What would Wikipedia be like if it did things differently? Had different standards for article inclusion? Different policies for non-free content? A different approach to dealing with problematic behavior? Simply a different group of core users who shaped its policies and community culture from the beginning?
Experiments like this have been run over and over in the form of the 262 different language versions of Wikipedia. Andrew Lih's The Wikipedia Revolution and Andrew Dalby's The World and Wikipedia have valuable but brief sections exploring what things are like on a handful of other projects, and first-hand accounts appear now and then in blogs and mailing list posts. The better English Wikipedia articles on specific language editions also provide some useful comparative insight. (The ones with significant original research are the most useful in this regard, although they may become less so as they are cleaned up.) However, on the whole very few cross-language comparisons (in English, at least) have been put down in writing. Hopefully we can change that.
The Signpost is calling for editors active in one or more non-English Wikipedias to write accounts comparing governance, process and policy, and editing culture across languages. The key questions are: how is it different working on another Wikipedia?; and what could English Wikipedia learn from that project—and vice versa?
Please list your comparison essays, or your plans for them, at the opinion desk. While you are there, you can read and comment on some of the other draft opinion content in development. As always, the Signpost is looking for new contributors, and there are more ways than ever to get involved; in addition to the opinion desk, there are open-ended writing opportunities at the review desk and the interviews desk, or you can stop by the revamped newsroom to pitch in on the next issue. Of course, comments, news tips, and story proposals are always appreciated at the tip line.
Finally, thanks sincerely to all the Signpost readers who have been using the new comments section so passionately, and thanks to User:Pretzels for designing and implementing it.
Reader comments
Wikipedian Fg2 has died according to this obituary and outside corroboration by his friend and co-worker Shirley Tamura. In life he was Frank J. Gualtieri Jr., a native of Canton, Massachusetts who traveled to Japan extensively and worked as an educator and translator.
He shared his love with the world by contributing heavily to Japan-related topics in Wikipedia. He amassed nearly 25,000 edits on the English Wikipedia, hundreds more as 二八 on the Japanese Wikipedia, and nearly 2,000 image uploads with his account on Wikimedia Commons, including these examples. He also created the English Wikipedia's Japan Portal.
In memoriam, three of Fg2's photographs have been nominated to be featured pictures on the English Wikipedia. As a further memorial, a group of editors have chosen Mount Fuji, one of his favorite articles, as a memorial collaboration to bring to featured article status. All editors are invited to collaborate.
Reader comments
Bing.com, the Microsoft search engine, is offering "Bing Reference", a way to search "enhanced Wikipedia articles" (available under "more" from the main page of Bing). The "Reference" page initially displays a Wikipedia article corresponding to the search engine's daily wallpaper. From the reference page, users can then search pages from Wikipedia and from Freebase, which is a large collaborative knowledge base.
Natural-language searches done on the "Reference" page generate a page of thumbnailed results. Any available results from Freebase will display first, and Wikipedia articles with excerpts display below these. The Wikipedia search is based on a locally hosted copy of the article database.
If the search is for a common term that has Freebase pages in multiple categories associated with it, these pages will display as tabs across the top of the search results. For example, a search for "ship" nets Freebase pages labeled "Ship; Computer game; DS9 episode; Gifted education; Novel; Comics; 2002 film."
When you click to view a full Wikipedia article, the enhancements offered include a "preview" link that displays when you hover over hyperlinks, similar to the Popups extension first developed by user:Lupin; an "article outline" box on the right-hand side that links to the sections of the article, similar to the Babaco usability experimental feature (see last issue); and a "highlighter" tool, which lets you to highlight a sentence or paragraph of an article with the mouse, then auto-generates a unique URL for that section which can be copied or saved. Additionally, a link to display thumbnails of all images in the article is provided.
Categories (including hidden maintenance categories) and cleanup tags are displayed for each article, and links to the history and original article are provided. A license notice at the end of each article states "All Wikipedia content is licensed under the GNU Free Document License or the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license or is otherwise used here in compliance with the Copyright Act," with locally hosted copies of each license linked.
At the bottom of the search results, a section entitled "Factz from Wikipedia" displays semantic links based on text-mining of Wikipedia articles. For instance, the same search for 'ship' tells us that ships "carry: crew, raids, amount, trifles, include, merchandise, points, caps, cannon; make: raids, voyage, collision, salute, stops, pass, landfall, passage and New Amsterdam; enter: ports, Mediterranean, orbit, Bay, world and Abkhazia," and much more. Each word links to the snippet of article from which the association is drawn. Whether this feature makes much sense seems to depend on the term chosen.
