Please note that:
The trial of the new pending changes system (see last week's Signpost coverage) will go live at 11pm UTC on June 15 (accompanying notes illustrated); the technical infrastructure was put in place on June 14 and will be switched on to start the trial. Details about the trial are available here.
A new help page, still in the process of being perfected, is here. Some diagrams explaining the terminology are here. Policy related to the new feature is described at Wikipedia:Pending changes.
The announcement on the Foundation's blog tried to dispel possible assumptions that the feature represented a move towards tighter editorial control on Wikipedia, emphasizing its potential to replace existing page protection instead:
See also the Signpost's backgrounder on the history of the extension (An extended look at how we got to flagged protection and patrolled revisions, August 2009) and other Signpost coverage dating back to 2006. This week's In the news notes some early media coverage published hours before the projected start of the trial. For a technical perspective on the upgrades, see this week's technology report.
Wikimedia Foundation endorses open-access petition to the White House; pending changes RfC ends
28 May 2012
The future of pending changes
16 April 2012
The pending changes fiasco: how an attempt to answer one question turned into a quagmire
29 August 2011
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
11 October 2010
French million, controversial content, Citizendium charter, Pending changes, and more
27 September 2010
Page-edit stats, French National Library partnership, Mass page blanking, Jimbo on Pending changes
13 September 2010
Pending changes analyzed, Foundation report, Main page bias, brief news
6 September 2010
Pending changes poll, Public policy classes, Payment schemes debate, and more
23 August 2010
Collaboration with the British Museum and in Serbia, Interaction with researchers, and more
21 June 2010
Wikipedia better than Britannica, Pending changes as a victory of tradition, and more
21 June 2010
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
14 June 2010
Pending changes goes live, first state-funded Wikipedia project concludes, brief news
14 June 2010
Hoaxes in France and at university, Wikipedia used in Indian court, Is Wikipedia a cult?, and more
14 June 2010
"Pending changes" trial, Chief hires, British Museum prizes, Interwiki debate, and more
7 June 2010
The very first publicly funded project to improve Wikipedia articles concluded recently on the German Wikipedia. It had been started three years ago with the goals of improving coverage of renewable resources (in German: "nachwachsende Rohstoffe", abbreviated "Nawaro") and recruiting external experts to contribute to Wikipedia. Due to its pioneering character, it received a fair amount of attention by international media at the time (see also 2007 Signpost coverage).
The project was funded by the Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e.V. (FNR), a government agency concerned with renewable resources, with means from the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV). It was directed by the private-sector Nova-Institut. The German Wikimedia Chapter was a partner in the project.
Two longtime Wikipedians who had been employed in connection with the project, Achim Raschka and Denis Barthel, recently published a wrap-up in the Kurier (the Signpost's sister publication in the German Wikipedia). They concluded that the goal to improve content had been fully met – all in all, 557 articles were edited over the course of the project, 434 of which were started or substantially expanded by it. They expressed some disappointment regarding the goal of recruiting external experts as Wikipedia contributors: Although there had been considerable interest and much effort had been made to support such experts, few sustained contributions resulted. (To compensate, in 2009 members of Nova-Institut's own team became involved more directly in editing.) On the other hand, the project was very successful in motivating the German Wikipedia community: Two "Nawaro-Marathon" article drives were well attended, and the "WikiProjekt" founded at the start of the initiative is expected to remain active.
The FNR's total budget for the project seems not to have been published, but Wikimedia Deutschland, which employed a Wikipedian (Barthel) during the time – tasked with interfacing between the experts and the community and with assisting new authors – recorded 35,248.80 Euro in expenditure with respect to Nawaro in its 2007–2009 annual reports, in essence covered by project funds[1]. At Nova-Institut, several employees were involved in the project, including Raschka.
