Apologies for the delay in publishing this issue; I've been coming back from a brief flu bug, and wasn't able to seriously start writing until late Wednesday. We'll plan on getting back on schedule for next week's issue.
Thanks for reading the Signpost.
— Ral315
Editor's note: The Wikipedia Signpost is an independent, community newspaper, and is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation. The contents of this page are that of their authors alone, and may not reflect the opinion of the Wikimedia Foundation.
While coverage of a relationship between Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales and Canadian political columnist Rachel Marsden, and financial allegations made by former Foundation employee Danny Wool (see archived story) continued over the last week, an allegation made by currently-banned user Jeff Merkey was also reported by various press sources. Merkey alleged that Wales offered to edit his article favorably in return for a US$5,000 per year donation to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation that Wales has strongly denied.
Merkey announced on Sunday on the foundation-l mailing list that he had been in contact with the Associated Press, regarding interactions with Wales. He claimed that Wales had offered "special protection" to the article "Jeff Merkey" in exchange for a $5,000/year donation to the Wikimedia Foundation:
I am notifying the foundation I was approached on Friday by the Associated Press regarding statements attributed to me which are in some way, perceived to be related to Mr. Wales private affairs which seem to have gotten a great deal of press coverage. ... Since I am obligated to protect my own good name, I feel compelled to address various allegations in order to distance myself from this controversy involving Mr. Wales so the facts are not spun into something they are not. As such, I issued the following statement to the associated press in response to their inquiries regarding my involvement with Mr. Wales and his business dealings. This statement was sent on Friday, March 7, 2008.
"According to Merkey, in 2006, Wales agreed that in exchange for a substantial donation and other financial support of the Wikimedia Foundation projects, Wales would use his influence to make Merkey's article adhere to Wikipedia's stated policies with regard to internet libel "as a courtesy" and place Merkey under his "special protection" as an editor. Merkey later withdrew his financial support of the Wikipedia project after reviewing evidence of diversion and mismanagement of the charities funds by Wales and the Wikimedia Board of Trustees and was immediately banned from the Wikipedia site by the Arbitration Committee for frivolous and unsubstantiated claims after he terminated the payments of $5,000.00 per year to the Wikimedia Foundation."[1]
Wales responded, in separate messages to the list:
I encourage anyone who is tempted to believe this story to consider the source.[2]
Of course I would never offer, nor accept any offer, whereby a donation would buy someone special editorial treatment in the encyclopedia. I do routinely assist people with WP:BLP issues, and I do courtesies for many people. Donations have no bearing on that at all. NPOV is non-negotiable.[3]
The story was first covered by the Sydney Morning Herald, in a March 11 article. The article presents Merkey's claims of paid proxy editing, and Wales' denial. It does, however, say that "Wales placed [the article] under his "special protection". Protected entries can only be edited by Wikipedia administrators." This claim is inaccurate; the article was placed under semi-protection, allowing most registered users to edit the page. All revisions of the article were deleted, however, leaving editors to rebuild the article from a blank slate.
The claim was subsequently the subject of stories by other press sources:
The matter was also covered by tech website Slashdot, dubbing the matter "DonorGate". Wikimedia spokesperson Jay Walsh responded to the Slashdot article with an official statement from the Foundation:
"Current allegations relating to Jimmy Wales soliciting donations for the Wikimedia Foundation in order to protect or edit Wikipedia articles are completely false. The Wikimedia Foundation has never accepted nor solicited donations in order to protect or make edits to a Wikipedia article — nor has Jimmy Wales. This is a practice the Wikimedia Foundation would never condone."[4]
Merkey has often been the source of controversy; his Wolf Mountain Group (now Timpanogas Research Group) was the subject of a lawsuit from Merkey's former employer, Novell, alleging confusion over the name of the group, and misappropriation of trade secrets. Merkey is also controversial within the open source community. In 2004, Merkey offered $50,000 for a copy of the Linux kernel that was not licensed under the GNU General Public License, an offer that many, including software freedom activist Richard Stallman, criticized. In 2005, Merkey filed a lawsuit against Slashdot, open source advocate Bruce Perens, and 200 John Does. The suit, alleging harassment by the defendants, was dropped in August 2005, with a subsequent motion to reopen the case against one defendant, Al Petrofsky.