The Reference page features, including the semantic search, were developed by the Powerset team at Bing. Powerset was acquired by Microsoft last year.
Microsoft, which once experimented with allowing user editing on its own Encarta encyclopedia, has used Wikipedia content for its search portals before, notably as part of Live Search Health, now itself a part of Bing.
It was announced October 7 that Marlita Kahn was hired for a one-year contract as Wikimedia's project manager for the Bookshelf project, which aims to create reference materials and short how-to manuals about the projects. Kahn is an experienced project manager, who was most recently at Design Media. She will report to Frank Schulenburg, WMF head of public outreach.
A public "Wikimedia Report Card" of key metrics produced by Erik Zachte is now available for August 2008-August 2009. The statistics cover measures of reach, including unique visitors, page requests, and rank in web properties; content, including Commons files, articles, new articles per day, and edits; and community, including New Editors Per Month, active editors, and very active editors. The statistics on content and community are from Zachte's own Wikistats, while the statistics on visitors and rank is from Comscore. Meeting targets for reach and participation is one of the conditions for $500,000 of the recent Omidyar grant, although these targets are not public (see previous story).
Zachte described the statistics and the detailed charts available on his blog.
Bing.com, the Microsoft search engine, is offering "Bing Reference", a way to search "enhanced Wikipedia articles." Results come from a locally-hosted copy of the Wikipedia article database and from Freebase.
Wikipedia may be the key link in the recent news story of photographer Richard Giles, who got a legal threat from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over licensing his images from the Beijing Olympics under Creative Commons licenses. Giles explains the situation on his blog:
It turns out that my Usain Bolt photo was being used by a book shop in the UK to advertise the launch of the Guinness Book of Records 2010. This was being done without my knowledge, and as they pointed out, in breach of the license granted on the Olympic ticket.
The Usain Bolt photo was the only one of 293 in the set on Flickr that was licensed with a ShareAlike license (allowing commercial use) rather than a non-commercial license, and Giles had relicensed that particular photo at the request of another Flickrite so that it could be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and used on Wikipedia. Wikipedia, which uses the image prominently, may be where that UK merchant found it.
Giles reports that the IOC may only object to licensing that allows commercial use. Depending on what the IOC says in response to his request for clarification, Giles may be changing the license on the Usain Bolt photo and asking the UK merchant to stop using it. However, it is Wikimedia Commons policy to retain photos from Flickr that were originally obtained under a free license, even if the license on Flickr is subsequently changed. Wikimedia Commons has hundreds of other photos from the Beijing Olympics by other photographers, all of which are licensed to permit commercial use.
An interview with Jimmy Wales was published this week in the Yale Daily News, following his visit and talk at Yale last week.
Also at Yale, a real-life contest – the bladderball game traditionally played at Yale – turned into a Wikipedia edit war, as chronicled by the Yale Daily News.
Sounds on Wikipedia are somewhat neglected: while large teams of individuals scout out visual images for our articles, many of the most important public-domain musical compositions lack any sort of recording; few speeches, even if a public domain recording exist, have been uploaded; and almost no animals have recordings of their distinctive cries.
In this occasional series, we'll walk you through the use of sound files on Wikipedia, and how you can overcome any problems.
In this first article, we discuss how to put a sound in an article, suggest where to find freely licensed sounds, and introduce you to the Featured Sounds process. It presumes a basic knowledge of how things are set up in Wikipedia, such as how to include images in an article. It will be helpful if you have used at least one template before, such as an infobox or one of the citation templates.
Let's begin!
Most Wikipedians probably know how to insert an image into an article. Unfortunately, sounds are not quite so well-supported in Wikicode, and you'll need to use a template to set them up.
The most common templates in Wikipedia articles are {{Listen}} and {{multi-listen item}} and its helper templates. The {{Listen}} template acts much like a thumbnailed image, whereas {{multi-listen item}} puts the file in-line. Both use basically the same format. For example:
{{Listen
|filename = Sor_Op_31_No_1_Rec_2.ogg
|title = No.1 from Fernando Sor's ''24 Progressive Lessons For Beginners'', Op. 31
|description = The first piece from [[Fernando Sor]]'s Opus 31 for guitar, performed by Wikipedian [[User:Jujutacular|]], set up with the "Listen" template.
