This week there is a slight change to the Signpost front page: a link to the previous issue in the upper left. You can now browse previous issues with the same layout as the current issue. Within the coming week, the new archives will be populated all the way back to the first issue from January 2005, and we are working on improving the navigability of the archives and other Signpost pages.
Michael Snow explained the name of The Wikipedia Signpost in that first issue:
The name also especially suits Wikipedia, because it alludes to a practice here and on other wikis, in that we communicate primarily through "signed posts," as on talk pages. While the wiki system may be used to develop and publish articles, because this is original reporting the reporters will use a byline to "sign" their posts.
Browsing the archives reveals a wide range of Signpost content that we have published over the years. The possibilities are nearly endless. It also reveals just how dependent the Signpost is on individual editors taking charges of features on a weekly basis. Each call for new writers brings plenty of volunteers—just as it did two weeks ago—but ultimately the Signpost, like the rest of Wikipedia, is a "do-ocracy". At this point, the Signpost needs editors willing to commit to pushing the "Discussion report" and "In the news" forward each week. There are also opportunities to revive some of the other features that the Signpost has run in the past. For writers who do not want to commit to a weekly feature, the best way to get involved with the Signpost is to keep a watch on the planning room and fill in for an absent regular or write a one-off story.
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Cyberlaw expert Jonathan Zittrain's latest book, The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It (Yale University Press, 2008; licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA and freely available online), is a thought-provoking analysis of the temptations and dangers inherent in attempts at making the Internet safer by limiting its flexibility and openness. Zittrain holds degrees in both computer science and law, and is a professor of Internet law at Harvard University; he is thus well-versed on both the technical and legal aspects of the Internet. The book convincingly demonstrates that security threats from malware and botnets are increasing at an alarming rate and will soon reach a point where people will feel that "something must be done." But overreaching steps to contain these threats, Zittrain says, might damage the Internet as much as worms and spambots.
The book begins with a history of personal computers and computer networks, comparing them with other technological developments. An interesting analogy is drawn with AT&T, the company which, throughout most of the 20th century, controlled virtually every aspect of telephone services in the United States. AT&T attempted to prohibit any intervention or modification of its system by outside parties, and even waged a long legal battle against the sale of the Hush-A-Phone, a small cup-like device attached to the mouthpiece which purported to prevent bystanders from listening in on the conversation. A court of appeals ultimately allowed the sale of the Hush-A-Phone on the grounds that it did not "affect more than the conversation of the user," but devices which directly interacted with the telephone system were prohibited for many years. Only in 1968 did the FCC rule that proprietary devices could connect to the AT&T network, as long as they did not damage the system. The result was a diversification of the uses of the phone network, with answering machines, faxes and cordless phones entering the mainstream.
AT&T's phone system was an example of what Zittrain calls "non-generative technology." The entire system was designed and maintained by a single large company with little incentive to seek improvements, and amateurs or hobbyists were not allowed to fiddle with the parts. Early computer systems followed a similar marketing strategy: they were rented along with a service contract. Zittrain attributes the explosive growth of personal computers to the fact that programs could be written by anyone, easily distributed, and used for purposes beyond the original intention of the manufacturer. For example, Apple was not even aware of the existence of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, when it noticed the resulting increase in the sales of its personal computer. A similar effect occurred when proprietary networks such as CompuServe and AOL were drowned out by the Internet, in which the creation of content by anyone was much simpler. In Zittrain's words, the PC and the Internet are "generative" in that they have a "capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences."[1]
But the generativity of the Internet can also be the cause of its downfall, since malicious software can be written and distributed as easily as the next revolutionary product. While the Internet was never designed for security, until recent years there was little economic incentive for breaking into other people's computers. This is changing, though: innocent computers are unwittingly incorporated into botnets and used for various spam-related purposes, or even for waging DDoS attacks on websites for a ransom. The figures cited by Zittrain are truly alarming: by some accounts, upwards of 10% of all computers on the Internet are part of a botnet. And at one point, a single botnet used up 15% of Yahoo's server load for a spam-related task. It seems that severe Internet disruptions may well become more common in the future.