On Wikipedia, Merkey has also been controversial. Under the account name Gadugi, he was indefinitely blocked in October 2005 by Fvw, with the block summary "Personal attacks, legal threats, harassment, disruption, ..." He was blocked while editing under the account Waya sahoni, as a reincarnation of Gadugi, but was allowed to come back in May 2007 under the account Jeffrey Vernon Merkey. After a July 2007 arbitration case, Merkey and two users who had harassed Merkey, Pfagerburg and Kebron, were all banned for one year.
While initial coverage focused on Wales' involvement with Rachel Marsden, very little of the coverage over the past week has focused on the relationship. It did, however, receive a mention from United Press International, and was mentioned on American newsmagazine Inside Edition.[5] The New York Post also covered the story, with a new claim:
...[Marsden] blamed Wales for growing "extremely paranoid" about their relationship becoming public, to the point where he "threatened me with things like jail or deportation" if she revealed details about them. "I was pretty terrified," she told The Post.[6]
This claim has not been mentioned by any other news sources, however. Meanwhile, Australian breakfast television program Weekend Sunrise gave less-than-flattering coverage to Marsden.
Over the last week, Wool's allegations that Wales had improperly used Foundation funds have received mentions in various sources, including:
This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Five-second rule". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
After eleven users applied for bureaucratship (see archived story), only one RfB, that of The Rambling Man, passed successfully (the nomination closed with 133 users supporting and just 4 opposing).
Riana's RfB was unsuccessful; it closed at 85.9%, within what some considered a bureaucrat's discretionary range, though others argued that the roughly 90% standard should remain in place for this round of RfBs, until community consensus could be achieved on the proper cutoff. After a bureaucrat chat, bureaucrats remained split on the RfB, with three users (WJBscribe, Andrevan, and Warofdreams) supporting Riana's promotion, and four (Rdsmith4, UninvitedCompany, Kingturtle, and Deskana) who would not support promotion. As such, WJBscribe closed the RfB as unsuccessful, with the bureaucrats unable to determine whether consensus existed.
A proposal to lower the bar for RfBs is being voted on; most commenting on the proposal have supported lowering the bar, although whether the discussion will result in any changes once completed is unknown.
On 9 March, the Wikimania 2009 bids from Brisbane and Karlsruhe were eliminated by the jury, leaving just two bids open: Buenos Aires and Toronto. The final decision will be made sometime on or after Thursday, 13 March.
After being featured and de-featured in February, Image:Love or dutyb.jpg, an 1871 chromolithograph by Gabriele Castagnola, has been re-featured. A suggestion by Spikebrennan for a Valentine's Day featured picture led Durova to locate the image at the Library of Congress archives, restoring it as Image:Love or dutya.jpg, where it passed featured picture candidacy on a unanimous vote; however, some users complained that the vote violated usual procedure. In order to feature the picture on the Main Page on Valentine's Day, the vote ran for just over two days, while most nominations run for about seven days. After being featured on the main page, these procedural issues led to a nomination for delisting, which resulted in the image's de-featuring. Afterward, the image was renominated as Image:Love or dutyb.jpg, where it passed on a second unanimous vote. This is believed to be the first time that a featured picture has been nominated, promoted, highlighted on the main page, delisted, and repromoted in less than 30 days.
Wikipedia's tin-cup approach wears thin - With Wikipedia attracting about 300 million page views each day, it has been estimated that the Wikimedia Foundation could attract up to hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising, while all this time, it has been relying on small donations from the public and the occasional large donor. Ideas that could raise money include selling t-shirts and Wikipedia board games. However, actually selling advertising would cause an uproar amongst some editors who would not like to see the commercialisation of Wikipedia. There is conflict between the desire for growth and the desire to avoid conflicts that would arise from serving advertisements.
Other recent mentions in the online press include:
Let's face it: not everyone is a wordsmith. Editors who think visually instead of verbally can contribute featured content too. It isn't necessary to be a talented photographer or even to own a camera, because a portion of Wikipedia's featured pictures are historic images that individual editors have uploaded or restored.
A few of the images already hosted at Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons are neglected gems, and other quality archives such as the Library of Congress host feature-worthy public domain material. It takes a working understanding of copyright law to search for images offsite and proficiency in at least one type of image processing software to do restorations. Fortunately, good free software programs are available and plenty of restorable images are already waiting for attention.
