This week, we add another new feature: Wikipedia Dispatches. This report will "cover high quality editing and other contributions that have happened that week in the English Wikipedia."
The name was coined by Raul654, who came up with the idea for the report, and likened the report to the award a soldier can receive by being mentioned in dispatches. Thanks to Marskell, who's written the first installment.
If any readers are interested in contributing, please let me know — I'm currently looking for someone to write the "Features and admins" column temporarily; The Placebo Effect is currently unable to do so for at least a few weeks. Other writers could cover weekly news, particularly that relating to the Wikimedia Foundation, which I haven't been able to cover as well as I'd like to.
Also, my thanks to Greg Williams, contributor of the WikiWorld cartoon. Greg has decided to discontinue weekly publication of the comic due to other commitments, but indicated that non-regular installments may still be uploaded. For at least the next few months, I'll be picking some of my favorite comics from 2006 and 2007 as "best of WikiWorld" specials. I'm not sure I ever gave Greg his due here, so I'd like to thank him again for all the effort he put into the cartoons.
Thanks for reading the Signpost.
— Ral315
Last month marked the end of 2007, and the end of the biggest year (and perhaps the most controversial year) that Wikipedia has seen. This week, the Wikipedia Signpost continues to take a look back at the year that was 2007 in Wikipedia.
In 2007, the Signpost interviewed three key figures in the Wikimedia Foundation: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation Chairperson Florence Devouard, and Executive Director Sue Gardner.
In Wales' September interview, we asked him about a trip to China, the fall fundraiser, and anonymous proxies:
Wikipedia Signpost: This week, you visited China. Did you meet with Chinese officials regarding the blocking of Wikipedia within the PRC?
:Jimmy Wales: Well, on this particular visit, I did not end up meeting with any relevant Chinese officials. Those visits are being scheduled for November. I was in Dalian, China attending an event of the World Economic Forum for the group of people they have named "Young Global Leaders". I met some awesome people. Of course they all know of Wikipedia (a few have had Wikipedia scandals or BLP issues or both). And others have missions that are in some ways similar to ours. ... I met Princess Mabel of the Netherlands, who is a delightful person, who happened to have had a WikiScanner situation last week.
That's right, we reported on that last week. What did she have to say about that?
:Well, she hoped that the edit would give rise to a debate about the facts of the situation. But the media only focused on the fact of the editing. She also thinks they could have done a better job of it. Rather than removing the two incorrect words -- which was a mistake since it was part of a quote -- she should have added a sentence pointing out that the couple continues to maintain that they gave no incorrect information, only incomplete information. (I have no opinion on the content of the controversy, but can testify that after a very long conversation with her, it was quite clear to me that it would be absurd to think of her as acting in bad faith around this matter.)
How is the Foundation planning to run the fall fundraiser? Will the emphasis be more on personal donations, or larger, corporate and grant contributions?
:For the most part it will be the same as ever, with banners on the website, etc. Except that I have gotten commitments for over US$1 million in matching funds from wealthy individuals.
In 2004, you said, “In general, I like living in a world with anonymous proxies ... There are many valid uses for them. But, writing on Wikipedia is not one of the valid uses”. How do you feel about the use of open proxies on Wikipedia today?
:I just came back from China. I was unable for that entire time to access Wikipedia. If I had been able to access Wikipedia, using Tor for example, I would likely have not been able to edit. I think that's a shame. At the same time, anonymous proxies do pose a couple of interesting problems for us. First, they spew a lot of vandalism, and the reality of the situation is that more people seem to use such tools for bad than for good. Second, there are some interesting problems that could arise due to the increasing number of griefers/trolls who would like to build fake "good" accounts at Wikipedia while at the same time continuing "bad" behaviors. I acknowledge that it is a tough problem, but I think it important that we think carefully and pro-actively and always try by default to be as open as we can be.[1]
In Devouard's November interview, we asked her about the Foundation's audit, the strengths and weaknesses of the Foundation, and misconceptions of the public:
Wikipedia Signpost: What is the current status of the Wikimedia Foundation's audit? When do you expect a public release of financial statements for FY2007?
:Florence Devouard: The audit officially began on September 17, 2007. It is expected to be finished by the end of the calendar year (hopefully). The audit is being conducted by a St. Petersburg firm called Gregory Sharer and Stuart. This is the same firm that conducted our ‘first-three-years’ audit report that was published last year.
:On the Wikimedia side, the people involved are Oleta McHenry, preparing the books on behalf of the Foundation. Mona Venkateswaran, a financial consultant to the Foundation and a former auditor, is providing oversight and guidance to Oleta. Various others are helping Oleta by providing information and/or supporting documentation. We are also now actively looking for a new treasurer.
:It is hard to plan completion date. It depends on the size of the organization, number of transactions, inherent risk in the audit work, and overall complexity of performing audit procedures. It’s fairly normal for audits to take longer to complete than was initially predicted. The Foundation’s projects (and their popularity) grew significantly over the past year, which meant that spending (number of transactions) increased. So there is more work to be done. Also, there has been some turnover in Foundation staff (e.g., the accountant), which has resulted in some loss of institutional memory that makes it harder to do the audit preparation. So it isn’t really all that surprising that the audit is fairly time-consuming.
Today, what do you think are the Wikimedia Foundation's strengths? What are its weaknesses? How can these be improved?
:People and good will are probably the biggest strengths. I would currently consider understaffing the biggest weakness. We probably miss many great opportunities to do big and important things, due to lack of time. I expect this will be improved soon, when more staff is hired. However, the success of the fundraising will also determine our future hiring ability.
What do you think is the public's biggest misconception about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects? How do you think we can remedy this?
:In January 2007, I defined as one of my priorities the following message: we are not a commercial project. By and large, the public, the corporate world, the NGOs and governmental organizations had no idea what Wikimedia Foundation was about, and considered Wikipedia was held by a private commercial company. As could be expected, such a belief raises questions (doubts...) about our (hidden) intents, about our independence etc... For this reason, in 2007, a lot of efforts have been put to explain that we are a non profit, that Wikimedia projects are here for the common good, etc. I can already see much improvement, not so much in the public mind, but definitely at the level of big non-profit organizations, big private companies and governments.
:A remedy to improve that further? Messaging... explaining what we do, how we do it, why we do it etc...everyone can help push this message: "We are a non profit, we want to bring knowledge to people". I would also consider getting one big grant a very cool way to show the public where we stand.[2]
Sue Gardner's December interview focused on her duties at the Foundation, the fundraiser, and quality concerns:
Wikipedia Signpost: As Executive Director, what are your immediate duties for the Foundation?
:Sue Gardner: I have two major immediate priorities right now: the relocation, and ensuring we’re okay financially. Financial stability is obviously critical – we can’t accomplish anything if we’re bogged down with money problems. So a lot of my attention is going towards fundraising. We have the online fundraiser underway right now, and that is important. And there are other initiatives as well – we’re doing some major donor cultivation, and I am hiring a head of fundraising whose job will be to develop and execute a sustainability strategy for us, etc.
:The second big priority is the relocation: it’s my job to get us safely and successfully to San Francisco. Which involves more than just finding us an office and buying some furniture; it involves a fair amount of hiring too. You may know that when we decided to move to San Francisco we invited all the current U.S.-based staff to come with us. But obviously many people are in no position to do that - they have husbands, they have kids in school, and other constraints. So we will need to replace several of the current staff, and we will also be hiring for a few new positions, like the fundraising one. That's really exciting and fun work, building what is in some ways a new organization. There are a bunch of other smaller urgent priorities – but those are the two major ones.
While the fall fundraiser has raised over $1,000,000 so far, this number falls well short of the $4.6 million in the 2007-2008 Planned Spending Distribution. How will the Foundation ensure that the budget is balanced?
:Yes, the online fundraiser will not cover our operating costs - nor did we expect it to. And that's okay. We have a couple of major donations coming in within the next few weeks: they’ve been committed to, and will arrive in the bank before the new year. I will be going on a mini-tour of potential major donors, starting in the middle of December. We’ll probably do another one in January. And the German chapter is doing its own fundraising, and will be pitching in to buy 15 new squid servers for Amsterdam – which is fabulous and will be very helpful.
:In the short term, I will need to focus quite a bit of my energy on fundraising, to ensure we’re okay for the coming year. In the medium and long term though, I am not particularly worried. We are going to have a head of fundraising, whose job will be –mainly- to cultivate major donations. And I think she or he will have a lot of fun in that role, and will be able to be really successful. Lots of people love Wikipedia: there is an awful lot of warmth and good feeling towards it, and also – to a lesser extent because they are lesser-known - towards the other projects. And I understand that. If I were a philanthropist, I would want to put my money towards initiatives that were able to be effective on a shoestring. And there is no denying the impact Wikimedia is having with a ridiculously small staff.
:I would also want to encourage philanthropists to attend Wikimania. It was incredibly inspiring to me to see those hundreds of very very different people, all voluntarily coming together for no reason other than to do something exciting and positive and good.
With the CBC, you handled the day-to-day operations of a website known for its quality and accuracy. How do you think the Foundation can overcome public perception of inaccuracy, and begin to foster a public image of quality growth?
:Regarding the perception-of-inaccuracy issue for us, I believe that part of the issue is simply time lag between perception and reality. First Monday published a study a few months ago that helped to validate our fundamental premise. It concluded that the best articles in Wikipedia had benefited from massive, open collaboration: working together in the way we do is critical to achieve high-quality articles. So, although I don’t want to minimize quality problems where they actually exist, I do believe that part of this is a perception issue rather than a reality issue. And my feeling is, some of the attacks on us will subside as people get more used to the idea of projects like ours. My mother has learned to embrace Wikipedia. So gradually, will other people who have been dubious about us.
:Part of the challenge is to make it clear to our readers that our core community of contributors is diligently working on building an ever improving reference work. Our fundamental openness is essential for that community to grow and thrive, but it also creates unique challenges. Recently we launched the quality portal, which lists some of the strategies we're supporting to make it easier for readers to distinguish high-quality articles from text that is in the draft stage or from random vandalism.[3]
In 2007, the Foundation went through numerous changes:
Next week, the last installment of the Signpost's exceedingly long series, "2007 in review".
Earlier this month, editor John Broughton's book about Wikipedia, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, was released by O'Reilly Media, as part of their Missing Manual series. The book is the first comprehensive guide to editing Wikipedia. This week, the Signpost interviews John Broughton:
Wikipedia Signpost: What first motivated you to write a book about Wikipedia?
How long has the book been in progress?
What areas of Wikipedia and Wikimedia does the book cover?
Most of the book is devoted to editing help—how much of the book is devoted to the community (e.g. talk pages, RFA, dispute resolution)?
Who is the book's primary audience? What will new editors get from the book? What will experienced editors get from the book?
Are there any immediate plans to update the book regularly, or write another book exploring a different side of the Wikimedia universe?
On Amazon.com, the book is listed as "available for pre-order", and some sites, including Buy.com and Overstock.com indicate a publication date of March. The book is currently available through O'Reilly Media's website. Where else is the book available?
John Broughton's book, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, is currently available (O'Reilly Media, $29.99, £18.50), and is available for purchase on Amazon ($19.79).[1]
A new preprocessor was introduced this week (see m:Migration to the new preprocessor), after several days of testing by the community, and preceding that extensive testing by developers, to try to make sure that it would not cause problems (last week's coverage). The new parser fixes several bugs, and makes new features available; however, it caused some problems as well that were not caught by the testing.