}}
This code produces the box seen to the right. There are three basic parameters: filename, title, and description:
{{multi-listen item}} works similarly, but was originally meant to allow long lists of files, so you need to put {{multi-listen start}} before it, and {{multi-listen end}} afterwards to get the documentation. Example:
{{multi-listen start}}
{{multi-listen item
|filename = Sor_Op_31_No_1_Rec_2.ogg
|title = No.1 from Fernando Sor's ''24 Progressive Lessons For Beginners'', Op. 31
|description = The first piece from [[Fernando Sor]]'s Opus 31 for guitar, performed by Wikipedian [[User:Jujutacular|]], set up with the "multi-listen" templates.
}}
{{multi-listen end}}
Any number of {{multi-listen item}}s can be put between {{multi-listen start}} and {{multi-listen end}}.
For more information, see the documentation at Template:Listen and Template:multi-listen item
If you can record the sound yourself, do so. You'll be helping Wikipedia's educational mission! There is some guidance on audio editors for the Ogg format on the help page for audio.
Recording music or sound yourself is not always possible. Luckily, several good sites exist for free-licensed recordings. For example:
A good way to find specific recordings is to search the internet for, say, "Mamie Smith Public Domain" or "Beethoven Piano Sonata Creative Commons", or other common free licenses. For recordings you already know are out of copyright, try "'Name-Of-Recording MP3"
Wikipedia only allows you to upload Ogg files, but the free program Audacity will allow you to convert MP3, .wav, and many other common file formats into ogg.
Another possibility is old recordings. Copyright for sounds is complicated, and not generally covered under the same rules as images. For instance, in the European Union, sounds go out of copyright after 50 years from recording, though there are moves to increase this to 70. Hence, any recording of a public domain work done in the European Union before 1939 is almost certainly out of copyright and perfectly fine to upload to Commons. (Contact me at User talk:Shoemaker's Holiday for help with sound copyrights, for now; I'll try to do a report on them later.)
For songs under copyright, Wikipedia's policy for fair use allows up to 30 seconds or 10% of the song (whichever is shorter) to allow discussion of a musical style, group, or iconic piece of music. Clips of copyrighted historic speeches may also be included for discussion. In both cases, the use must be minimal, and significantly add to understanding.
Wikipedia is based on free culture, and, as such, if a free-licensed or public domain recording could, at least in theory, be acquired, we must use that. For instance, public domain songs such as a piece by Ludwig van Beethoven (who died in 1827) could have a free recording made, and we thus cannot use commercial recordings unless they are out of copyright.
If you find a really good file, and it's free licensed or public domain, try nominating it at WP:Featured sound candidates. Sounds that pass the nomination process can be found at Portal:Featured sounds; there are currently 128 featured sounds.
Reader comments
The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.
Image size has been the subject of discussion at Wikipedia talk:Image use policy. On 28 September User:Tony1 initiated a discussion regarding the policy not being "entirely consistent with the WP:MOS#Images. After a lengthy discussion at the MoS talk page, the section there covering image sizing has been changed, and certainly does not insist on the default thumbnail size as a norm, as this page appears to."
With the policy edited by User:Eubulides to better reflect the consensus at the Manual of Style, Tony1 asked User:Tim Starling about the possibility of "changing the default thumbnail image size from 180px to, say, 220px". This prompted fresh discussion at Wikipedia talk:Image use policy on 30 September. A quick straw poll was opened with people asked to "[p]lease consider giving a range of the pixel widths that would be acceptable ... if not a single favoured width."
Tony1 kept track of the options suggested and their support in two graphs, the latest made on the 9 October, after 51 people had responded:
If we take the consensus as 180px is inadequate what remains is a decision on exactly what the minimum tolerable thumb size is, and going with that. The tradeoff for 220px is considerably smaller than that for 250px. Perhaps we should be weighing that up, rather than wringing hands over unlikely scenarios. Really, I think a serious drive to audit articles and remove forced thumbs (given a new default off 220) would be a net bloat-reduction, as a great many articles are currently either over-illustrated or have 250px+ forced upon them.
On the 11 October User:Juliancolton wondered what the next move was: "It has been quite a while since this discussion was started, and we have a fairly strong consensus for changing the default size to 220px. What next?" Tony1 responded that they were awaiting a response from Tim Starling, noting it was possible he was "on a month's leave". Debate quickly shifted to discussing whether 220px was actually the true consensual figure. Tony1 felt that "since the range of acceptable widths is well weighted on the greater than 220 side rather than the smaller than 220 side, I suggest that 230px would be a truer reflection of community opinion. I believe the Swedish WP has 250px." The quick discussion saw 220px put forward as the consensus size, and Tony1 filed a bug request on 12 October at bugzilla.
