In an unprecedented coincidence, seven administrators of Wikipedia requested promotion to bureaucrat status last week. As of press time, six of seven candidacies remained open for comment. The candidacies were:
Majorly (nom, withdrawn by candidate) This was Majorly's second nomination for bureaucratship; the prior nomination closed unsuccessfully on 5 April 2007. In support, Phaedriel said, "I know for a fact that he has used his tools with care, thoughtfulness and unfailing will to help the community and its individual members." Opposing, Friday cited her concern that issues raised in the prior nomination hadn't been addressed, in her opinion, and added that Majorly "tends to bicker with those opposing the RFAs of his buddies." Majorly withdrew his nomination with a final tally of 35/15/2 (70% support) on 4 July, stating, "I agree and admit to being confrontational, but I thought that I could be trusted to view others' opinions," and mentioning his plentiful contributions in discussions at requests for adminship.
RyanGerbil10 (nom) This is RyanGerbil10's second bureaucrat nomination; his prior attempt closed unsuccessfully on 4 March 2007. In opposition, Xoloz said that, "...in my past interactions with Ryan here at RfA (which have involved colloquies on a few different candidates), his replies have been brief and sometimes cryptic," but went on to add, "He is a nice guy, though, I'll say that." Other opposing commenters were concerned by a perceived lack of participation in requests for adminship discussions. In support, Anthony.bradbury commented that, "I believe, from reviewing his work on the project and from personal experience, that this is an admin whom we can trust with the extra responsiblities of bureaucratship." As of this writing, RyanGerbil10's nomination has a tally of 28/11/5 (72% support), and is scheduled to close 11 July.
A Man In Black (nom) Nominated by Somitho, this is A Man In Black's first attempt at bureaucratship. Several users commenting in the discussion seem concerned by prior incidents involving possible edit warring and interpretation of the three revert rule. Opposing, JayHenry stated that, "I hate to minimize years of good work for a half dozen bad examples, but trying to minimize the bad examples from bureaucrats is important." While Sjakkalle mentioned in support, "...some concern over the block log, but I think AMiB is a sensible person in general, and the issues raised there are not really part of the bureaucrat's domain," several former supporters had struck out or amended their initial comments. As of this writing, A Man In Black's nomination has a tally of 27/32/6 (46% support), and is scheduled to close 11 July.
Ral315 (nom) This is Ral315's first bureaucrat nomination. A primary point of contention in this discussion seems to be Ral's position as the editor-in-chief of the Wikipedia Signpost, leading several users to express concerns regarding possible consolidation of power. In discussions at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship, JayHenry argued that there were enough other trusted people to fill the necessary roles, and that "separation of powers is a principle that is good for societies of any size". In response, EVula (himself a recent candidate for bureaucratship) found the concerns a "Non-issue. The two don't conflict at all, and there's no "separation of powers" issue here; the Signpost is just a community-run 'newspaper', not a position of authority [that] interprets and enforces Wikipedia's policies and guidelines." On the nomination page itself, Mailer diablo said, "Let's leave holding more than one high position as a grandfather clause. The potential conflict of interest might possibly mean that the Signpost becomes a mouthpiece of crat decisions, whether unwittingly (influence) or otherwise." In response to some of these concerns, Ral315 added an addendum to his self-nomination statement and commented on the requests for adminship talk page, suggesting that he would avoid participating in articles related to bureaucrat activities, and that he would resign as a bureaucrat if he "crossed the line." Currently, Ral315's nomination has a tally of 76/12/0 (86% support), and is scheduled to close 11 July.
Andrevan (nom) This is Andrevan's third attempt at bureaucratship, with prior nominations closing unsuccessfully on 16 November 2004 and 3 September 2005, respectively. In support, Shalom said, "I don't have the same 'name recognition' of Andre as for the other candidates, but I like his essay about consensus and I believe that he does 'grok' it." Opposing, Durin felt that Andrevan had not displayed interest or activity in requests for adminship, until recently, saying, "In the opening to this RfB, you say 'It's been a while'. Indeed it has. You've been utterly absent from WT:RFA since November of 2005 up until a couple of days ago." Andrevan's nomination currently has a tally of 58/9/2 (87% support), and is scheduled to close 11 July.
