsBot (task request), Bot523 (task request), Aksibot (task request), ArkyBot (task request) and Byrialbot (task request).
This page covers changes to the MediaWiki software and English Wikipedia site configuration, and other technology news, since the last technology report (on 9 April 2007). Bugfixes and new features that do not affect the English Wikipedia have been omitted from this.
The Arbitration Committee did not accept any new cases this week, and closed two cases. Acceptance of the controversial Badlydrawnjeff case regarding WP:BLP and related issues currently stands at 6/3/1/0.
The committee is also considering whether to lift Dmcdevit's ban on Koavf (talk · contribs), and instead to impose probation and a revert parole, without a full hearing. Currently, voting stands at 5/0/0/1, but some editors have expressed concerns over whether it is appropriate to deal with the case by summary motion.