Zittrain is worried that the public will eventually come to distrust the network, and will seek safer (but less generative) alternatives instead. Some such alternatives are already available on the market. For example, the iPhone is basically a computer with a wireless network connection, but it can only run software approved by Apple. Even personal computers are sometimes locked down to various degrees, with many workplaces now prohibiting users from installing software on their office computer, for fear of introducing viruses.
Will this trend continue, with people buying "boxes that look like PCs" but are actually only web browsers, and offices going back to the days of mainframes and terminals? Personally, I remain skeptical. There are many far less severe methods for dealing with an increasingly hostile outside network. Even completely disconnecting an office network from the Internet, a rather severe step, would not destroy generativity altogether, since innovative products could still be introduced by traditional CD-ROM installation. And I find it hard to imagine corporate IT departments giving up the ability to separately purchase products such as word processors and backup software, without being tied down to a single supplier. However, the world we live in, in which universal unobstructed Internet access is taken for granted, may change in coming years. Zittrain is correct that we should recognize this possibility and prepare for it.
The book concludes with a wide and varied set of ideas for increasing the safety of the Internet without losing its generativity. Interestingly, many of these ideas arise from an analogy between Internet worms and Wikipedia vandalism. Like all generative systems, Wikipedia faced problems as its popularity grew: in this case, the problem of vandalism resulting from the "anyone can edit" policy. But rather than massively protecting articles, vandal fighters, equipped with appropriate technology, keep the situation (more or less) in check. Why can't something similar be done for Internet worms? There are many reasons, but Zittrain cites the ease of crowdsourcing a simple task like RC patrol as opposed to the difficulty and technical skills required in identifying and fighting malicious code. Nevertheless, there are some intriguing collaborative efforts in this direction, such as StopBadware (co-directed by Zittrain), a nonprofit organization using a volunteer computational grid to identify malware. None of these solutions will entirely neutralize the threat of network abuse, since eventually malware writers will attempt to infiltrate the malware-fighting volunteer networks themselves. But that would really mean that such efforts are beginning to show success, just as vandalism on Wikipedia is an indicator of Wikipedia's popularity. And, like vandalism on Wikipedia, such problems can probably be dealt with with as they come along.
Some of the problems described by Zittrain are also confronting Wikipedia specifically. Many people have an obvious economic incentive in altering the content of Wikipedia to suit their needs. Thus, it is not inconceivable that vandalism will be transformed from a graffiti-like nuisance to a profitable business. If this happens, we may one day have to deal with massive, multiple-IP, botnet-driven advertising, inserted simultaneously into thousands of marginally-related articles. If a single botnet was able to occupy a sizable portion of Yahoo's server load, how will a small corps of vandal fighters deal with such an attack? These questions are beyond the scope of Zittrain's book, but perhaps we Wikipedians should think about the matter sooner rather than later.
Ultimately, there's a place on the Internet for restricted appliances alongside more generative (and less reliable) counterparts. I fully agree with Steve Jobs, who said at the launch of the iPhone that "[t]he last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn't work anymore,"[2] a statement which Zittrain seems to view with some reservation. We want phones to be highly available and rely on them for emergency services. There's a reason why the Skype website warns that "Skype is not a replacement for your ordinary telephone"; that sort of reliability just isn't available on the Internet. The popularity of restricted appliances like smart phones does not necessarily threaten the continued existence of traditional PCs. But any effort at increasing the safety of the net, while maintaining its generativity, is a worthy endeavor.
The Arbitration Committee this week closed the Scientology case. The closure of the case formed two milestones: with the closure falling close to six months after the case opened on 11 December 2008, the arbitration is the lengthiest on the English Wikipedia; and, as part of the final decision, the Committee blocked all IP addresses controlled by the Church of Scientology (the first time the Committee, or indeed Wikipedia, has blocked an entire organisation from editing).
These proceedings were the fourth Scientology-related case in four years (the other cases are AI in 2005, Terryeo in 2006, and COFS in 2007). In finding of fact (2), the Committee, by way of providing background to the dispute, held that,
More recently, the dispute has become lower-key but is ongoing and corrosive, involving persistent point-of-view pushing and extensive feuding over sources on multiple articles. The corrosive atmosphere has resulted in normally neutral editors adopting polarized positions in countless minor sub-feuds … The topic has become a magnet for single purpose accounts, and sockpuppetry is rife… .