Deskana (nom) This is Deskana's second nomination for bureaucratship, the first having closed unsuccessfully on 30 January 2007. Deskana's nomination has seen heavy discussion regarding the so-called "Danny question," (which has been asked of all current candidates) regarding the controversial decision by current bureaucrats to promote Danny to adminship, following his having resigned from the Wikimedia Foundation's office staff (see archived story and RfA nom). While Haukurth opposed Deskana's nomination, saying, "Deskana says the bureaucrats made the right call in promoting Danny even though he agrees that there was no community consensus for such a promotion," Pascal.Tesson supported, saying that, "I trust Deskana's sound judgment and the answer to the tricky Danny-question reinforces that feeling." Many opposing users have cited Durin's post in the discussion, which brings up concerns regarding demeanor and temperament. Currently, Deskana's nomination has a tally of 101/12/2 (89% support), and is scheduled to close 10 July.
Husond (nom) This is Husond's first nomination for bureaucratship. Citing personal experience, Ryan Postlethwaite said that, "From my first few weeks on the project, Husond has been someone who I have looked up to and respected. I'm not sure where I first saw him, but I admire his approach on-wiki." However, some users are concerned regarding the philosophy of consensus, with Dmcdevit opposing and stating, "we don't need another vote-counting bureaucrat (we have too many as it is). Asked above for the criteria for promotion, the word 'consensus,' or any reasonable synonyms are completely absent." Currently, Husond's nomination has a tally of 72/20/3 (78% support), and is scheduled to close 10 July.
The most recent addition to the roster of bureaucrats was Cecropia, who returned on 17 May 2007 after relinquishing his status in April 2006.[1] The community has not approved any new bureaucrats after Redux was promoted on 12 June 2006, thirteen months ago.[2]
Why now?
From January through June 2007, there were 11 unsuccessful requests for bureaucratship by nine different candidates - an average of two per month. What caused seven users to request bureaucratship within the same week?
One major motivator has been the persistent backlog at Wikipedia:Changing usernames. Although there are currently 22 bureaucrats,[3] only two of them - Cecropia and Secretlondon - have performed about 90% of the last 500 username changes.[4] Some requests have waited more than a week for one of these two bureaucrats to address them.
In his nomination statement, Deskana observed, "Personally, I feel Wikipedia needs more bureaucrats. Most of the bureaucrat stuff is done by Cecropia (who might I add, was only recently re-elected as a bureaucrat), and there is a backlog at WP:CHU."
Results
The requests are still running as of publication. The Signpost will report the final results next week.
References
^Cecropia's last bureaucrat action before the leave of absence was on 31 March 2006, according to the user rights log.
This week, the Signpost covers the closing of this year's Board elections.
The Wikimedia Board Elections closed this Saturday, with 4,713 unique votes from across numerous Wikimedia Foundation wikis. The results of the elections are expected to be released on Sunday, 15 July.
The Election Committee has reviewed many of the votes, looking for possible voter fraud. After this is completed, Software in the Public Interest will tally the votes, and forward the results to the Election Committee. The top three of the fifteen candidates standing will receive two-year terms on the Board. Before the winning candidates officially take their positions, the Board of Trustees must officially certify the elections in order for their results to be valid, a move that is likely to be merely a formality.
Last week, a minor controversy erupted over mailings sent by Gregory Maxwell, urging English Wikipedians and Wikimedia Commons users to vote in the elections. The mailing, which was sent to active Wikipedians who had not yet voted in the elections, was viewed by some as helpful in reminding users to cast their vote. Others viewed the notice as an abuse of the e-mail system, and unfairly benefited the English community (though Gmaxwell offered to help users send out notices in other languages, no users had stepped forward by the time the elections closed). Jimbo Walessuggested that in future elections, the Wikimedia Foundation could personally send e-mails to users who are eligible to vote.