At the village pump, User:Shakescene asked for thoughts on how to handle the sudden breaking of links caused by the closure of GeoCities:
User:ThaddeusB was asked to contribute, as the user is responsible for User:WebCiteBOT, a bot whose stated purpose "is to combat link rot by automatically WebCiting newly added URLs." ThaddeusB said "Obviously time is short here, so I am going to make the necessary code modifications tomorrow [8 October] and start archiving ASAP". The bot will also handle Encarta links, as that site is to shut on Halloween, and ThaddeusB noted that:Would it be a good idea for someone to set up a 'bot to locate and test these links now, and then to search for mirror sites with a view to rewriting or redirecting the old links? Should we archive some pages' content at WikiCommons (if that's even legal)? How easy or difficult a project would this be, from the technical point of view?
I am planning on having [the bot add archive links to] external links for this task since sometimes the "External links" section is really just a mislabeled references section. I figure it is easier for a human to remove the [archived external link] later if they deem it inappropriate then it is to recover the content once its gone.
A round up of polls spotted by your writer in the last seven days or so, bearing in mind of course that voting is evil. You can suggest a poll for inclusion, preferably including details as to how the poll will be closed and implemented, either on the tip line or by directly editing the next issue.
Your writer has trawled the deletion debates opened and closed in the last week and presents these debates for your edification. Either they generated larger than average response, centred on policy in an illuminating way, or otherwise just jumped out as of interest. Feel free to suggest interesting deletion debates for future editions here.
Doctor Who campfire trailer was nominated for deletion on 1 October by User:YeshuaDavid, who felt that while it was "a well written article, [he couldn't] see how a trailer for the series can qualify as notable", suggesting either deletion, a "merge into Doctor Who (series 4), or move to a Doctor Who wiki". On 9 October User:MuZemike closed the debate with a brief statement noting that the consensus was merge to Doctor Who (series 4). User:Sceptre, who had argued for the article to be kept, questioned the close at User talk:MuZemike#Doctor Who campfire trailer. This led MuZemike to list the deletion close at deletion review, Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 October 9#Doctor Who campfire trailer, asking for a review. During the debate, User:Flatscan noted that the policy issues raised by merge closures could be discussed at the talk page of Wikipedia:AfD and mergers.
Twenty Requests for comment have been made in the week of 5 October – 11 October:
The Tropical cyclones WikiProject was founded in October 2005 by the now-inactive Jdorje. Since then, the project has become one of Wikipedia's most successful, creating 133 featured articles and 349 good articles out of a total pool of merely 1,380 articles.
Today, we've asked Juliancolton, a member of the project, to answer a few questions about their experiences there:
1. What aspects of the project do you consider to be particularly successful? Has the project developed any unusual innovations, or uniquely adopted any common approaches?
2. Have any major initiatives by the project ended unsuccessfully? What lessons have you learned from them?
3. Featured articles dealing with tropical cyclones have occasionally been the targets of criticism for being "too short" or "formulaic". Do you believe such criticism is justified, and how has it affected the project? Have you developed any special methods for dealing with such issues?
4. What experiences have you had with the WikiProjects whose scopes overlap with yours? Are they useful collaborators, or do you feel that they have little to offer you? Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?
5. Your project was last interviewed 18 months ago. How has your project changed since then?
6. What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles it shepherds, developing over the next year? The next five years?
No editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week.
Twelve articles were promoted to featured status this week: Tryon Creek (nom), Intimacy (Bloc Party album) (nom), Titania (moon) (nom), Ode on Indolence (nom), Ellis Wackett (nom), Interstate 70 in Colorado (nom), 4 Minutes (Madonna song) (nom), Marshalsea (nom), Rolls-Royce Merlin (nom), Drapier's Letters (nom), Bramall Hall (nom) and Sydney Riot of 1879 (nom).
