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10 May 2010

From the editorReviewers and reporters wanted
Commons deletions
Porn madness
Book review
Dan O'Sullivan's Wikipedia: a new community of practice?
Wikipedia books launched
Wikipedia books launched worldwide
News and notes
Public Policy and Books for All
In the news
Commons pornography purge, and more
WikiProject report
WikiProject Birds
Features and admins
Approved this week
Arbitration report
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
 

2010-05-10

Reviewers and reporters wanted

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By Sage Ross

Newsworthy project happenings and books relevant to the community continue to flow by at a faster rate than the Signpost can keep up with. If you have an interest in writing for the Signpost, contact an active contributor or jump right in.

On the books front, a variety of recently published works deal directly or indirectly with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. One upcoming book in particular should be a priority for timely review: Joseph Reagle's Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia, due out in September. A prospective reviewer—preferably with a social sciences or humanities background—should be prepared to commit to completing the review by September, assuming review copies go out far enough ahead of time. Suggestions for other books to review can be added to the review desk, which also has a list of earlier suggestions that have not yet been reviewed.

Several Signpost beats have been understaffed or unstaffed lately, particularly the discussion report and the technology report. The discussion report has only been part of the Signpost for short bursts, and requires much of its writers, but when done well it is also a very useful way to keep the community informed about important discussions. Especially given the pending deployment of usability updates and flagged revisions, regular technology reports are also a great service to Signpost readers. And as always, more help is welcome and appreciated for "In the news", "News and notes", and other regular features.

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2010-05-10

Porn madness


Timeline of events


Reader comments

2010-05-10

Dan O'Sullivan's Wikipedia: a new community of practice?

Ashgate Publishing, 191pp, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-7546-7433-7, September 2009

Historical analogies with Wikipedia fail to convince

"Everything is radical about Wikipedia except for the actual articles", Dan O'Sullivan told the recent Critical point of view conference in Amsterdam. Many aspects of Wikipedia's community and knowledge production, he said, are profound departures from the Western cultural tradition, and the suppleness, pluralism and interconnectedness that Wikipedia achieves amount to "a change in the very nature of knowledge itself". But in his view, while an article in old-style encyclopedias such as the Britannica can gain authority by adopting a particular angle, Wikipedia’s conventions of neutrality and consensus—the "blended compromise"—are a conservative formula that can weaken the distinctive voice of an article, resulting in a certain sterility.

Dan O’Sullivan is a British historian with his name on five books, most recently this one, which traces what he sees as antecedents of the "wildly successful" Wikipedia phenomenon back more than 2,000 years. The author describes a set of pre-Internet communities of practice (whence the book's slightly clunky subtitle) in terms of their aims, participants, transactional costs, public relations and legacy. But rather than deepening our insights into Wikipedia, these historical vignettes disappoint: most of the connections with the earlier communities of practice are obvious or tenuous, and we are subsequently presented with a decidedly superficial analysis of how Wikipedia is "conservatively radical" in relation to them.

Christopher Wren (1632–1723), the brilliant architect who was seminal in establishing the Royal Society and became its president in 1680
The title page of Diderot's Encyclopédie (1751–72)
Lexicographer James Murray (1837–1915), the father of the OED
We are taken first to the Library of Alexandria, established by Ptolemy in occupied Egypt in the 2nd century BC. This is an engaging commentary on how the Library might have been, but O'Sullivan admits that the evidence is "highly fragmentary, and often contradictory", and in the end we must take on trust the notion that a modern account of ancient Alexandria can help us to understand Wikipedia. The statement that Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger "inherited the ambitions of the Alexandrian librarians" could be true only in the most diffuse sense.

Much more is known about The Royal Society of London, created in 1660 by a group of professional gentlemen to champion the value of evidence-based knowledge. The boldness of setting up the Royal Society could have been underlined if we had been given a sense of the tumultuous state of England at the time; and here, too, was a chance to follow up the concept of the expanding public space, explored in the opening, theoretical chapter but nowhere thereafter. The conclusion that the Society was "without patronage" and neutral on questions of politics sits oddly after an account of the royal patronage, both financial and political.