Results from the election are expected on Sunday, barring any complications.
Over the last two weeks, the Wikimedia Foundation has hired two new employees: Sue Gardner will serve as a consultant and special advisor, and Mike Godwin will serve as general counsel and Legal Coordinator.
Sue GardnerOn 27 June, Wikimedia Foundation chair Florence Devouardannounced that Sue Gardner would be hired as a "consultant and special advisor" to the Foundation. In the announcement, Devouard said:
Sue’s arrival is an important step for Wikimedia as we continue to evolve as an organization. We want to ensure sustainability and reliability, as well as set the stage for future growth: Sue’s role is to help us do that. She is well-suited to the job: she’s consensus-oriented (which as we know is important in an organization like ours), and she has experience leading change and managing transitions like the one we’re facing. She is sympathetic to our goals and values, and also has some experience with collaborative projects.
Sue will be responsible for assessing and improving all aspects of the Foundation’s operations. This means she’ll be taking a look at how we do things today –everything from staffing to fundraising to financial controls– and recommending improvements.
Sue comes to us from CBC.CA, the website of Canada’s national public broadcaster, and that country’s largest and most popular news site. Under her leadership as Senior Director there, CBC.CA more than doubled its audience size, and won dozens of international awards. Prior to running CBC.CA, she was a journalist for 10 years, writing for magazines and newspapers, and making documentaries and talk programming for media companies such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the British Broadcasting Corporation and National Public Radio.
Gardner thanked Wikimedians for "all the very kind welcomes", and noted that she would be focusing on learning the various processes, wikis and mailing lists, and meeting with office staff, and would start much of her work after Wikimania, due to a prior commitment from July 7 through July 25.
Mike GodwinOn 3 July, Devouard announced that the foundation had hired Mike Godwin to handle Wikimedia's legal responsibilities:
As General Counsel and Legal Coordinator, Mike will be responsible for handling the day-to-day legal needs of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as coordinating pro bono legal help worldwide. Additionally, he will be responsible for evaluating the Foundation’s policies and operating procedures, and assisting the Board of Trustees with legal concerns.
Mike comes to us from Yale Law School and the Yale Department of Computer Science, where he was working as a Research Fellow, supervising student research projects involving law and technology. Mike is an accomplished attorney with over 17 years of experience in legal policy development and advocacy concerning technology, privacy and the internet. Most notably, he was the first Staff Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about civil liberties relating to technology, and acted as a defender of those liberties. He also served as Counsel to two Washington D.C.-based nonprofits, specifically Public Knowledge and The Center for Democracy and Technology. ... Mike will be working from his office in the Washington, DC, area. If you would like to volunteer with the Wikimedia Foundation in a legal capacity, we encourage you to contact Mike directly by email at mgodwin at wikimedia.org.
Godwin, perhaps best known for his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and for Godwin's Law, coined by Godwin in 1990, has edited Wikipedia in the past, anonymously and under the username Mikegodwin.
In an embarrassing mistake, a Japanese newspaper has been caught plagiarizing from Wikipedia for part of a front-page story about the death of a former prime minister, and apologized for the situation last week.
The newspaper, the Shizuoka Shimbun, originally ran the article in question on 29 June, one day after the death of Kiichi Miyazawa, who served as prime minister from 1991 to 1993. It included a tale about Miyazawa, much earlier in his career as a cabinet minister, telling Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko to sit down during negotiations over the Kuril Islands, where the boundary between the two countries has long been disputed.
