This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "The Rutles". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Developers are planning a pilot of the CentralAuth extension (better known as single user login); this pilot will be limited to administrators only.[1] (Note that this was accidentally enabled for a short time last week.)
The pilot is opt-in, and for the time being will only cause accounts with the same name and owned by the same user to be merged together into a single 'global account'; other existing users with the same name will not be affected. If and when the test takes place, administrators should note that setting a common email address or password on all accounts they own will help the merging process to identify which accounts are owned by the same user.
Even the full planned version of single user login itself does not do much more than associate accounts owned by the same user together, and allow a common username/password across all Wikimedia wikis; other similar features, such as crosswiki talkpage notification, are not part of the extension, although will become much easier to implement as a result of it.
Last week, the Board of Trustees approved a resolution, announced on Saturday by Chairperson Florence Devouard, that named the Election Committee for the 2008 Board elections. The seven-member committee's membership includes:
The committee is "responsible for planning and maintaining virtually every aspect of the board election." One of the responsibilities of the Committee is planning the type of voting used in the election; in previous elections, some users have questioned the traditional approval voting method used, arguing for other voting systems instead. Other responsibilities include determining suffrage criteria, drafting election pages on the Meta-Wiki, and vote auditing.
To supplement Wikipedia Weekly, comes NotTheWikipediaWeekly, a new podcast currently conducted weekly, via Skype. The latest episode features Wikimedia Executive Director Sue Gardner.
Start Writing the Eulogies for Print Encyclopedias - The print encyclopedia appears to become the "first casualty in the end of print". Take for example the printed Encyclopedia Britannica, whose sales are now said to be 10 percent of what they were in 1990, but the company says that the print edition is still profitable. Other companies are not doing as well though; German encyclopedia Brockhaus might never appear in print again, while Gyldendal, a Danish publisher, is finding the online subscription model is "misguided". Despite nostalgic recollections of childhood memories of reading the encyclopedia, the "electronic hearth" is providing new opportunities for encyclopedias in providing information that updates quickly. Wikipedia is naturally cited as an example, in addition to the Encyclopedia of Life and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Open-Source Troubles in Wiki World - This week brings more coverage of the recent controversies surrounding the actions of Jimmy Wales. In what is said to illustrate growing pains, Wales has been accused of spending frivolously on his expense account and on intervening on the article about someone with whom he had a relationship. On top of that, there is now a new controversy about Wikipedia's relationship with venture capitalists Elevation Partners, after one of its partners helped find two large donors, although apparently in his personal capacity. The chair of the Wikimedia board, Florence Nibart-Devouard, has expressed concerns with becoming reliant upon venture capitalist donors, and said that the board recently passed a resolution requiring all donations larger than two percent of revenue be approved by board. Despite these controversies, it seems like there will always be a place for Wales, who is a "hero" in the Wikipedia community, the article says.
Other recent mentions in the online press include:
More Peer Reviewers needed!
Peer Review is a busy place: there were at least 156 peer review requests in December 2007, 184 in January 2008, and 188 in February 2008. Reviewers are always needed and welcomed, so please volunteer here, or just review a single article; constructive comments are always helpful in improving articles, and are a major contribution to the project. Despite a number of process improvements at Peer review – on top of a house style check generated by a script written by AndyZ and operated by Ruhrfisch – more participation at peer review is needed to help raise the standards of WP's articles.
New: the volunteers list
To assist intending reviewers, we've recently made a significant change by introducing a volunteers list of peer reviewers and their reviewing interests. This helps editors with peer-review requests to find interested reviewers, and hence increases participation at peer review. More than 90 reviewers are listed (although some reviewers are listed more than once). Anecdotal evidence suggests that the scheme has been a success; one reviewer, Jayron32 commented that"Under the old system, I would check in here once in a while, and maybe pick up a new article to peer review ... With the new volunteer page, I am able to list myself by area of preference, and article custodians come to me to request a review. I always get an article I am interested in, which is helping me review a LOT more article."
The volunteers list is organised by Wikipedia 1.0 topic names. To help reviewers find articles to review, the peer-review page is now organised in a similar way; a separate page lists peer reviews by date of request. There's also a new backlog list. This shows peer-review requests at least a week old that have received no comments (beyond the semi-automated review).
Automation is streamlining the process
The automation which has made some of the above changes possible is also helping behind the scenes with the maintenance of peer-review pages. In the past, old peer-review pages had to be moved to make space for new requests, and these page moves broke many links. This issue has been addressed by starting each peer-review request on a unique page. The unique page is determined through a template system developed by Geometry guy and Gimmetrow. The main peer review page is automatically generated by VeblenBot, a bot operated by Carl (CBM); the monthly peer-review archives, from February 2008 onwards, are created in a similar way.
These changes have reduced the number of edits required for requesting or closing a peer review, although unfamiliarity with the changes may make the process seem more difficult at first. Editors are encouraged to read the instructions at Wikipedia:Peer review and to raise any queries or comments on the talk page. (Editors nominating an article as a featured article candidate (FAC) or featured list candidate (FLC) should first close the peer review.)
Listing an article at peer review
Editors are encouraged to allow ample time – at least several weeks – for an effective peer review, and to actively recruit knowledgeable editors to review the article. There are at least three standard ways of locating peer reviewers:
This week we interviewed one prominent member of the Tropical Cyclones WikiProject, Mitchazenia. A relatively small project, it has transformed into a high-achieving group with seventy-five featured articles or featured lists, eleven A-class articles, one hundred and fifty three good articles, four featured topics, a featured portal, and five featured pictures - ranking among the small group of other projects which have very high numbers of good or featured content.
The Tropical Cyclones Project is considered by some to be the best represented on Wikipedia in terms of the quality of the articles under its wing. Started on 5 October 2005 by Jdorje (talk · contribs), the Project (as with last week's report on the Professional Wrestling WikiProject) has been active for over 2½ years. The participant list has grown from just six people to (currently) around forty-five members, and, unlike some other projects, it also has a list of inactive members and retired editors. Its goal is to "provide an encyclopediac overview for tropical cyclones, including individual storms, historical warning of cyclones, and the structure of a cyclone", and as of 17 March 2008, it seems to be well on its way in achieving that. The quality of the Project's articles can be at least partly attributed to its "adopt an article" process, which lets members become more involved in the editing of a page, and has been likened to the popular Collaboration of the Week, which many projects have. A full list of the sister-projects and departments can be seen here.
This week's tutorial explains how to install user scripts that increase the functionality of the encyclopedia's interface. Such tools range from rather simple scripts - for example, that replace some text with other text - to complicated behemoths that do everything from fighting vandalism to closing AFCs.
If you are using the Monobook skin (for more on skins, see WP:SKIN), your scripts page would be at this location. In general, if you use skin X, your scripts page would be at User:(your username)/X.js.
Once you have navigated to the page, you should see the following box:
This means that unknowingly putting malicious scripts on your scripts page may lead to your account being compromised. One must always be careful when installing scripts.
To install a script, simply edit the page and copy-and-paste the desired script in (or, if you are familiar with Javascript and you know how to use Wikipedia's DOM, type your own). Save the page as your normally would. Generally, you will have to bypass your cache (ctrl + f5 on Firefox and Internet Explorer, simply f5 on Konqueror and command + R on Safari to see the effects of the script.
A better question would be, "What can't scripts do?" Scripts, as mentioned briefly above, can change Wikipedia's interface in drastic ways, as well as providing semi-automated ways to edit. The latter is particularly useful for vandalism fighting, though it has many diverse applications.
Some of the most well-known scripts are:
Which tools should you install? Consider first which tools you will actually have much use for. If you spend your time voting in XfDs, vandalism reversion scripts may not be useful for you, and vice versa.
WikiProject User scripts, a WikiProject devoted to scripts, maintains a list of user scripts. One can also request a script be made.
If you wish to use the same scripts as another user, there are two methods. One is to simply substitute their script page onto your own. The second is to use the importScript command, which works as follows:
importScript('OTHER USER'S SCRIPT PAGE');
A more recent feature is the "Gadgets" tab in your preferences page. If you want to use a gadget (user script or CSS modification) that is listed, you simply check a box and save your change. The list includes some of the more well-known scripts. (If you want to customize a script, you'll need to install the scripts manually.)
Seven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Seraphim Whipp (nom), J Greb (nom), Poeloq (nom), Discospinster (nom), Toddst1 (nom), Tivedshambo (nom), and Scott5114 (nom).
Two bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: SQLBot (task request) and Newsletterbot (task request).
Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Royal Blue (B&O train) (nom), In Rainbows (nom), Tyrone Wheatley (nom), The Last Temptation of Krust (nom), England national football team managers (nom), Barthélemy Boganda (nom), Final Fantasy XI (nom), Neptune (nom), NoitulovE (nom), French Texas (nom), Rotavirus (nom), Jack L. Warner (nom), The Guardian of Education (nom), Defense of the Ancients (nom), and Discovery Expedition (nom).
Eleven lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Meerkat Manor meerkats (nom), List of billionaires (2007) (nom), List of wettest tropical cyclones in the United States (nom), List of wealthiest foundations (nom), List of participating nations at the Summer Olympic Games (nom), List of UEFA Cup winning managers (nom), List of European Cup and Champions League winning managers (nom), List of tallest buildings in Toronto (nom), List of Heisman Trophy winners (nom), List of Medal of Honor recipients for the Battle of Iwo Jima (nom), and List of UEFA Cup Winners' Cup winning managers (nom).
No topic was promoted to featured status last week.
Two portals were promoted to featured status last week: Portal:Indianapolis (nom) and Portal:Oklahoma (nom).
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Slavery in ancient Greece, John Knox, Melodifestivalen, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, Oxygen, Trapped in the Closet (South Park) and Storm botnet.
Three articles were delisted recently: Athanasius Kircher (nom), Guqin (nom), and Civil Air Patrol (nom).
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Diffusion tensor imaging, Parthenon, Tufa towers in Mono Lake, Mira, Edward VI of England, Leucospermum and Ireland viewed from space.
No sounds were featured last week.
Eighteen 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.
#REDIRECT [[target] (with a missing trailing ]) is now handled more sensibly. (r31996, bug 2084)
The Arbitration Committee closed four cases this week, and opened one case, leaving only two cases currently open.