While the Royal Society anticipated the Enlightenment, the Frenchman Denis Diderot was one of the leading figures of that movement. Having introduced Diderot a little unfairly as a hack writer, jailbird and one-time pornographer, O’Sullivan describes how he took up a proposal by Parisian printers for a French translation of the English Cyclopedia (1728). But the Encyclopédie was no mere translation: it turned into a visionary 28-volume work, with more than 70,000 articles plus illustrations. This is an interesting account of how Diderot and hundreds of collaborators strove not just to assemble knowledge, but to move it firmly out of the hands of an elite and into the public domain. However, tracing a parallel between Wikipedia and the Encyclopédie on the basis of the use of "the latest technology" to produce and disseminate their knowledge is dubious without proper investigation.

The Scotsman James Murray was the principal editor of what would become The Oxford English Dictionary. Like Diderot a century before, he was the hub of an almost unmanageable flood of contributions from widely dispersed writers, and was plagued by subprofessional standards—an inevitable trade-off in harnessing the huge volunteer workforce that sifted the literature for contexts in which words are used. This might have been the opportunity to explain why so many Wikipedians are keen to give their time and effort gratis and largely unacknowledged. But the reader has to work hard to winkle out what could have been a clearly stated analogy: that the OED project offered a conduit between ordinary people and a high-profile, prestigious publication to which they could make piecemeal contributions without the burden of professional deadlines; and that Wikipedia, too, has redefined expertise, unlocking within editors' personal timeframes their specialised knowledge, even if just on their own locality or school. The picture might have been filled out later in the book by asking whether earning social esteem within the Wikipedia community, in combination with this private–public conduit, might be what fires editors to donate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of their labour.

The subsequent treatment of Wikipedia is wide of the mark, wasting an opportunity to deeply probe its community and process of knowledge production. Instead, some 30 pages are devoted to reproducing versions of a single article at three stages of its development, with insubstantial conclusions. Almost 20 pages are devoted to setting out a cumbersome numerical system for assessing articles and presenting a kind of detached how-to-use-it guide. Yet the basics are missing. There is no recognition of the hierarchy of rules and standards—the pillars, policies and guidelines. The relationship between articles is discussed in terms of the category system, but not of the use of summary style to reach deeply into the nooks and crannies of human knowledge through the creation of "daughter" articles of increasingly narrow scope—the ultimate tree. Only one of the six featured-content processes is mentioned, featured article candidates, and there is no discussion of how it has evolved as an influential model for article quality—the sharp rise in standards over the past few years, the complex relationship among nominators, reviewers, and delegates, and the jostling among the FAC process, the Manual of Style, the main page exposure of featured articles, and the rule that no editor owns any article.

O'Sullivan sees the cauldron of wikipolitics largely in terms of how neutrality is handled. If he contends that Wikipedia's pillar of neutrality enfeebles its voice with a have-a-bet-each-way formula, a comparison would have been useful with the editorial policies of the world's only two non-commercial, independent state broadcasters—the British and Australian Broadcasting Corporations—since they are charged with addressing a similar need to balance the angles of competing interest groups. Still untouched is an analysis of the extent to which neutrality in practice is skewed towards the cultural perceptions of the educated, middle-class anglophones who call the tune at Wikipedia. And there was scope to probe the robustness of the no original research pillar—to ask whether there can ever be a clear distinction between original research and the handling of secondary sources in Wikipedia's articles.

The author stresses the "comparative lack of hierarchy" in the community, quite forgetting that the freedom to edit is subject to constraints for social and legal reasons, and is overseen by Wikipedia's own police force and judiciary. The book might have traced how official power in the community has developed to deal mainly with behavioural issues, even though matters of behaviour and content are often entangled. Related to this could have been an examination of how sovereignty, originally emanating entirely from Jimmy Wales, is evolving in the light of his changing role.

This book needed to penetrate the dynamics of Wikipedia, characterised as they are by the contest of opposite forces. Among these are democracy versus consensus (still poorly defined), reform versus the status quo, privacy versus the management of identity fraud, and the ownership of intellectual property versus fair use. The world's most prominent information site brings into sharp relief many of the issues that will be played out in "real life" societies over the coming century. We await a book that analyses in depth how these dynamics are unfolding on Wikipedia.

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2010-05-10

Wikipedia books launched worldwide

Worldwide launch of the book feature

Wikipedia in print

6 May 2010 marked the launch of the book tool on the English Wikipedia.[1][2][3] Previously, the creation of Wikipedia books was limited to logged-in users because of scalability issues, but now anyone in the world can take collections of Wikipedia articles, arrange them into chapters, and get them delivered to their door by PediaPress, the official print-on-demand partner of the Wikimedia Foundation. The books come as A5 format paperbacks, and users are able to select an image and background color for the book's cover. The books ship within two business days, and start at US$8.95 for a 100-page book. The books can also be freely downloaded as A4 format PDFs, as well as in ODT format, which can be printed at home and further edited. There are plans to make hardcover and color versions available by the end of August.