Once the Shizuoka Shimbun published the story, readers noticed that this excerpt strongly resembled the description of the incident in the Japanese Wikipedia's article about Miyazawa. After this circulated on Japanese blogs and other sites, the newspaper came out with an apology last Thursday, 5 July. According to the Mainichi Shimbun (Shimbun means "newspaper" in Japanese), the writer responsible thought the information was common knowledge and didn't need to be cited, but the editorial chief of the Shizuoka Shimbun called the reporter's action inappropriate.
The Inquirersuggested that "a better anecdote" would have been the one about how George H.W. Bush fell ill at a state dinner and vomited in Miyazawa's lap. This one makes it into his relatively brief entry on the English Wikipedia, which makes no mention of the Kuril Islands dispute.
For a sense of the magnitude of the situation, the Shizuoka Shimbun has a reported circulation over 1.4 million. Although not quite in the class of Japan's leading national dailies, it is a major regional newspaper. By way of comparison, its circulation figure is higher than that of almost all British or American non-tabloid newspapers (Japanese newspapers generally have some of the world's highest circulation numbers).
With help from SandyGeorgia, Rick Block, Gimmetrow, and Raul654, the FA stats page was revamped this week. The numbers there are more accurate and (for the FA proportion) more precise.
Wikipedia tops Nielsen/NetRatings' news/information rankings
Reutersreported this week that Nielsen/NetRatings' U.S. stats show that Wikipedia is "the top online news and information destination", with 46.8 million unique users, about 10 million more than the Weather Channel.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.8 (f08e6b3), and changes with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.
Watching pages no longer fails in Gecko-based browsers when the page's title contains a zero-width non-joiner character in the page's title. (Previously the watch appeared successful but failed anyway.) The same fix fixed the same error when using the CategoryTree feature. (r23834, bug 10477)
New features
An (undo) link is now available for each edit on page histories, without going via the (diff) link first. (r23771, bug 1783)
A new API query prop=imageinfo has been implemented, to query for details about an image. (r23819, bug 9142)
It's now possible to query the size of the database server replication lag, using an API query for meta=siteinfo. (r23823, bug 10211)
A local page MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist was added for blacklisting spam links from just one Wikimedia project. (Adding spam links to the Meta blacklist, m:Spam blacklist, will blacklist spam links from all Wikimedia projects.) (r23849, bug 8492)
Configuration changes
Adding an external link to http://en.wikiversity.org (or any other language-version of Wikiversity) no longer triggers a CAPTCHA for new and unregistered users. (bug 10440)
Wikipedia was uneditable for about an hour from 14:54 to 15:54 UTC on 3 July; the developers' log gives some possible reasons as to why ('brion' is User:Brion VIBBER):[1]
15:53 brion: lag problems on enwiki -- all slaves lagged (approx 3547 sec), but no apparent reason why
15:56 brion: lag problem resolved. stop/start slave got them running again; presumably the connections broke due to the net problems but it thought they were still alive, so didn't reconnect
Ongoing news
Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla.
PalestineRemembered was a case involving the actions of PalestineRemembered and a block of this editor by Jayjg, referred from the Community sanction noticeboard. Upon reviewing the case, the arbitrators concluded that the original dispute had been resolved and that all editing restrictions arising from this incident had been lifted, and adopted a motion to dismiss the case without taking any action.
New cases
The five newly accepted cases are all in the evidence stage of consideration:
COFS, a case initiated by Durova based on a discussion at the community sanctions noticeboard. The case involves allegations of tendentious editing by various editors, sockpuppetry, and other user conduct issues on Scientology related articles.
Great Irish Famine, a case initiated by SirFozzie, involves allegations including misuse of sources and harassment relating to Great Irish Famine and other Ireland/Northern Ireland articles.
Pigsonthewing 2, initiated by Moreschi, concerns the conduct of Pigsonthewing, including a series of conflicts between this user and other editors involving the use of microformats on Wikipedia and other matters.
In addition to the new cases listed above, these cases are in the evidence stage:
Armenia-Azerbaijan 2: A case alleging misconduct by various editors, some of whom were previously placed on revert parole in an earlier case, on articles relating to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the conflict between them.