The remedies passed by the Committee in the case's final decision included:
In addition to the above remedies, the Committee resolved that all IP addresses
owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates, broadly interpreted, are to be blocked as if they were open proxies.
A provision was made for individual editors to request IP block exemption should they wish to contribute from the blocked IP addresses.
In reporting the decision, the mainstream media has focussed primarily on the Committee's decision to, in order to neutralise the Scientology dispute, ban the Church of Scientology and its activists (for example: theguardian.co.uk, theregister.co.uk, wired.com, and telegraph.co.uk). However, remedies were by no means passed only against pro-Scientology activists; in passing the final decision, the Committee also held that,
This longstanding dispute is a struggle between two rival factions: admirers of Scientology and critics of Scientology. … Each side wishes the articles within this topic to reflect their point of view and have resorted to battlefield editing tactics, with edits being abruptly reverted without any attempt to incorporate what is good, to maintain their preferred status quo.
To that end, the Committee also sanctioned a number of anti-Scientology activists whose editing was proving problematic. The blocking of the IP addresses of the Church of Scientology is indeed more a measure to remove from the topic area editors who were contributing from Church of Scientology equipment in a disruptive manner.
The spread of the Scientology decision story through mainstream news outlets marks a new level of press interest in the internal community decisions of Wikipedia. While Cade Metz of The Register frequently covers Wikipedia news, and stories about vandalism are a media mainstay, arbitration decisions are generally ignored beyond the Wikipedia community. However, coverage in The Huffington Post sparked a series of articles in major newspapers and news networks.
Most early coverage repeated variations of the headline from the The Huffington Post, that Scientology had been banned, but overall the coverage shows that the press is becoming more familiar with how Wikipedia works.
The Wall Street Journal explored the implications of the decision with respect to public perception of the project in the light of what could be viewed as the ban of an organisation (and so its viewpoint):
Over the weekend, the online dialogue about Wikipedia’s decision reached a fever pitch, with some news outlets calling the decision a “ban” of Scientology and chiding the encyclopedia. An op-ed by Foreign Policy’s Evgeny Morozov, for example, takes the view that Wikipedia’s move has undermined the trust of users, who depend on the tool as open. Wikipedia’s job “is to make sense of completing claims,” he wrote. “Banning Scientologists from even making those claims to me indicates that the Wikipedia editors are of a firm opinion that no good ideas could ever come from the Scientology headquarters.”
— Wikipedia Bans Scientology Church’s Edits, blogs.wsj.com post on 1 June 2009.
The blocking of specific accounts and Scientology IP addresses, rather than banning the Church of Scientology itself, is in keeping with the way severe behavior problems and edit wars on Wikipedia are typically handled. However, as several Wikipedians observed on their off-site blogs, the Scientology decision is in some respects unusual.
Remedies in Wikipedia are supposed to be preventative rather than punitive. When it comes to arbitration this is no longer true. … various other editors were less fortunate; they are now under formal sanction regarding actions they had ceased long before the case began. In several instances, diffs cited in the decision were cherry picked, inconclusive, or very old
(Because of the length of the case, which opened almost six months ago and dealt with evidence reaching back further still, a number of remedies apply to editors who have not been active on Scientology articles since 2007.)
Danny (talk · contribs) remarks that the decision, "raises a lot of longterm issues that may or may not have been considered", and touches on six of them: (1) If the [Church of Scientology (CoS)] sued, does Wikimedia have the resources to handle it? (2) "Who would the CoS sue?" The decision was passed by the ArbCom, and not by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). (3) How would the WMF react if the CoS decided to sue the Arb Com members who made the decision? (4) What public relations implications will the Scientology case have? (5) Could the CoS attempt to influence the WMF by internal infiltration? (6) Does the Scientology case set a precedent for being able to ban an organisation (where, until now, bans were handed out only to individuals)?
JayWalsh (talk · contribs), the Wikimedia Foundation's head of communications, guested on KUOW-FM (a Seattle metropolitan area, United States, radio station) to discuss the Scientology arbitration case. (kuow.org: listen in .mp3, program listing.)
Nihiltres (talk · contribs) examines the misleading aspects of press coverage and commentary. Several pieces criticizing the supposed "ban" of Scientology, Nihiltres observes, are based on misunderstandings of the decision itself and of the methods available to control disruptive and biased editors.
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Official results for the 2008 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year competition have been announced. The first place winner is "Horses on Bianditz mountain" taken by Flickr user Mikel Ortega in the Basque Country, and edited by Richard Bartz. The runner up, in second place, is Fire breathing "Jaipur Maharaja Brass Band" in Chassepierre, Belgium taken by Wikimedian Luc Viatour. The third place photo is Steam locomotives of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway in the roundhouse at the Chicago, Illinois rail yards in 1942 by Jack Delano of the Farm Security Administration in December 1942 and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Durova.
The competition involved a multistage process, accepting nominations for Picture of the Year and then narrowing down the nominations to a list of finalists. In the final round (Round 2), 712 Wikimedians participated in the vote, giving 74 votes to the winning photo, while the second place photo received 71 votes, and 46 votes went to the third place photo.
Full results are available at Commons:Picture of the Year/2008 on Wikimedia Commons.
Bjørn Smestad, the creator of Wikipedia's first official logo (right), which was in use for about eight months in 2001, has come forward as User:Bjornsm. Smestad, a teacher of mathematics instruction in Norway, had responded to a logo contest held for Nupedia, the precursor to Wikipedia, in about 2000. However, his submission lost the Nupedia contest and Smestad, who states he was never very active on either Nupedia or Wikipedia, was unaware that Jimmy Wales had chosen his logo to replace the American flag placeholder image used when Wikipedia was started. It was not until User:Mosca dug through some old web archives to reconstruct the history of the logo that Smestad's role was uncovered and mentioned in March 2009, at which point Smestad stumbled upon his previously unknown claim to fame after Googling himself in May 2009. Smestad states, "The two black vertical lines were included in an effort to make the logo seem like an 'N'. However, it is ironical that while I probably didn't succeed too much in making it appear like an 'N', that may be precisely why it could be used for Wikipedia," and remarks, "this may therefore be one of my most welcome failures ever." (Smestad's blog post)
Information about the 2009 Wikimedia Foundation Board elections has been released by the elections committee, on Meta. The page contains information about the election rules for candidacy and voting requirements. Those interested in running for the board can submit their candidacies from 06 July 2009 to 20 July 2009.
After posting the information to the Foundation-l mailing list, the Wikimedia board elections committee extended the length of the voting period in the 2009 Board elections to run from July 28 through August 10. The changes were in response to concerns raised on the mailing list. The summer time period is when many will be on holiday, so many felt that the originally proposed time period of one week was not sufficient. The elections page on Meta has been updated accordingly. [1]
At a conference for web developers (Google I/O), Google announced Google Wave. According to our own article:
It is a web based service and computing platform designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages, and numerous other extensions. It is expected to be released later in 2009.
Because of Google Wave's wiki-like features and because Google has plans to release open source code for wave technology, Wikipedians have been discussing the potential uses of Google Wave in Wikimedia projects. On the possibility of using Google's development tools to create wave applications for MediaWiki, Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Möller stated:
It could be quite compelling. I'm happy to talk to them about early access on behalf of interested Wikimedia volunteers.
A forthcoming version Google's web browser Chrome will support Ogg Theora video files, reports Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh. Because of the Foundation's commitment to using free software, Ogg Theora is the only type of video used by Wikimedia projects; more popular formats such as Flash Video, Windows Media Video, and MPEG are proprietary formats.
Ogg Theora browser support will make it possible to embed .ogg videos on webpages simply by using the HTML 5 video element. Chrome will join Firefox and Opera, two other browsers with plans to support Ogg Theora.
"If it weren't for Wikimedia using it, this work probably wouldn't have gone into enabling native browser support for it," said Walsh.