A hoax article on the French Wikipedia made it into international news last week. According to a report in The Times, the article about "Léon-Robert de L'Astran", supposedly a traveller, scholar and shipowner born in 1767 in La Rochelle, stayed on the French Wikipedia for three years and duped many. The most notable victim was Ségolène Royal (the 2007 French presidential candidate for the Socialist Party), who on May 10, the national anti-slavery day, extolled de L'Astran's opposition against slavery in a comment on Facebook (which she removed after realising the hoax). As of June 14, tourists in La Rochelle were still offered to take La Route de L'Astran named after the nonexistent local hero.
The article (which did not cite any sources in the May 9 version that is still available from Google's cache) was based on an invention by a member of the Rotary Club of La Rochelle, according to Sud-Ouest [3]. Outside France, the case was also covered by major newspapers in Austria and Italy.
Jimmy Wales was interviewed on the June 9 episode of The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Tech Therapy" podcast, discussing among other things the use of Wikipedia in education and the importance to teach media competence. Wales described various successful and unsuccessful examples of Wikipedia assignments. At one point (starting around 4:20) he was asked about the Edward Owens hoax, an article that had been written in 2008 by a class at George Mason University at the instruction of history professor T. Mills Kelly, and was picked up by a USA Today blog and other media. (In the headline of an earlier article about the case, the Chronicle had summarized the professor's approach as "Teaching by Lying".) Wales said he had not been aware of the case, and that it was "disappointing [to] hear that it comes from a professor", questioning the ethics of Kelly's teaching method: "To ask students to deliberately hoax Wkipedia is a very bad thing ... If you are in a class to train security guards for banks, you don't send the class out to rob a bank. It could be a learning experience, yes, but it's probably better to say, here's a list of 50 cases of bank robberies that went wrong, let's go through each one ...". In a blog post titled Really? Really, Really?, T. Mills Kelly hit back at "Jimmy", advising him to read the earlier debates about the case (both on his blog and in the deletion discussion), arguing that they "quickly move away from the vandalism-is-annoying oversimplification".
Last week, false rumors about Russell Crowe's death spread on the Internet and briefly made their way into the Wikipedia article about the actor, too. This led RadarOnline [4], the Los Angeles Times [5], Austrian newspaper Der Standard [6] and several user-generated news sites to imply that the hoax had originated on Wikipedia. But according to other sources it had spread on Twitter and elsewhere long before the first such edit that is visible in the article's version history. According to one source, the "Celebrity Fake News Generator" at FakeAWish.com had been used to start the rumor.
According to a report in the Indian newspaper DNA, Wikipedia was recently quoted by a government lawyer before the Bombay High Court, adding to the long list of such usages internationally (see "Wikipedia as a court source").
Tarun Tahiliani is an acclaimed fashion designer in India. Earlier this year, he had claimed an exemption as an artist on his income tax for his design work under section 80 RR of the Indian Income Tax Act. "Artist" is not defined under the Income Tax Act. The income tax department rejected this on the grounds that it does not consider fashion design as a part of the fine arts; its lawyer submitted definitions of the terms "design", "art" and "artist" from Wikipedia to argue that it should instead be regarded as an applied art.
The matter finally went to the Bombay High Court, where judge DY Chandrachud asked, "How reliable is Wikipedia? Isn't it subject to user modification?" The opposing party cited definitions from Webster's dictionary and a Sanskrit text.
Interestingly, Wikipedia's article on fashion design currently defines it as "the art concerned with the application of design and aesthetics to clothing and accessories."
As reported by the Straits Times [7], the Hindustan Times [8] and AsiaOne [9], a Singaporean student of Indian origin has filed a complaint with the police after insulting remarks about himself and a fellow South Korean student were inserted into the Wikipedia article about his school, the Tampines Junior College, on June 11. The school's staff removed them from the article, which is presently semi-protected. The version history of the article lists several deleted revisions added between May 30 and June 11.