Zacheus-jkb: A case involving the actions of -jkb- and Zacheus. -jkb- alleges that Zacheus has published personal data on him, and has made legal threats. Zacheus denies the allegations, and Thatcher131 alleges on the talkpage that -jkb- has himself revealed personal information on Zacheus.
Under review
The "under review" category refers to situations where the arbitrators are examining a party's compliance with a prior ArbCom decision, without opening a full new case to address the matter.
In these cases, a proposed decision has been drafted and is being voted on by the arbitrators:
CharlotteWebb: A case arising from the revelation by Jayjg, who has checkuser access, that CharlotteWebb had edited from TOR proxies. This occurred during CharlotteWebb's request for adminship, which then failed to reach consensus. In a proposed decision submitted by arbitrator Kirill Lokshin, the Arbitration Committee would note that CharlotteWebb remains a user in good standing and is welcome to resume editing, and would advise or remind Jayjg to seek to resolve this type of dispute privately before making public statements alleging misbehavior. Other arbitrators have not yet commented on these proposals.
Miskin: A case involving the actions of Miskin, who was blocked by Swatjester for one month (later reduced to one week) for an alleged violation of the three revert rule following an earlier history of blocks. In a proposed decision submitted by arbitrator Mackensen, the committee would advise Miskin to seek consensus on an article's talkpage if his initial edits are reverted, and advise Swatjester to take the length of time since previous blocks into account in deciding for the length of a later block and to treat all editors violating the 3RR fairly.
Abu badali: A case alleging that Abu badali has disruptively tagged non-free images for deletion, even when a valid fair-use justification exists, and has harassed editors who have complained about this behavior. Abu badali denies the allegations. The proposed decision submitted by arbitrator Fred Bauder would place Abu badali on probation for one year. Arbitrator voting on the remedy and some of the findings of fact underlying it is split.
NYScholar: A case involving the actions of a number of users, including NYScholar and User:Notmyrealname, in relation to the Lewis Libby article. The proposed decision authored by Fred Bauder would grant an "amnesty" for past edit-warring on this article, but providing that further misconduct may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator.
Piotrus: A case involving User:Piotrus and other editors on Central and Eastern Europe-related articles. In the case, multiple parties have accused one another of edit-warring, incivility, unethical behavior, and biased editing. Arbitrators have proposed remedies ranging from granting amnesty for prior editing problems on these articles to placing "all articles relating to Eastern Europe, broadly defined, on general probation and parole" to banning M.K from these articles for one year. Voting on all the proposed remedies is divided.
Paranormal: A case involving the actions of various users, especially as regards bias and attribution, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon. Remedies including limiting editors on articles relating to the paranormal to one revert (other than of simple vandalism) per week, and cautioning Dradin and Kazuba, have been proposed.
Motion to close
An arbitrator has proposed closing the committee's consideration and finalizing the decision in this case:
Hkelkar 2: This case involves the actions of, among others, Rama's Arrow, Bakasuprman, Dangerous-Boy, and Sbhushan. Rama's Arrow has alleged that the others acted as meatpuppets of banned user Hkelkar, which they deny. Rama's Arrow has since been voluntarily desysopped. Remedies supported by a majority of the Arbitration Committee would confirm Rama's Arrow's desysopping (but note that he is eligible to seek adminship again through RfA at any time), would urge the editors involved to enter into mediation regarding any unresolved conduct disputes, and would emphasize that administrators involved in a dispute should not exercise admin powers such as blocking against others involved in the dispute, but should ask an uninvolved admin to review the matter. Also supported by a majority are the principle that off-wiki e-mails should not be posted on Wikipedia without, at least, the consent of the sender, as well as a recently added proposal stating that "all parties are reminded in the strongest possible terms that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a forum for conspiracy, personal attacks, nor the continuation of ethnic disputes by other means."
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