Seventeen lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of emperors of the Song Dynasty (nom), List of districts of Sri Lanka (nom), List of Project Runway contestants (nom), George Michael discography (nom), List of Outer Hebrides (nom), List of Popotan soundtracks (nom), List of Celebrity Big Brother housemates (nom), List of Kansas City Royals managers (nom), Order of battle in the Atlantic campaign of 1806 (nom), List of US Open Men's Singles champions (nom), List of National Treasures of Japan (sculptures) (nom). List of Asu no Yoichi! episodes (nom), List of Tour de France general classification winners (nom), List of Bleach episodes (season 10) (nom), List of Minnesota North Stars head coaches (nom), List of songs in Guitar Hero 5 (nom) and Rumford Prize (nom).
Three topics were promoted to featured status this week: 1973 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), The World's Greatest Tag Team (nom) and Deuce 'n Domino (nom). Also, Tokyo Mew Mew (nom) was promoted last week and your writer missed it. Apologies.
No portals were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Catherine de' Medici, Plymouth Colony, Ununoctium, Janet Jackson, The Time Traveler's Wife and Water fluoridation.
Two articles were delisted this week: Arrested Development (TV series) (nom) and Sheffield (nom)
No lists were delisted this week.
No topics were delisted this week.
The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Eastern Grey Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus), 1818 technical illustration of hot air balloon technology, NGC 1672, Two black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) in the act of mating, A 1901 etching of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, James Gillray's 1807 caricature of the breakup of the Ministry of All the Talents and The California Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus beecheyi).
Four featured sounds were promoted this week:
|
| Fernando Sor – 24 Progressive Lessons For Beginners, Op. 31 No 1 | (nom) - Performed by Wikipedian Jujutacular |
|
| John Philip Sousa – Semper Fidelis March | (nom) |
|
| Ted Snyder – Ramshackle Rag | (nom) |
|
| Arthur Pryor – That Flying Rag | (nom) |
No featured pictures were demoted this week.
Ten pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.
The Arbitration Committee opened one case this week, and closed none, leaving five cases open.
The Socionics case was opened this week. The case was filed by rmcnew, who alleged that Tcaudilllg has engaged in edit-warring and personal attacks. Tcaudilllg has denied the allegations, calling them "ad hominem attacks on [his] character". No significant drafting has yet taken place; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Carcharoth, is expected by 20 October.
The Eastern European mailing list case has entered its fourth week of deliberations. The case concerns a set of leaked mailing list archives which are alleged to show an extensive history of collusion among numerous editors of Eastern European topics. Standard workshop procedures have been suspended for the case, so normal drafting of proposals by the parties and other editors is not taking place; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrators Coren and Newyorkbrad, was expected by 11 October.
The Asmahan case has also entered its fourth week of deliberations. The filing editor, Supreme Deliciousness, alleges that Arab Cowboy has engaged in a variety of disruptive behavior on the "Asmahan" article; Arab Cowboy denies the allegations, and claims that Supreme Deliciousness is pursuing a disruptive agenda of his own. No drafting of proposals has yet taken place; a draft decision is expected from arbitrator FayssalF by 20 October.
The Speed of light case has entered its sixth week of deliberations. The case was filed by Jehochman, who cited concerns about "tendentious editing and disruption" by a large number of editors on the "speed of light" article. Unusually, arbitrator Cool Hand Luke, who is slated to draft the decision in the case, has directly asked the parties "what resolution [they] would like to see from this process, and what (if any) concessions would [they] be willing to give to achieve that end?"; the parties have provided a set of varied responses to this. Workshop proposals have been made by a number of editors, including Cool Hand Luke and fellow arbitrator Vassyana. A draft decision in the case is expected by 16 October.
The Lapsed Pacifist 2 case has entered its eight week of deliberations, as well as its third week of voting. The filing editor, Steve Crossin, alleges that Lapsed Pacifist has engaged in advocacy, original research, and edit warring, as well as various other improprieties, over a wide range of articles. A temporary injunction prohibits Lapsed Pacifist from editing articles related to the Corrib gas project for the duration of the case. The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Casliber, would place all articles related to the Corrib gas controversy and Shell to Sea under article probation, as well as imposing revert restrictions on Lapsed Pacifist and GainLine and issuing a series of admonishments and reminders. An alternative proposal by arbitrator Rlevse would ban Lapsed Pacifist from the topic area indefinitely.
The Committee adopted a series of motions to resolve the various matters arising from the sockpuppetry scandal which unfolded last week. Notably:
The Committee announced that the first elections for community members of the Audit Subcommittee will take place starting 30 October. Three seats will be open, and applications must be submitted by 22 October; more details are available on the election page.
Reader comments
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. 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.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.
Four bot tasks were approved this past week:
