Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/In the media
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.12 (8b8c762), 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 only bots approved this week were FoxBot and TobeBot, both of which are to use the standard python framework to maintain interwiki links.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/Opinion
In the early morning of 17 August, an article on the Norwegian actress Beate Eriksen was created, the three millionth article on the English Wikipedia. The article was created by Lampman, who wrote five new articles for the milestone effort. The precise three millionth article was determined by a bot run by X! that monitored the live IRC feed of article creations and deletions. A snapshot of the results lists the articles created immediately before and after Beate Eriksen.
As with previous million article milestones, many Wikipedians saved articles to submit for the occasion; articles are typically created at a rate of about 50–70 per hour, but within minutes the article count rose from 2,999,970 to nearly 3,000,100. Of the 6 milestone winners (being 0.5M: user:Altenmann, 1M: user:Nach0king, 1.5M: user:Quarma, 2M: user:Zzxc, and 2.5M: user:Wizardman) only Nach0king and Wizardman participated in this "wikirat race".
Wikimedians have highlighted other recent and upcoming content milestones. Wikimedia Commons recently reached 100,000 Ogg files and is projected to pass five million total files during Wikimania (which takes place in Buenos Aires from 26 to 28 August). The total number of articles across all Wikipedias is nearing fourteen million. And Wikia co-founder Angela Beesley Starling (User:Angela) noted that Wikia in aggregate will soon pass English Wikipedia for total articles.
The milestone was reported in The Daily Telegraph, blogs of The Guardian and the Christian Science Monitor, and other mainstream media.
Samuel Klein, Kat Walsh and Ting Chen were all elected to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees last week. Both Walsh and Chen are incumbents, while Klein is new to the Board. In total, 2940 valid ballots were cast.
Klein, Walsh and Chen will fill the three "community representative" Board seats. Their terms of office are two years.
The Augmented Social Cognition group at PARC published two blog posts this week about their research on Wikipedia which caused a stir. The first post was called PART 1: The slowing growth of Wikipedia: some data, models, and explanations.
In "PART 2: More details of changing editor resistance in Wikipedia", the researchers conclude that there is "evidence of growing resistance from the Wikipedia community to new content, especially when the edits come from occasional editors". In total, 5.8 percent of all edits in 2008 were reverted for reasons other than vandalism, or by a bot, double the percentage in 2005 (2.8 percent). As for occasional editors: By the end of 2008, this revert rate (again, non-vandalism) was close to 25% for editors making only a single edit during a given month, and was more than 15% for editors making 2 to 9 edits in a given month.
The posts got picked up by many news outlets.
An Amazon.com book search on 9 June 2009 gives 1009 (6 August, gives 1,859) "books" from Alphascript Publishing.[nan 1] 1003 of the books are described as "by John McBrewster, Frederic P. Miller, and Agnes F. Vandome". They are called editors in the book listings. It seems the only content of the many books is free Wikipedia articles with no sign that these three people have contributed to them.
The articles are often poorly printed with features such as missing characters from foreign languages, and numerous images of arrows where Wikipedia had links. It appears much better to read the original articles for free at the Wikipedia website than paying a lot of money for what has been described as a scam or hoax. Advertising for the books at Amazon and elsewhere does not reveal the free source of all the content. It is only revealed inside the books which may satisfy the license requirements for republishing of Wikipedia articles.
As an example of the "care" given to the books, the book "History of Georgia (country)" is about the European country Georgia but has a cover image of Atlanta in the American state Georgia.[nan 2] The Wikipedia article History of Georgia (country) does not make such a comical blunder.
PrimeHunter has compiled a list of the 1009 titles identified in June.