The book tool is currently enabled for 17 languages, and books have been delivered to 33 countries.[2] The launch of books caught the eye of several media outlets, such as TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Mashable, and The New Yorker.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

Screencast explaining how the book tool works

PediaPress released a new screencast for the book launch, explaining how to create books with the book tool.

Confused by the book tool? See this video guide on how to create a book!

Users interested in creating and maintaining "community books", that is books which can be edited by everyone (such as Book:Canada and Book:Messier objects), can join WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, which is a collaboration of editors who are interested in creating and maintaining Wikipedia books.

100 free books

To celebrate the launch of Wikipedia books to the world at large, PediaPress is giving away 100 coupons for free printed books. Each coupon has a value of $20 (USD) and will be awarded on a first-come first-served basis to editors who create a community book (books uploaded in the Book namespace). If the price of the book comes to more than $20, then a $20 discount will be offered instead. For the full details, see User:Headbomb/Coupons.

References



Reader comments

2010-05-10

Public policy, and books for all

Public Policy Initiative

This week, the Wikimedia Foundation announced its new public policy outreach initiative, funded by a grant from the Stanton Foundation. The new initiative focuses on working with faculty and students at universities in the U.S. to improve articles related to U.S. public policy. More information about the initiative can be found on the Outreach wiki.

The initiative is hiring five positions: a Campus Team Coordinator, a Communications Associate, an Online facilitator, a Research Analyst, and a Project Assistant. All jobs are one-year positions lasting from July 2010-September 2011. The first four jobs close on May 17; the project assistant job closes on June 2.

Books available to all

See related story.

The Pediapress Books extension is now available to all users of the English Wikipedia, whether logged in or not. Starting May 6, the extension became available to all; previously users of the service on the English Wikipedia had to have an account and be logged in.

Briefly

  • A new mailing list has been formed for those interested in issues surrounding museums and cultural organizations and Wikimedia, called Museum-l. The new list is administered by Raul654 and Wittylama and all are welcome to subscribe.
  • Howie Fung has joined the Wikimedia Foundation as product manager.
  • A call for nominations for the Chapter-selected board seats has been made; nominations should be submitted by May 17. Anyone can nominate individuals for the two seats, which are then selected by the Chapters.

    Reader comments

2010-05-10

Jimbo bans Commons pornography, UK political biographies 'cleansed' as expenses scandal dies down, Government-published reports cite Wikipedia, and more

Jimmy Wales takes action in response to pornography allegations

See also Commons:News regarding the sexual content purge

PC Pro magazine reports that Jimmy Wales has asked Commons administrators to delete images that "appeal solely to prurient interests". His plea came in the wake of Larry Sanger's reports to the FBI that the Wikimedia Foundation is freely hosting and distributing "depictions of child sexual molestation" (see archived story), the subject of a remarkably one-sided article by Fox News that cast the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as Wikimedia deputy director Erik Moeller, in a negative light.

The story of the sexual content purge and the ensuing controversy has been picked up by several news websites, including BBC News [1] and The Register.[2] To date the only major newspaper to cover it is the Indian Daily News & Analysis, which published an eleven-paragraph wire story on 29 April [3] and an eight-paragraph wire story on 8 May.[4]

British politicians' expenses covered up on Wikipedia; ten biographies have been 'cleansed' and some remain uncorrected as scandal dies down

On 9 May the Sunday Telegraph published an investigative article, titled "MPs, their expenses and the Wikipedia 'cover-up'", about how British politicians have removed details of the Parliamentary expenses scandal from their Wikipedia biographies. It appeared on page eleven, overshadowed by the front-page story on talks to form a coalition government which was broken down over the first five pages, but the article was part of the newspaper's election coverage.

The journalists list ten cases in which details of expenses claims were removed by either the politicians themselves, a staffer, or a confidant of the politicians involved. They note that in some cases "the ploy worked" while "in other cases, the details were reinstated and the people who tried to delete them were reprimanded".

The Signpost's own analysis of the article histories shows that there was prolonged edit warring on four articles, but only two (on the Joan Ryan and Ian Taylor articles) resulted in the details being removed permanently. (Note: both articles have since been corrected). There was consensus to remove details on Malcolm Rifkind. The vast majority of edits which removed details were caught with the Twinkle vandalism tool or manually reverted within a few hours, but those that went unnoticed lasted for days or even weeks.