The new preprocessor has actually existed in the software for a while (since 20 November, revision r27667 of the software); however, it caused problems with strip markers (the 'UNIQ bug'; see related story) and was disabled on Wikimedia wikis until the problems could be sorted out. It was re-enabled for the English Wikipedia on 24 January (Village Pump announcement), but some unexpected problems developed, in addition to the changes that were known.
There were some changes that fit to some extent within expected behaviour; for instance, the method previously used to prevent MediaWiki:Ipbreason-dropdown expanding templates within the drop-down list stopped working, but this was easily fixed by Tim Starling (who wrote the new preprocessor) using a different method. However, there were other unexpected problems. One problem that affected certain processes like Wikipedia:Templates for deletion was that signature tildes (~~~~) inside a <!-- comment --> ended up being expanded when the page was saved under the new preprocessor; the new preprocessor was disabled for several hours while the issue was fixed, but now handles such cases correctly. Another problem was caused by the change in semantics of <onlyinclude> (which indirectly affected Portal:Current events, and possibly other pages); it now no longer removes whitespace from the same line, and therefore now behaves the same way as <includeonly> and <noinclude>. However, the change for the most part went smoothly.
Two new pieces of markup are available with the new preprocessor. The new {{#iferror:}} parser function checks to see if another parser function returned an error message, and allows a different error message or other markup instead:
* {{#expr:2+2}} {{#iferror:{{#expr:2+2}}|error}}
* {{#expr:this is an error}} {{#iferror:{{#expr:this is an error}}|error}}
There is also the #tag syntax, allowing magic words, template markup and similar preprocessor markup to be used inside tag-like extensions, like <ref> and <imagemap>. There is an example on the technical village pump. One less obvious but important improvement is that branches of parser functions like {{#if:}} that are not used are now not parsed, reducing the load on the server for pages which use such constructs; this means that the pages in question will not use up nearly as much of the page's template limits as before.
A large number of bugs were also fixed by the new preprocessor (see related story).
NB: WikiWorld has ceased its weekly schedule, but will continue to run occasional new comics, as well as "classic" previously-published comics. This rerun is from January 22, 2007.
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Truthiness". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Recently, Estonian Wikipedians celebrated their 45,000th article and 6,500th user (27, or 0.41% of them have administrator tools). The Estonian Wikipedia also had their 4,700th media file uploaded this week.
The Estonian Wikipedia still has no approved administrator election policy; this lack of definitive policy could be one of the reasons why only one administrator was proposed in 2007. The first administrator candidate in 2008 had the most "for" votes in the history of the Estonian Wikipedia, and was made an administrator, regardless of the lack of approved election rules.
In April and May 2007, the Estonian Wikipedia received a wave of vandalism caused by the Bronze Night. In the English Wikipedia, the Estonian flag was briefly replaced by the Nazi flag; the Estonian Wikipedia had attacks like this for almost a week in the wake of the unrest.
Media in Estonia has quoted the Estonian Wikipedia more and more every month. Its editors had their first meetup in December 2007, something that was reflected in the media.
This month, there has been a media debate on two big paper encyclopedias along with their on-line versions about to be published, and as a result, Vikipeedia has had more attention from media than usual.
The 2007 Commons Picture of the Year contest has concluded, with Broadway Tower taking 1st place, with 84 votes. The top 3 finalists are below:
The Arbitration Committee has created a working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars. In the words of arbitrator FT2,
As part of the recent arbitration case on Palestine-Israel articles, a working group is being appointed to look freshly and with a completely open and wide remit at the kinds of nationalistic, ethnic or cultural based editorial conflicts which came to the fore in 2007, which often reflect deep feelings, advocacy, and unreconciled viewpoints in the real world. The aim of the group is to:
# Gain a detailed understanding how such conflicts occur, and the structures and approaches administrators and experienced users face in trying to obtain stability, appropriate conduct, and a neutral point of view.
- Generate ideas to cover different aspects of these.
- Report their findings and conclusions within 6 months of appointment.
Parties interested in joining the working group should read the working group guidelines first, and then email any arbcom member or the Arbitration Committee's private mailing list, arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org. Application is open to any editor in good standing, meeting the tentative criteria (broadly interpreted and subject to improvement). Applications are due 29 January; the group's membership will be announced by 2 February.
The death of the last German surviving veteran of World War I on January 1 went unnoticed, until an anonymous editor changed the article, linking to the death notice on the talk page. The edit was made on January 5, and the death was not noted in the press until last week. "Der Spiegel magazine noted that 'the German public was within a hair's breadth of never learning of the end of an era' until someone who had read Kaestner's death notice in a newspaper figured out who he was and updated a Wikipedia entry on the Internet." [1]
It turns out that it was a confusion in names: Erich Kästner died, but Franz Künstler seems to live on. A possible reason of misunterstanding is that while Künstler lives in Germany (and has German citizenship), he was born Hungarian German in Austria-Hungary, while Kästner was Germany-born German.
Wikipedia To Learn More About Its Volunteers - The Wikimedia Foundation will conduct a survey on Wikipedia users together with the joint United Nations-Maastricht University. It is said that there is currently little data about Wikipedia readers and editors, and the information will help understand how Wikipedia functions. The survey will be conducted over the next few months in various languages and the results are intended to be released at Wikimania this year.
Other recent mentions in the online press include:
Whether you're focusing on creating and maintaining content on Wikipedia, or expressly interested in patrolling recent changes, or even regardless of whether you're a new or experienced user, chances are good that at some point you will probably run across a vandal. This tutorial aims to give you the knowledge and tools to appropriately deal with this situation, when it arises. I highly recommend you skim over this, rather than reading everything at once.
This probably seems like a silly question, but it's an important one. Wikipedia policy defines vandalism as "any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia." Vandalism is always disruptive, but not all disruptive changes fit into the narrow category we call "vandalism." This distinction can become very important: many users accidentally treat content disputes as vandalism; doing so can muddy the waters in important discussions, could get you into trouble, and generally causes hot heads all around.
As a general rule of thumb: if you can assume good faith, try and do so. There's no deadline.
Identifying vandalism is of course an essential element of dealing with it, and there's no end to the list of tools available: if you regularly edit some articles, be sure and add them to your watchlist; you can watch recent changes for edits which add or remove large amounts of text, or are otherwise suspect -- anonymous users (recognized by an IP address in place of a user name) or users with redlinked user and talk pages tend to be new, for example; other resources include Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages (WP:MVP).
If you're interested in learning more about the available tools (it's a bit beyond the scope of this tutorial), Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol is a decent place to start.
So, you've run into an edit, and you're pretty sure it's vandalism -- what now? Ideally you can consider each incident on a case-by-case basis, but if you're looking to get a feel for things, I recommend a progression something like the following. Don't worry too much about getting it perfect, the important part is that you boldly lend a helping hand in good faith.
In brief: revert, warn, check, report.
This is usually the first and most important step, when responding to vandalism. There are a few ways to handle this; Help:Reverting contains a pretty useful guide. I'll run over the basics, here.
When looking at a diff, you'll see an older version of the page on the left, and a newer version on the right. You may notice the "undo" button next to the newer edit. If there was only one problem edit, and page hasn't been edited much since that edit, this is a quick solution. Undo has the advantage of frequently working even if the page has since been edited productively.
In cases with multiple problem edits, you can navigate back through a few diffs and make use of your ability to edit old versions of a page -- "edit" the last good version of the page, and simply save it with no changes (most user scripts use something akin to this method, when reverting). If there are good edits made after the bad edits, be careful and try to retain or restore the good work.
If you find yourself reverting vandals on any regular basis, you will probably want to install some user scripts (more on this, below). Around the time I started writing this, Wikipedia:Requests for rollback went live, allowing experienced users to request access to a very easy, fast, one-click method for reverting top-edit vandalism that had previously been limited to administrators -- see Wikipedia:Rollback feature. Review of this process is slated to take place just before this is scheduled for publishing.
Template warnings are quick and easy to use. It's good to place these at the bottom of a user's talk page. There's a more comprehensive list at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace (WP:WARN); generally, though, these work in most situations:
Substing is good, but not important. If you can't remember the "uw-" bit, just using {{test1}} to {{test4}} will work fine, too.
Some vandals are really trying to damage our work, but for the most part they're usually new and curious ("I can really edit this? Cool!") or don't understand what we're about. Getting angry or frustrated rarely solves the problem, and is liable to provoke further problems. It's difficult to strike a perfect balance between assuming good faith, discouraging attention-seekers, and preventing disruption, but the current suite of warning templates does a pretty amicable job of that. Some situations may call for you to "jump up the ladder" and start issuing serious warnings more quickly, but it's rarely a bad idea to start from the bottom and work your way up, one at a time.
Remember, also, that you can also write out messages by hand. Not as quick, but easy to remember and tailor-made for the situation at hand!
This step, fortunately, can be pretty easy. If you haven't already, check the page you fixed to be sure you didn't accidentally introduce new problems or revert to a bad version.
A common problem shared by the pages with both extremely high and extremely low traffic is that several vandals edit the page one right after another (sometimes with occasional decent editors in between). Therefore it is always a good idea to check the recent history of the vandalized page for suspicious user names and strange edits.
Often a vandal (or a curious fingerpoker) edits several pages. It is easy to check their other edits by following the link to the user's contributions from the history tab.
A decent portion of the time, it will eventually become clear that somebody isn't just "trying things out," or that they haven't realized they should stop, or that they're earnestly trying to deal some damage to the project. Around this time, it's a good idea to get the attention of administrators, who have a variety of tools to deal with vandalism.
Development on a variety of tools to monitor and resolve vandalism is ongoing; going into too much detail is likely to render this tutorial severely dated. As of this writing, user scripts like Twinkle or Lupin's anti-vandal tool are popular options, and integrate easily with regular browsing. Other up-to-date resources are listed at Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol#Tools.
WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology is a WikiProject that is dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of topics and articles related to cellular and molecular biology, with its primary goal being "to collect and organize the totality of this information and make it accessible to researchers and laypeople alike by providing an entry point to the wealth of biological data that is currently hidden in obscure databases and journal articles." The project was created on 28 August 2005, and, since then, has grown to more than 150 members.
We asked some questions of TimVickers (talk · contribs), the coordinator of the Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject.
Note: If you want to hear more from Tim Vickers about this WikiProject, you can listen to the current episode of Wikipedia Weekly.
Wikipedia's Featured article process entered the new year having broken new ground in 2007. Net promotions to FA status (promotions at featured article candidates less demotions at featured article review) were 556, or approximately 1.5 per day, a new annual record. Only in January 2007 were net promotions below 30, and four months of the year saw the total above 60.
While an increase in featured article production does not seem unusual given a growth in the overall project, the jump was remarkably abrupt. Both 2005 and 2006 showed a very consistent trend of about one per day (376 and 359 net promotions, respectively) with monthly totals rarely deviating far from 30.
A partial explanation is provided by an analysis of the removals process: while 2005 and 2006 appear uniform, total featured article production, as opposed to net, increased from 437 to 560. But far fewer articles lost status in the first year (61 versus 201) creating an appearance of consistency. Total production would again increase in 2007, to 748, but the removal total was within ten of the previous year, at 192. In short, FA production has been steadily increasing for three years, but this only became obvious in 2007.
Growth was evident at featured topics, which jumped from six to 29. A number of editors continue to expand hurricane related coverage, with four separate topics listed (2003 Atlantic hurricane season, Florida hurricanes, Hurricane Isabel, and Retired Pacific hurricanes). Virtually every major body in the Solar System is now a featured article.
Featured article production continues to follow the Pareto principle: relatively few editors provide a majority of successful featured article candidacies (FACs). Between 30% and 35% of listed nominators have provided between 65% and 70% of FAs. Distributions of this sort are inevitable on Wikipedia as people tend to clump in processes they enjoy, and in this case the ratio is not severe. A number of editors were particularly successful at FAC in 2007. The top three were Mike Christie, Awadewit and Casliber. A full list of Wikipedians successful in nominating a featured article in 2007 is also available.
Eleven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Esanchez7587 (nom), Alexf (nom), MBK004 (nom), DDima (nom), Jauerback (nom), Gonzo fan2007 (nom), Malinaccier (nom), Zeibura (nom), Smalljim (nom), Rodhullandemu (nom), and EncMstr (nom).
Two bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Botpankonin (task request), and Alexbot (task request).
A record forty-two articles were promoted to featured status last week: Portman Road (nom), Hurricane Lane (2006) (nom), Matanikau Offensive (nom), Nottingham Panthers (nom), Meerkat Manor (nom), Imagination (magazine) (nom), The Simpsons Movie (nom), Silent Hill 4: The Room (nom), Interstate 355 (nom), Somerset (nom), Prairie Avenue (nom), Doomsday (Doctor Who) (nom), Emma Watson (nom), Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt (nom), Metacomet Ridge (nom), Calgary Flames (nom), Anodyne (album) (nom), Halo 3 (nom), R.E.M. (nom), Stocksbridge Park Steels F.C. (nom), U2 (nom), The World Without Us (nom), The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power (nom), Offa of Mercia (nom), PlayStation 3 (nom), Northern Pintail (nom), Greatest Hits (Lost) (nom), Battle of Musa Qala (nom), 1983 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), Alpha Kappa Alpha (nom), Ming Dynasty (nom), Jimmy McAleer (nom), Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom (nom), Suleiman the Magnificent (nom), Lead(II) nitrate (nom), Chiffchaff (nom), London congestion charge (nom), Joseph Johnson (publisher) (nom), Treehouse of Horror (series) (nom), 1988 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), USS Illinois (BB-65) (nom), and Italian War of 1542–1546 (nom).
A record sixteen lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Governors of Colorado (nom), Works of William Gibson (nom), List of unmade Doctor Who serials and films (nom), Leeds United A.F.C. seasons (nom), List of Indianapolis Colts first-round draft picks (nom), List of Knight's Cross recipients (nom), List of North Carolina birds (nom), Order of battle at the Glorious First of June (nom), Load Records discography (nom), List of Shetland islands (nom), Characters in Castlevania: Sorrow series (nom), Aesop Rock discography (nom), Washington Redskins seasons (nom), List of North Carolina hurricanes (pre-1900) (nom), Godsmack discography (nom), and List of FLCL episodes (nom).
One topic was featured last week: Gillingham F.C. (nom).
No portals or sounds were featured last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Geology of the Lassen volcanic area, Stede Bonnet, Crazy Taxi (series), Treatment of multiple sclerosis, Daniel Boone, Hamlet, and Battle of Ramillies.
Six articles were delisted recently:
Six lists were demoted: 2002 NFL Draft, 2003 NFL Draft, 2004 NFL Draft, 2005 NFL Draft, 2006 NFL Draft, and List of Oh My Goddess episodes.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Siege of Strasbourg, Wildfire, London, Javier Solana, Humpback Whales, Motocross, and Gold dust day gecko.
Fourteen pictures and one video were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.8 (f08e6b3), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.
The introduction of the new preprocessor (see related story), which is a configuration change, fixed many bugs, mostly to do with section editing.
NB: I apologise for not having written a report last Monday - I was having a particularly hectic week.
The Arbitration Committee opened two new cases this fortnight (one of which was later dismissed), and closed two additional cases, leaving six currently open.
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