The Hindu, a widely read English-language Indian newspaper, profiled Tamil Wikipedia in "The Tamil Wiki...six years on" on 21 May 2009. Although the Tamil language has almost 70 million native speakers, Tamil Wikipedia has grown slowly, with fewer than 20,000 articles. (Tamil is ranked 15th among all languages in number of native speakers, but is only the 68th largest Wikipedia.)
Wikizine reports that "New account creations on that wiki doubled on the day the article was published."
In "The hidden censors of the internet", 20 May 2009, Wired UK takes a close look at the Internet Watch Foundation, the non-governmental charitable body that monitors online child pornography, racist content, and criminally obscene content and distributes blacklists of such material to ISPs in the United Kingdom. The previously low-profile organization came under scrutiny last year after a botched effort to censor the controversial cover of the album Virgin Killer (see earlier Signpost coverage and the article Internet Watch Foundation and Wikipedia).
One editor was granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: CactusWriter (nom).
Eleven bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Erik9bot (task request), AnomieBOT (task request), DrilBot (task request), SteveBot (task request), NukeBot (task request), SDPatrolBot (task request), Orphaned talkpage deletion bot (task request), Mr.Z-bot (task request), EarwigBot I (task request), PascalBot (task request) and, pending an User:Jarry1250/RFC on its operation, LivingBot (task request).
Operated by Chris G, Orphaned talkpage deletion bot is an adminbot that deletes orphaned talk pages that meet criteria set forth on its BRFA.
Eight articles were promoted to featured status this week: Gamma-ray burst (nom), Millennium '73 (nom), Government of the Han Dynasty (nom), Oberon (moon) (nom), Rosewood massacre (nom), Operation Perch (nom), Vauxhall Bridge (nom) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (nom).
Five lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of NBA game sevens (nom), List of Metal Gear media (nom), Australian Crawl discography (nom), 2007 World Series of Poker Europe results (nom) and List of PWG World Champions (nom).
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page this week as Today's featured article: U2, Karmichael Hunt, La Peau de chagrin, Paulinus of York, Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, SMS Von der Tann and Tropical cyclone.
One article was delisted this week: Mumbai (nom).
Nine lists were delisted this week: List of awards and nominations received by Matchbox Twenty (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Korn (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Justice (nom), Walter A. Brown Trophy (nom), List of awards and nominations received by The Neptunes (nom), List of awards and nominations received by No Doubt (nom), List of awards and nominations received by Nirvana (nom), List of awards and nominations received by The Notorious B.I.G. (nom) and List of numbered highways in Amenia (CDP), New York (nom).
No topics were delisted this week.
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page this week as picture of the day: Curculionidae, Eurasian Coot, Kew Gardens, L'Innocence, Browns Spider Monkey, Pioneertown, California and South Wind, Clear Sky.
No featured sounds were promoted this week.
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Six pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Please note that some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone 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 Wikipedia Usability Initiative project team has developed a new skin (Vector) based on the default Monobook skin, with improvements influenced by usability testing and research. Changes include moving the search box to the upper-right corner of the page. Monobook will remain the default skin, however users will be able to try out the new Vector skin by selecting it in user preferences. The skin will be available once r51094 goes live on Wikimedia servers.
The StringFunctions extension has been merged with the ParserFunctions extension, per bug 6455. These functions will be available once r50997 is pushed live to the Wikimedia servers.
The new functions include:
.jpg){kind=link}
{{#len:string}}) - provides the number of characters in a string.{{#pos: string | needle | offset}}) - Finds first occurrence of "needle" in "string" starting at "offset".{{#rpos: string | needle}}) - Finds last occurrence of "needle" in "string".{{#sub: string | start | length }}) - Returns substring of "string" starting at "start" and having "length" characters.{{#count: string | substr }}) - Returns number of occurrences of "substr" in "string".{{#replace:string | from | to | limit }}) - Replaces each occurrence of "from" in "string" with "to", and "limit" replacements at most are performed.{{#explode:string | delimiter | position}}) - Breaks "string" into chunks separated by "delimiter" and returns the chunk identified by "position".The string parser functions will only work for strings up to a maximum length of 1000 characters.
The Committee amended the Ban Appeal Sub Committee procedure, providing that Arbitrators on the Committee shall be replaced monthly, rather than quarterly.
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases and closed one this week, leaving seven open.