Extended content
  1. Chris Grayling – 1,025 bytes removed at 15:37, 30 July 2009 (diff) – 1,025 bytes restored at 17:06, 30 July 2009 (diff)
  2. Margaret Moran – 1,304 bites removed at 14:22, 24 April 2009 (diff) – 1,029 bytes restored at 16:33, 27 April 2009 (diff)
  3. Joan Ryan
    1. 1,021 bytes removed at 11:06, 2 June 2009 (diff) – 1,015 bytes restored (slight changes) at 12:00, 18 June 2009 (diff)
    2. 988 bytes removed at 20:31, 29 June 2009 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 13:01, 2 July 2009 (diff)
    3. 987 bytes removed at 16:14, 19 July 2009 (diff) – 987 bytes restored at 13:28, 10 August 2009 (diff)
    4. 988 bytes removed at 19:14, 25 August 2009 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 11:20, 7 September 2009 (diff)
    5. 986 bytes removed at 20:47, 13 September 2009 (diff) – 986 bytes restored at 20:48, 13 September 2009 (diff)
    6. 987 bytes removed at 13:56, 21 September 2009 (diff) – 987 bytes restored at 11:48, 15 October 2009 (diff)
    7. 987 bytes removed at 14:24, 1 November 2009 (diff) – 987 bytes restored at 10:02, 29 December 2009 (diff)
    8. 988 bytes removed at 13:56, 4 January 2010 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 22:36, 4 January 2010 (diff)
    9. 988 bytes removed at 21:30, 7 January 2010 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 22:31, 7 January 2010 (diff)
    10. 988 bytes removed at 15:42, 14 January 2010 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 00:03, 15 January 2010 (diff)
    11. 989 bytes removed at 17:56, 16 January 2010 (diff) – 989 bytes restored at 17:57, 16 January 2010 (diff)
    12. 988 bytes removed at 10:56, 17 February 2010 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 10:58, 17 February 2010 (diff)
    13. 988 bytes removed at 20:06, 18 February 2010 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 14:37, 23 March 2010 (diff)
    14. 988 bytes removed at 16:14, 24 March 2010 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 21:31, 24 March 2010 (diff)
    15. 988 bytes removed at 08:44, 27 March 2010 (diff) – 988 bytes restored at 12:06, 27 March 2010 (diff)
    16. 988 bytes removed at 15:56, 8 April 2010 (diff) –
  4. Ann Keen – 1,215 bytes removed at 12:13, 28 May 2008 (diff) – 1,215 bytes restored at 12:18, 28 May 2008 (diff)
  5. Alan Keen
    1. 1,226 bytes removed at 12:11, 28 May 2008 (diff) – 1,226 bytes restored at 12:12, 28 May 2008 (diff)
    2. 204 bytes removed at 12:39, 28 May 2008 (diff) – 371 bytes restored (slight changes) at 06:07, 29 January 2009 (diff)
  6. Angela Christine Smith
    1. 1,088 bytes removed at 22:42, 10 July 2009 (diff) – 1,088 bytes restored at 22:31, 14 July 2009 (diff)
    2. 186 bytes removed at 23:12, 10 July 2009 (diff) – 304 bytes restored (slight changes) at 22:45, 14 July 2009 (diff)
    3. 1,420 bytes removed at 12:11, 16 July 2009 (diff) – 1,420 bytes restored at 13:03, 16 July 2009 (diff)
    4. 1,420 bytes removed at 19:21, 16 July 2009 (diff) – 1,420 bytes restored at 19:29, 16 July 2009 (diff)
    5. 1,420 bytes removed at 19:44, 16 July 2009 (diff) – 1,420 bytes restored at 20:09, 16 July 2009 (diff)
    6. 1,420 bytes removed at 20:18, 16 July 2009 (diff) – 1,420 bytes restored at 20:26, 16 July 2009 (diff)
    7. 1,420 bytes removed at 20:29, 16 July 2009 (diff) – 1,420 bytes restored at 20:30, 16 July 2009 (diff)
    8. 1,770 bytes removed at 22:32, 17 July 2009 (diff) – 1,770 bytes restored at 22:52, 17 July 2009 (diff)
    9. 1,770 bytes removed at 11:05, 18 July 2009 (diff) – 1,770 bytes restored at 12:02, 18 July 2009 (diff)
    10. 1,771 bytes removed at 14:03, 18 July 2009 (diff) – 1,771 bytes restored at 14:06, 18 July 2009 (diff)
  7. Dari Taylor
    1. 2,750 bytes removed at 16:46, 13 August 2009 (diff) – 2,750 bytes restored at 17:27, 13 August 2009 (diff)
    2. 2,737 bytes removed at 11:36, 17 August 2009 (diff) – 2,737 bytes restored at 12:02, 17 August 2009 (diff)
    3. 2,749 bytes removed at 12:36, 17 August 2009 (diff) – 2,749 bytes restored at 12:36, 17 August 2009 (diff)
    4. 2,750 bytes removed at 13:06, 17 August 2009 (diff) – 2,750 bytes restored at 13:12, 17 August 2009 (diff)
    5. 2,751 bytes removed at 13:16, 17 August 2009 (diff) – 2,751 bytes restored at 13:20, 17 August 2009 (diff)
  8. Christopher Fraser – 920 bytes removed at 20:37, 9 November 2009 (diff) – 920 bytes restored at 22:38, 9 November 2009 (diff)
  9. Malcolm Rifkind
    1. 695 bytes removed at 11:29, 12 October 2009 (diff) – 692 bytes restored at 16:01, 18 October 2009 (diff)
    2. 1,630 bytes removed at 15:12, 20 April 2010 (diff) – consensus to remove
  10. Ian Taylor (UK politician)
    1. 1,289 bytes removed at 14:41, 9 July 2009 (diff) – 1,289 bytes restored at 23:19, 9 July 2009 (diff)
    2. 2,229 bytes removed at 17:30, 10 July 2009 (diff) – 2,229 bytes restored at 20:38, 10 July 2009 (diff)
    3. 1,037 bytes removed at 17:42, 13 July 2009 (diff) – 1,037 bytes restored at 15:53, 23 July 2009 (diff)
    4. 1,378 bytes removed at 20:47, 24 July 2009 (diff) – 1,378 bytes restored at 20:47, 24 July 2009 (diff)
    5. 1,378 bytes removed at 20:47, 24 July 2009 (diff) –
  11. Barbara Follett – 407 bytes removed at 14:35, 8 December 2008 (diff) – 407 bytes restored at 18:37, 8 December 2008 (diff)

Two reports published by Irish government cite Wikipedia

On 3 May the Irish Independent published an article on page two, titled "State reports used Wikipedia as source", revealing that two government-published reports, a study produced by the Department of Environment and a report by the Department of Agriculture cited Wikipedia as a source. Apparently, neither report used Wikipedia for technical citations, as was the case in a recent Australian report that was attacked over sourcing (see Signpost coverage).

Opposition Senator Paschal Donohoe criticised the departments for failing to double-check their sources. Long-time Wikipedia critic Ian O'Doherty wrote in his column on 5 May that it was "bizarre" the government was relying on such an unstable source, pointing out that his biography has twice been vandalised this year.

Briefly

  • Two weeks ago Umberto Eco, the pioneer of modern semiotics, said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País that the omnipresence of the Internet (presumably referring to the popularity of microblogging) creates language issues which lead to culture loss, but acknowledged that reference websites like Wikipedia are useful. The interview was republished in the influential Colombian magazine Revista Cambio and was this week discussed by South American commentators.
  • Erica Cervini wrote in the education section of The Age that Australian universities are "urging students" to use the Internet in class and recommending they consult Wikipedia as a source. She was critical of both these developments, disregarding the arguments of writers such as Will Richardson [5] and Anya Kamenetz [6] in favor of online classwork.
  • A product manager from Google told Reuters the company wants more structured Arabic content online, and it is now encouraging people to improve the Arabic Wikipedia. Five months ago, the company was heavily promoting Google Knol (see this interview, 6:50 in, for instance).
  • In a video interview with The Business Insider, Jimmy Wales discussed the history and success of Wikipedia and Wikia, touching on subjects such as the decision to make Wikimedia a non-profit, and comparisons with Demand Media and Google Knol. Wales has been getting a lot of positive press coverage since appearing in the documentary America: The Story of Us. A speech he gave on the use of wikis in product marketing was published as an essay in the 6 May issue of Marketing Week.

    Reader comments

2010-05-10

WikiProject Birds

WikiProject news
  • WikiProject Economics is searching for "armchair economists" and any other interested editors to help improve articles
  • Join the May 2010 Backlog Elimination Drive and help clear an 8,000+ {{copyedit}} tag backlog. Participating editors receive barnstars and other awards for their participation. The drive runs from 1 May to 31 May.
  • Quickly create stubs or update your project's articles with the CSVLoader plugin for AWB
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

This week, we invited the members of WikiProject Birds to share their experiences and a flock of eight editors answered our call. This very active project is home to over 100 active members and boasts a collection of 63 featured articles, 19 featured lists, 49 good articles, 2 featured sounds, and a vast library of featured pictures. The project dates back to April 2003 when Tannin created the project's page, including in the first few sentences the same mission statement that remains at the top of the project's page today: "The aim of this project is to set out broad suggestions about how we organize data in the bird articles. These are only suggestions, and you shouldn't feel at all obligated to follow them." WikiProject Birds is part of WikiProject Tree of Life and home to the Domestic Pigeon Task Force. Included in this week's interview are Sabine's Sunbird, Jimfbleak, Innotata, JerryFriedman, Casliber, Shyamal, MeegsC, and Maias.

Green-naped Lorikeet

What motivated you to become a member of WikiProject Birds?

  • Sabine's Sunbird: It simply happened that I discovered Wikipedia while I was working for a charity that worked with birds, doing bird research. So I started writing about birds (at other points I may have written more about conservation or monkeys). After that it was natural that as I was writing about birds I'd be talking about writing about birds at the place to do so.
  • Jimfbleak: I'm a long-time birder, seemed natural to write about the subject of my hobby.
  • Innotata: I think most of us are like Jimfbleak.
  • JerryFriedman: Yep.
  • Casliber: Me too. It also allows us to bridge a much-needed gap between guidebooks with (generally all too brief descriptions) and scientific literature, to bring lots of fascinating facts about birds into general circulation for laypeople and combine the articles with lots of nice photos, which have exploded all over the web in the past few years with the rise of really good digital cameras. We can create something really unique here WRT a wiki bird species repository of accessible knowledge.
  • Shyamal: The potential for good and low-cost information - especially out in the tropics - for local users - who cannot afford anywhere as much as trans-national birders can and who are in a position to produce additional knowledge (not here on WP of course) if only they knew what could be figured out or verified. I have written about this elsewhere in greater detail.
  • MeegsC: When I first visited Wikipedia (after reading an online BBC article about UK librarians bemoaning its use, incidently), among the first things I looked up were a few bird species. It didn't take me long to see how much work there is to do on the subject — and to discover the Birds wikiproject. I've been hooked ever since.

With so many birds in the world, how does the project determine notability? In addition, how does your project get 15,325 pages sorted and improved?

  • Sabine's Sunbird: Improving so many articles is obviously somewhat haphazard. We have had a sustained drive towards making sure that every bird family (an taxonomic rank - pigeons, or gulls or albatrosses are all families) has at least a start-level article, and at present only a very small number (no more than five) families are still stubs. This is obviously complicated by the rather fluid state of avian taxonomy in science at the moment - what is a family today my be several families tomorrow, or maybe not one at all.
A featured sound recording of a Turdus migratorius; an American Robin
  • Innotata: Notability? It is well accepted that any species and most taxa higher than this are unquestionably notable. Issues of notability, and for my part concerns of splitting too much, come up with subspecies, and individuals and varieties of birds kept in captivity.
  • Casliber: Species pages are the natural starting point for most and the easiest to improve -also they are all inherently notable. Bigger articles require concerted work, often over some months.
  • Maias: For me all recognisable taxa, including distinctive subspecies, and especially those isolated from significant gene-flow, are notable. The notability of higher taxa is taken for granted, so I focus more on the largely neglected lower taxa such as island forms.
  • Shyamal: The species pages are certainly approached in a haphazard way. Editors may work on a particular group of birds, of a particular region, of current interest or just whatever they fancy. Some editors may even just review the latest scientific publication and update a few factoids on the relevant articles. There are some editors (e.g.: J. M. Garg User:Jmgarg1, Tom Tarrant User:Aviceda and others) who have added pictures, often to rather sparse articles. A collection of pictures and scattered factoids can sometimes stimulate editors to reorganize and update articles.
Black Swan

There are no unassessed articles within your project. How did you accomplish this and do you have any advice to other projects with large backlogs of unassessed articles?

  • Jimfbleak: I suppose that we are fortunate in having good numbers of contributors, some of whom are more conscientious than me in fixing unassessed articles.
  • Casliber: It ain't rocket science to determine - I generally consider it a rough guide which allows one to glance at the assessment table to see the state of articles as a whole....and realise what a long way to go we have :/
  • MeegsC: We had a big hit on unassessed articles — which then numbered more than 5,000 — a few years ago, with a couple of editors (particularly Maias and Dixonsej) doing a vast bulk of the reviews. Since then, it's been a whole lot easier to stay on top of things!

WikiProject Birds currently has 63 featured articles, 19 featured lists, and 48 GAs. How did you achieve this and how can other projects get to this point?

  • Jimfbleak: I think the collaborative approach is a strength. Although only a minority are formal topic collaborations, there is a willingness to help with sourcing, copyediting and the other thankless tasks involved in reaching GA/FA. having said that, some of the FLs are probably not at current FL standards
  • Innotata: I think birds are a pretty obvious topic to have plenty of quality articles on, with so many species of interest to so many people. And having contributors like Jimfbleak and Casliber is another factor.
  • Casliber: There have been enough active contributors to really create a thriving collaborative environment, since 2007 or so, and shows no signs of slowing down in the near future. Feedback as you go is extremely helpful in breaking down writers' block.
  • MeegsC: I think we push each other a little bit. Jimfbleak and Casliber are probably the editors who've brought the most articles to FA and GA status, and both have challenged — and helped — many of the rest of us get there as well. It helps to know you'll have a critical eye or two looking things over before you take articles to the "lion's den"!
Superb Lyrebird

Which of these articles are you most proud of being involved with? Overall, what have been some of the project's greatest achievements?

  • Sabine's Sunbird: Without question I think that getting bird to featured status was the best thing we did. It was unbelievably hard work to cover such a massive topic concisely, and took a lot of effort from a lot of people, but it is a vitally important article for the Wiki as a whole and gets 170,000 views a month.
  • Jimfbleak: I didn't do much for this, but it's hard to write at higher taxonomic level than species, and this is as high as you can get in the project
  • JerryFriedman: I think one of our best ("greatest" seems a little strong) achievements is de-stubbing most of the family articles, as Sabine's Sunbird mentioned above. Some people are too modest to mention their very big part in this, but I'm proud of my small part. Other than that, I'm happy about some photos I took; even though they're not very good, they're better than nothing.
  • Innotata: I would say Jimfbleak's featured and good topics and the other ones we have in progress. For most of these one user started the effort to improve a bunch of related articles and writes the articles, but gets tons of help from other editors.
  • Casliber: bird was a real project that those involved should be well proud of. The collaborations provided an early impetus to get things moving for a year or two, but seemed to lose traction as a few of us got up to speed in churning out content really, and the last couple haven't seen much action. The fact there is an article on every species is amazing, and I hope one day to see every bird article with an image - that would be something great to see. And Snowman is doing a great job ferreting out photos (presumably) to that end. I myself found our first collaboration Common Raven very rewarding. I think it really set the ball rolling and the article just came together and really read well. If you get some really good photos and learn stuff along the way, that is a great bonus. Cockatoo was a bit like that too.
  • MeegsC: Personally, I'd have to list the flight feather article. Project-wise, I'd have to concur with the comments about Bird; various editors — particularly Sabine's Sunbird, who's done great work on a number of articles — did a super job here.
Rooster

Many projects are dealing with little activity and initiatives ending unsuccessfully. Has your project experienced these and what lessons have you learned from them?

  • Jimfbleak: We're pretty active, although the monthly collaboration sometimes fizzles out.
  • Sabine's Sunbird: Collaborations sometimes suffer because we pick articles that are important but hard to work on. Passerine is the current pick but hasn't had much happen because it is arguably a harder subject to write about than even bird was. Simpler topics, such as species like the Cattle Egret and Common Raven, have led to successful FACs.

What are the most pressing needs for WikiProject Birds? How can a new contributor help today?

  • Jimfbleak: All the articles exist, so it's mainly a matter of improving them.
  • Innotata: All the articles exist? I think you mean virtually all the taxon articles. We don't have that many decent articles on subjects like bird anatomy and suchlike; look at List of terms used in bird topography. There still are articles to be created, articles to be cleaned up, and most species articles still are short. Every project on Wikipedia has things to be done; here a good place to start is Template:Birds tasks.
  • JerryFriedman: In particular, there are thousands of stubs with just taxonomy and range, which Quadell (who I don't think is a member of the project) very kindly had Polbot make from IUCN data. They can all be de-stubbed. And lots of articles, especially older ones, need sources and copyediting, as well as additional information. In my opinion, the most valuable information is what can't be found easily at other Web sites, but everything helps.
  • Casliber: Jerry sums it up well. A scan of the Good and Featured work also shows some patterns as to what editors are interested in, so certain subjects are overrepresented. It'd be great to get more bird articles from places like Africa, South America and Asia improved as well. Finally, it would be nice to develop some Good or Featured material on aviculture and really core species such as Budgerigar, Cockatiel and Chicken up to speed.
  • MeegsC: And, of course, photos and recordings! Many of the species pages — particularly those from parts of Africa, Asia and South America — have no pictures at all. And sound recordings are lacking for most species.

Anything else to add?

Greater Crested Tern
  • Maias: A personal observation; the topic of birds seems to have a natural and well-defined core, which follows the taxonomic rankings, as well as a large and diverse peripheral area which overlaps with the interests of several other projects or project groups – including biography, books, organisations, countries, protected areas, physiology, diseases etc. The project contains a small group of around half a dozen long-term committed editors who have put in a huge amount of effort, individually and cooperatively, on the core taxon articles, researching, editing and finding illustrations, resulting in already good and steadily improving coverage. I do not count myself as part of this core group as my interests and efforts lie more on the periphery. However, the existence of the central group of editors has, in my opinion, acted to focus and encourage efforts by a much larger group of editors who contribute in various ways throughout the project. How stable this situation is, I do not know; it has served relatively well for the three years or so that I have been involved. Long may it continue to do so.
  • Shyamal: The contents of the Biodiversity Heritage Library and the Internet Archive are of growing importance and Wikipedia articles seem to be playing an important role in the indexing of relevant contents there. The Encyclopedia of Life was born with similar aims but have a sharp delineation - and do not deal with other associated topics such as biographies, geographical information, history and culture and their increasing association with Wikipedia is perhaps predictable.
  • Sabine's Sunbird: Shyamal mentioned that we have benefited from several users who have contributed many images, and I wanted to sing the praises of another group that have massively enriched the Bird WikiProject and therefore the Wiki as a whole, the numerous Flickr contributors who have made their photos available on a licence we can use. Photographers like Kip Lee, harper, Dario Sanches and Michael Woodruff have immeasurably improved our coverage by donating images from hard to reach parts of the world.

Next week, we'll look at a revived project that focuses on the written ideas of Wikipedians like you. Until then, read volumes of our previous work in the WikiProject Report archive.

Reader comments

2010-05-10

Approved this week

Administrators

One editor was granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Blurpeace (nom).

Fifteen articles were promoted to featured status this week: Lemur evolutionary history (nom), Free State of Galveston (nom), Funerary art (nom), Battle of Villers-Bocage (nom), The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (nom), Terry Fox (nom), Keith Miller in the 1946–47 Australian cricket season (nom), Bog turtle (nom), Silky shark (nom), The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman (nom), Gough Whitlam (nom), Wilfred Rhodes (nom), Mycena haematopus (nom), Westcott railway station (nom) and Cottingley Fairies (nom).

Nine lists were promoted to featured status this week: Family Guy (season 5) (nom), List of FC Barcelona seasons (nom), List of National Parks of the United States (nom), List of 1920s jazz standards (nom), List of Olympic medalists in softball (nom), List of Phi Kappa Psi brothers (nom), List of Kansas Jayhawks head football coaches (nom), List of Colorado Buffaloes head football coaches (nom) and List of South Africa women ODI cricketers (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 as Today's featured article this week: Bird, Sex Pistols, George V of the United Kingdom, 1937 Social Credit backbenchers' revolt, 2009 Giro d'Italia, Jason Voorhees and Neville Chamberlain.

Two articles were delisted this week: 35 mm film (nom) and Marshall Plan (nom).

Two lists were delisted this week: List of Formula One fatal accidents (nom) and List of family relations in the NHL (nom).

No topics were delisted this week.

No portals were delisted this week.

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Southern Crowned Pigeon; white nectarine; missing square puzzle; illustration for Act II, Scene 3 of The Winter's Tale; Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin sitting together at the Yalta Conference; Eastern billabong fly and photo of a man scalped as a child.

No featured sounds were promoted this week.

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Four pictures were promoted to featured status this week.



Reader comments

2010-05-10

Arbitration Report

Open cases

Closed cases

Motions

Other

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