After filing a complaint under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) in June, the Wikimedia Foundation was granted the domain names "wikipeadia.com" and "wikipediia.com", which had been registered by a Californian online marketing company. The 7 August decision by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center found that both domains were "confusingly similar" to the Foundation's "Wikipedia" trademark, calling the second one "a classic example of typosquatting". Earlier this year, the Wikimedia Foundation had already obtained the domain "visualwikipedia.com" under the UDRP.[1]
Two weeks ago the Signpost reported that the local UK chapter of Wikimedia had been denied charity tax status. Wikimedia UK is documenting the process of drafting a revised application for charity status. According to their website, while the initial decision found that "production of an encyclopaedia is not the charitable advancement of education", they expect a different outcome from their subsequent application directly to the UK's Charity Commission, which will address more specifically the educational goals of the chapter. The initial application was made to HM Revenue and Customs Charities Unit, because with annual income below £5,000 at the time, Wikimedia UK was ineligible to apply to the Charity Commission; since then, the chapter has been approved for a £5,000 grant from the Wikimedia Foundation.
The following new projects were opened this week:
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/In focus
The Arbitration Committee did not close any cases this week, and opened one new case, leaving two cases open.
A request for arbitration concerning the contents of Jimbo Wales' user page was filed by Drew R. Smith, and then withdrawn after it was discovered that the filing account had been compromised.
Two additional requests for arbitration, concerning Noloop and Lapsed Pacifist, were filed by Abce2 and Steve Crossin, respectively.
The 194x144x90x118 case was opened this week. The filing editor, Erik9, alleges that 194x144x90x118 has engaged in a variety of disruptive conduct, despite an RFC on the matter. 194x144x90x118 has so far refused to respond to the allegations. Evidence has been presented by several editors, but no substantial drafting of proposals has taken place. A draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Wizardman, is expected by 24 August.
The Abd-William M. Connolley case has entered its fifth week of deliberations. The case was filed by Abd, who alleged that William M. Connolley had improperly banned him from the cold fusion article; William M. Connolley denied these allegations, and stated that Abd's conduct had been inappropriate. Arbitrator Stephen Bain has prepared a preliminary draft decision on the workshop page; the proposals encompass desysopping and banning William M. Connolley, requiring Abd to enter a mentorship arrangement, and admonishing several other editors. Response to these proposals has been generally negative. The case is expected to move to voting by the end of the week.
In response to the request for clarification regarding the Obama articles decision filed by Wikidemon, arbitrator Carcharoth has proposed a motion extending ChildofMidnight's topic ban to include related discussions in all namespaces. The motion currently stands at five arbitrators supporting and one recused, with seven votes necessary for adoption.
A request that the Falun Gong decision be amended was filed by Olaf Stephanos. Olaf argued that the six-month topic ban he had received was unwarranted, and asked the Committee to rescind it. At present, no arbitrators have commented on the substance of the request.
The Committee has enacted a motion in response to Everyking's request to amend the Everyking 3 decision to remove the remaining sanctions against him. The motion denies the request, but provides for the sanctions to automatically expire one year after the date of the motion or of any future appeal, whichever is later.
The motion proposed by arbitrator Newyorkbrad in response to Greg L's request to amend the Date delinking decision appears to have passed, but has not yet been published. The motion reduces the various editing restrictions related to style and editing guidelines imposed by the decision to apply only to topics specifically related to the linking or delinking of dates.
The Committee enacted an open motion clarifying that The Rambling Man's resignation during the Date delinking case did not preclude him from regaining his bureaucrat status on request, and encouraging "any users concerned that the policies and procedures governing restoration of administrator and bureaucrat privileges following a resignation may be unfair or unclear to convene a community discussion on an appropriate policy page and to seek to develop a community-written policy on these matters".
Following the conclusion of the August 2009 CheckUser and Oversight elections, the Committee announced that CheckUser rights would be granted to three editors:
and Oversight rights would be granted to nine editors:
The Ban Appeals Subcommittee announced that it had unbanned Keeblesound, Arindamp, Mrinal Pandey, and Carlisle Rodham as a result of successful appeals.
The Committee announced that, as a consequence of arbitrator travel, Committee business would be conducted at reduced levels between 23 August and 31 August. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-08-17/Humour
