Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/In the media
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.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.
Six new bot tasks were approved this past week:
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/Opinion
Even many of the larger Wikipedias are very parochial, according to a new analysis of geographical density of Wikipedia articles by language, by Mark Graham. Graham wrote a column on "Wikipedia's known unknowns" in The Guardian last week that included maps of different regions of the world shaded according to the density of corresponding geocoded Wikipedia articles — that is, articles with geographic coordinates included; he found that the Global North is much better represented on Wikipedia in this regard than the Global South.
In the new follow-up up on his blog Zero Geography, Graham compares the density of geotagged articles in different language editions. The result is that each language's geotagged articles are largely concentrated in the areas where the respective languages are spoken, and only English and German Wikipedias have significant coverage outside the geographic areas where those languages predominate.
It is now possible to import pages with their full history from Meta, several language versions of Wikipedia, and the Nostalgia Wikipedia, a copy of the English Wikipedia database from 20 December 2001. This feature can be used for attribution of translated articles alongside {{Iw-ref}}, and very old edits can be imported from the Nostalgia Wikipedia that are not in the current Wikipedia database. See Wikipedia:Requests for page importation to make requests, and this week's technology report for more details.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/In focus
The Arbitration Committee closed two cases this week, leaving three open. No cases were opened.
The Tothwolf case has entered its fifth week of deliberations. The case, which concerns a long-standing dispute between Tothwolf and several other editors, was filed by third party Jehochman. Some preliminary workshop drafting has taken place, though no arbitrators have yet responded to any of the proposals; the drafting of a decision has been reassigned to arbitrator Stephen Bain and is expected by 20 December.
The Ottava Rima restrictions case has entered its fifth week of deliberations and its first week of voting. The case was filed by Ottava Rima to appeal an editing restriction imposed following a community discussion on the administrators' noticeboard.
The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Wizardman, would ban Ottava Rima for a period of between three months and one year and place him on probation on his return, while admonishing Moreschi. All of the remedies currently have the majority support of arbitrators, with greater support for a longer ban.
The Eastern European mailing list case has entered its 13th week of deliberations and its ninth week of voting. 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 the normal drafting of proposals by the parties and other editors has not taken place.
The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Coren, would strip Piotrus of his administrator status, ban him for three months, and place him under a topic ban for one year; ban Digwuren and Martintg for three months, and place them under year-long topic bans; and issue a number of admonishments and reminders, as well as an amnesty for all participants of the mailing list not otherwise sanctioned. Additional proposals made by other arbitrators include bans for Tymek, Jacurek, and Radeksz, as well as more nuanced topic bans for Piotrus and Digwuren. Voting on the proposals remains divided, but a motion to close has two net support votes, with four needed to close the case.
The Asmahan case was closed this week. The decision imposes topic bans and editing restrictions on Supreme Deliciousness and Arab Cowboy, as well as placing the "Asmahan" article on probation.
The Socionics case was also closed. The decision bans rmcnew for six months and Tcaudilllg for one year, as well as indefinitely banning them from all Socionics-related topics, pages, and discussions. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-14/Humour