In a June 7 InfoWorld article named The High Priests of Wikipedia, Wikipedia was described as one of "Six more tech cults" (the other five being the Slashdot, Singularitarianism, Drupal, OS/2 and open source communities). The article identified the page Wikipedia:FAQ as the cult's "[h]oly scriptures" and Jimmy Wales as its "[p]atron saint". The author Dan Tynan wrote that "[f]or internecine intrigue and power struggles, the Wikipedia makes the Vatican look like a coffee clatch", with administrators as "the Wikipedian equivalent of the College of Cardinals". Tynan cited from an interview he had conducted with writer Sam Vaknin, published recently in Global Politician under the title The Wikipedia Cult (which was also recommended by Larry Sanger, whom Vaknin refers to as "the Wikipedia's real visionary"):
Tynan introduced Vaknin as "author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited and other books about personality disorders." Snopes has noted that "Dr. Vaknin is careful to include a disclaimer on his web site stating that he is 'NOT a mental health professional' (his CV lists a doctorate in philosophy from the unaccredited Pacific Western University)".
In 2006, after an article about Vaknin had been deleted and User:Samvak had been blocked (for sockpuppet activities involving the article Narcissistic personality disorder and other topics related to Vaknin's work), Global Politician had published an earlier article by Vaknin that was critical of Wikipedia: The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (see also a rebuttal by Ta bu shi da yu). In 2007, Global Politician published Vaknin's article Wikipedia - Can Teenagers Write An Encyclopedia?. In a January 2010 article on the same website, titled Positioning the Encyclopedia Britannica (see Signpost coverage), Vaknin granted that although "the data are riddled with errors and do not amount to structured knowledge ... Wikipedia-like online efforts are more than adequate for the needs of the vast majority of users", advising Britannica to cooperate with Wikipedia and "to study and emulate" the model of Citizendium.
Tynan's recent article and interview quoted Vaknin as saying:
Wikipedia researcher Joseph Reagle called the criticism of Wikipedia as a cult "hyperbolic", pointing out that the project did not meet several criteria from cult checklists. He classified Vaknin's criticism as
In his 2008 NYU dissertation about Wikipedia,—to appear in book form later this year—Reagle had examined various kinds of Wikipedia criticism and placed them into a centuries old context of encyclopedia criticism, in a chapter called "encyclopedic anxiety"—also the title of a recent conference talk of his (Summary, slides, video; see also Signpost coverage).
Hours before the trial of the "Pending Changes" feature was to start at 11pm UTC Tuesday (see this week's News and notes), media coverage began with articles by the BBC (Wikipedia unlocks divisive pages for editing), the Daily Telegraph (Wikipedia rolls out 'pending changes'), V3.co.uk (Wikipedia modifies editing system for controversial pages) and Network World (Wikipedia to unlock frequently vandalized pages). At that time, it appeared that the Foundation had been relatively successful in its efforts to emphasize the feature's potential for easing existing page protection and to dispel assumptions that it represents a move towards tighter editorial control on Wikipedia (which had dominated media coverage of the proposed trial last August, see Signpost coverage: Misleading media storm over flagged revisions).
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This week, we revisited the folks at WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors (GOCE) to check out their successful May Backlog Elimination Drive. The last time the Report featured the Copy Editors was in October 2007 when the "Guild" was still called a "League" (check out the old article for a brief introduction to the project). The project has recently completed an ambitious month-long backlog elimination drive involving over 8,000 articles tagged with the {{copyedit}} tag or specifically denoted on the project's request page. The May Copyediting Backlog Elimination Drive's 33 active participants hacked away at 1,175 articles, resulting in a net improvement of 760 articles after that month's newly added tags are taken into account. Participants received barnstars based upon the total word count of the articles the participant copyedited. Special awards were given to the participants who copyedited the most articles, had the highest total word count, and fulfilled the largest number of special requests. After seeing such a strong reaction from the Wikipedia community, the project has decided to hold a second drive in July. We interviewed the drive's coordinators noraft, S Masters, and Diannaa. Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales also dropped by to say a few words.
Are you pleased with the results of the Backlog Elimination Drive?
Walk us through some of the planning for the Backlog Elimination Drive. What preparation took place before the drive began and how much work was left after the drive ended?
Did you encounter any unexpected problems during the drive and if so, how did you solve them?
When attracting editors for the Backlog Elimination Drive, how important were the drive's awards? Would you recommend other projects create similar incentives to increase participation? What other methods did you use to advertise the initiative?
Now that the Backlog Elimination Drive is over, what projects will the Guild of Copy Editors focus on next? How can a new member contribute to the Guild's goals?
Following the success of the May Backlog Drive, WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors will be hosting another backlog elimination drive in July. As of 20:00 UTC on May 13, a total of 50 editors have already signed up for the July Backlog Drive. Among those editors is Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Jimbo dropped by to share his thoughts with us.
Why did you decide to participate in the July Backlog Elimination Drive? What role do the drives and collaborations sponsored by WikiProjects (competitive or otherwise) play in improving Wikipedia as a whole?
Next week, the entire world will be saved by Bono. Until then, do your part by rocking the archive.
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TFOWR (nom) was promoted to administrator.
The following seven featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article:
Eight articles were promoted to featured status: Madonna (entertainer) (nom), Transandinomys talamancae (nom), Indiana class battleship (nom), River Parrett (nom), Harris Theater (Chicago, Illinois) (nom), Rock Martin (nom), William Ellis Newton (nom) and Ninja Gaiden (Nintendo Entertainment System) (nom).
Eight lists were promoted to featured status: List of Lincoln City F.C. seasons (nom), List of National Treasures of Japan (archaeological materials) (nom), List of international cricket centuries at the Kensington Oval (nom), List of Major League Baseball batting champions (nom), List of Washington & Jefferson College buildings (nom), List of Record Mirror number-one singles (nom), List of accolades received by The Hurt Locker (nom) and List of Plymouth Argyle F.C. seasons (nom).
One portal was delisted this week: Portal:Mars (nom).
Eight pictures were promoted to featured status:
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| Ernest Hemingway | Fresco in the Saint Paulin Church | Heath fritillary | ||||
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| Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image of cloud cover on Earth | Military recruitment poster for the United States Navy | Würzburg Residence | ||||
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| Alpine Fault | Highway 401, the busiest highway in North America, was closed during the 2008 Toronto Propane Explosion |
The Arbitration Committee opened one case and closed none this week, leaving two open.
The technical basis for the pending changes trial went live in parts throughout June 14. Developer William Pietri described how the changeover would take place in a Wikimedia techblog post:
| “ | This new configuration requires new features, which in turn required substantial code changes to Flagged Revisions. For technical reasons, we can’t release that code just to the English Wikipedia, so we will upgrade all copies of Flagged Revisions in use on Wikimedia Foundation projects. Happily, that will result in a number of minor improvements for all Flagged Revisions users. We believe this won’t cause any trouble, but if bugs do crop up, we’d like to hear about them. Our team will be standing by, prepared to fix any small issues immediately, or roll back if there are any big problems. |
” |
In the event, there were no catastrophic errors, though a number of significant bugs - some related to the English Wikipedia's chosen setup, others not so much - needed to be ironed out before usage of the system on the English Wikipedia could begin.
For a non-technical perspective on the developments, see this week's news and notes. Bot operators may also like to take a look at some ideas for new pending changes-related bots here.
For a while this week page view statistics (collected officially but most commonly viewed on external tools like http://stats.grok.se ) were much lower than expected (up to 80 or more percent so). A number of possibilities were suggested for why this might be, but ultimately the answer lay in the amount of filespace available to the recording software. User:Midom has now reported the problem fixed. It is unlikely that any fix would apply retrospectively, but new dates will be recorded correctly.
Note: not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at time of writing, or may not in fact be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