At its best, image restoration is like cleaning a window onto the past. It's a way to improve the encyclopedia where few editor conflicts happen. Just fire up the image software, start some music or maybe open a chat, and relax. If you're patient enough and careful enough, the window you open may bring history to life on Wikipedia's main page.
The page that describes Wikipedia's featured picture criteria is essential reading for editors who want to contribute featured pictures. This overview focuses on the aspects that are of special interest for vintage image work. Editors who are making their first efforts will find Wikipedia:Picture peer review a good place to seek feedback.
Featured picture criteria allow flexibility for historic images, but in practice that's often less flexibility than an enthusiastic newcomer would like. The file itself needs to be a quality scan without halftoning or JPEG artifacting. Reviewers will accept moderate compromises in quality if the nominator provides good reasons why no better replacement is available.
Featured picture criteria ask for a minimum of 1,000 pixels on at least one side. Although historic images are allowed as exceptions, nearly all vintage pictures actually are this size or larger.
Wikipedia features only pictures that are public domain, or that have been given GFDL or another suitable copyleft license. Fair-use copyrighted material is not eligible.
Editors who upload vintage images have to become familiar with the quirks of copyright duration. Material should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons whenever possible because Commons serves all Wikimedia Foundation projects, including all foreign-language editions of Wikipedia. Occasionally a difference in hosting policy makes it necessary to upload to the English-language Wikipedia instead of Commons.
Encyclopedic restorations are a conservative undertaking. Several practices are specifically acceptable:
Reviewers tolerate other modest changes as long as the work recreates the original photograph. Radical filters or composition changes are not viewed favorably. It's good practice to upload an original version of every image and to include restoration notes.
On average, about 1 in 1,000 archival images has the potential to become a featured picture. So I maintain an open workshop at User:Durova/Landmark images, where editors are welcome to pick up images for restoration, or to drop off extra needles from whichever haystacks they've been searching.
The technical side of restoration is mostly a matter of working slowly and up close. I start at 300% addressing simple problems, and then go in as much as 700–800% for challenging areas such as human faces. The results are worth the effort.
Hone restoration skills in one or two areas, familiarizing yourself with the technical background for each medium, and try new things as your interests and confidence grow. Some editors work with paintings. Others specialize in engravings, etchings, and lithographs. An interest in nineteenth century photography can lead to arcane knowledge about daguerrotypes, colloidon glass emulsions, salt paper calotypes, and photochrom prints. As much as possible, combine technical research with historical and cultural background to make your restoration choices as accurate as possible.
It can help to collaborate with an editing partner to review work in progress and share suggestions, and then to conominate the image together. If several similar images excite you, concentrate on your favorite one first and space out the nominations.
This week, we interviewed three members from the Professional Wrestling WikiProject - (iMatthew, Nikki311 and TJ Spyke). After enjoying a year of promotions (whether they be to FA/FL status or to GA), the project had grown significantly to become one of the most acclaimed.
Started in March 2005 by Gwalla (talk · contribs), the project has been going for nearly three years, celebrating its anniversary in just under two weeks now, on the 21st. It started with relatively few editors but now has over 350 participants. In that time they have established themselves to be one of the highest achieving projects on Wikipedia, with a featured topic, 25+ featured articles & lists, 30+ good articles and nearing 250 B-class articles. According to the project mainpage, the aims for it achieve are as follows:
Additionally, the project has a large number of departments, including: Collaboration of the Week, an Assessment centre and a Style guide to model pages on.
Wikipedia is a project that has wide boundaries. As such, there are many rules and policies that describe how things are done. As of right now, there are 42 policies that are enforced and used in the maintenance of Wikipedia. A brief summary of each policy, listed in bold, sorted into categories, follows. (Note: This only covers official policies, not guidelines)
The first few policies deal with an editor's start on Wikipedia. The Username policy limits certain names from being used, including those of celebrities (unless you can prove who you say you are), ones that imply leadership on Wikipedia, are offensive, or are similar to an established user. Usernames can be changed by going to Wikipedia:Changing username and requesting an unused username, or one that has no edits can be usurped. Editors are discouraged from having multiple accounts, often called sock puppets, and are disallowed from using them to "create the illusion of greater support for an issue, to mislead others, to artificially stir up controversy, to aid in disruption, or to circumvent a block."
After this, the Editing policy states simply that editors should work on improving pages, without regarding perfection, because it can be fixed later. However, certain types of edits are prohibited:
Most of your interaction with other editors takes place on the Talk Pages. There are three main policies for governing interaction with other editors:
Two more policies fall into this subcategory of Policies:
Content and style policies talk about what type of articles are allowed in Wikipedia, and what has to be maintained in the articles.
These are Wikipedia's three core content policies. Together, they set the standard for what should be in Wikipedia's articles. They should be viewed as parts of a whole and not separate. The principles upon which these policies are based are non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus.
Two policies based on content apply to two specific subsets of articles:
The final two policies in this category are:
The Deletion policies govern what articles should be deleted and what process they have to go through in order to be deleted. They allow for four methods of deletion: Articles for Deletion, two of the methods of deletion listed below and copyright violation, which can fall under speedy deletion. Deletion Review is also established under this policy, which allows for the undeletion of articles that were deleted incorrectly.
The other two policies governing deletion deal with actions by the Wikimedia Foundation. These policies are when the Foundation is doing something for legal reasons or because of exceptional controversy:
Any system that has policies has to be able to enforce them in some way. Wikipedia is no different. The first two of these deal with how you work with other editors in order to decide how things work in Wikipedia:
If these methods of discussing the problems don't work and edit warring continues, there are policies that come into effect, in this approximate order:
The final two methods, below, are extensions of the Blocking policy. They help to enforce the strength of blocks, so that they aren't avoided or misused:
Copyright Policies come from The Laws of the United States of America and the State of Florida. All the policies listed below are extensions of the previous two listed:
There is only one policy that falls in this category, and it is impossible to summarize it, because it is already so succinct:
Five users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: TravisTX (nom), Deacon of Pndapetzim (nom), shoeofdeath (nom), Gadget850 (nom), and Zedla (nom).
One user was promoted to bureaucrat status via the Requests for Bureaucratship process this week: The Rambling Man (nom)
Five bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Kbdankbot (task request), Lockalbot (task request), Kal-El-Bot (task request), YekratsBot (task request), and KrimpBot (task request).
Nineteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Oliver Typewriter Company (nom), Reactive attachment disorder (nom), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (nom), Paleolithic-style diet (nom), Holden (nom), Flea (musician) (nom), If (magazine) (nom), Fanny Imlay (nom), Duncan Edwards (nom), Neilston (nom), Trafford (nom), Huldrych Zwingli (nom), Grover Cleveland (nom), Lessons for Children (nom), Typhoon Paka (nom), Bernard Fanning (nom), Soprano Home Movies (nom), Odyssey Number Five (nom), and Pattern Recognition (novel) (nom).
Fifteen lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Peep Show episodes (nom), East Carolina Pirates football seasons (nom), List of foreign recipients of the Knight's Cross (nom), List of Governors of Hawaii (nom), List of autonomous areas by country (nom), List of Interstate Highways in Texas (nom), Degrassi: The Next Generation (season 4) (nom), List of Tampa Bay Lightning players (nom), List of Lieutenant Governors of Wisconsin (nom), Degrassi: The Next Generation (season 3) (nom), List of 30 Rock awards and nominations (nom), List of tallest buildings in Portland, Oregon (nom), List of countries without armed forces (nom), List of unrecognized countries (nom), and List of space telescopes (nom).
Two topics were promoted to featured status last week: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (nom) and York City F.C. (nom).
Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Spain (nom) and Portal:Criminal justice (nom).
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Crusaders (rugby), The Philadelphia Inquirer, ESRB re-rating of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Pre-dreadnought battleship, Hockey Hall of Fame, Hoysala Empire and Plano Senior High School.
Two articles were delisted recently: Metal Gear Solid (nom) and Battle of Jutland (nom).
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Surfer, Prokaryote, Cappadocia, Glaucus atlanticus and Leucospermum. One featured picture was demoted: Caterpillar feeding. One featured picture was re-promoted: Love or Duty.
No sounds were featured last week.
Fourteen pictures and one video were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
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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.4 (a8dd895), 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 Arbitration Committee did not open or close any cases this week, leaving five currently open.
