Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/In the media
About a week ago, significantly inflated pageview counts began to be noticed in Wikimedia's official statistics (for example, see Gerard Meijssen's blog post). Was it the result of some new technology directing users to WMF sites? Or just a technical glitch? Upon further investigation it (unfortunately) proved to be the latter, the result of requests to the new "Extension:CentralNotice" fundraising banner campaign. The statistics software was logging requests to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BannerController as it would log requests to a "useful" page that should be logged, such as articles and some special pages. The current convention, it was discovered (since, as Rob Lanphier noted, it had not been documented anywhere) was that requests of the "pretty" format /wiki/ would be counted, and that requests that ought not to be logged should use the alternative format /w/index.php?title=. Discussion then centred on whether this was a sustainable format or not, with a number of alternatives proposed, but no agreement was reached on the wikitech-l mailing list.
As reported last week, there has been a lot of discussion about getting the MediaWiki software onto a more useful development cycle, both for WMF purposes (potentially very regular updates, but of potentially imperfect software) and for that of third parties (releases months apart but thoroughly checked for bugs). Staff developer Roan Kattouw outlined his plan for getting the development cycle back on track (wikitech-l mailing list):
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This week, Rob Lanphier opened a discussion on the topic in response to "a number of calls to make the release process more predictable (or maybe just faster)". In understanding how best that could, and whether it should, be implemented, he asked first whether contributors felt "release cadence" (shipping to a specified deadline, regardless of how many features actually got released) or a feature-dominated release (shipping X, Y and Z features however long it took to develop them) was preferable. For the former, should writers of features not ready at a given date be prepared to see them cut? For the latter, how far in advanced could the list of features be reliably drawn up? And how deep is the belief that deployment to WMF sites must precede a release to third parties?
The resulting discussion was wide-ranging. Why shouldn't a new version just be released when it would be useful to release one, rather than at a specific point, some asked. Ultimately, the sentiment that garnered most support was a strong "yes" to the last question, and that the best way to implement this would be to get back to having a very fast turnaround on deploying to WMF sites (the "weekly deployments" of Roan's post, if not faster; Flickr, as Neil Kandalgaonkar pointed out, often deploys multiple times a day). "Wikipedia", wrote volunteer Aryeh Gregor, "is a great place to test new features, and we're in a uniquely good position to do so, since we wrote the code and can very quickly fix any reported bugs."
Wikimedia tech staff, contractor developers, and volunteers gathered this past weekend in Tysons Corner, Virginia (in the Washington, D.C. area) for Hack-A-Ton DC. (TechBlog post) The focus was on fixing bugs and reducing the backlog of fixmes in code review, but there also was discussion of operations issues, and on moving forward in implementing some maps features. Naren Datha of Microsoft gave a demo of the WikiBhasha translation tool, and Jan Paul Posma demoed his student project, Sentence Level Editing. On Saturday evening, hackers joined DC-area Wikipedians for DC Meetup #12.
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/Opinion
On October 19, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner announced that Mike Godwin, long standing general counsel to Wikimedia, would be leaving the Foundation on October 22. Gardner described Godwin's departure as a "confidential personnel issue" and said that "we want to handle this kind of thing with respect for people’s privacy and dignity, and we are hopeful we can do that in this instance," stressing that his departure is neither "because of a change in direction or policy, related to our legal context" nor "over a point of principle" nor "because he did something egregious" ("The Wikimedia Foundation believes Mike has always acted in what he believes to be the Wikimedia Foundation's best interests").
Mike Godwin was hired on July 3, 2007, less than a week after Sue Gardner (see Signpost coverage). Before working for the Foundation, he had 17 years of experience as a technology and free speech lawyer, some of which resulted in his 1998 book Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age. He is also credited with the invention of "Godwin's law," a whimsical adage on Internet discourse, which states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." He has edited Wikipedia as User:MGodwin.
The General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation is in charge of the day-to-day legal issues within Wikipedia. During his time on the Foundation staff, Mike Godwin had been involved in several important legal issues, including the introduction of employee background checks after the case of former COO Carolyn Doran, the 2008 privacy and data retention policy updates, the 2008/2009 license migration and the August 2010 FBI seal issues. While the Foundation has chosen not to reveal the details of his severance package, Sue Gardner did say that he will remain available to Wikimedia for several months longer. The Foundation is currently seeking for a replacement for Godwin through its employment agency m|Oppenheim, and is expecting to fill the position by January. Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed by senior WMF staff. In the interim, an outside counselor will fulfill the Foundation's day-to-day needs. In the announcement's Q&A (described as "cryptic" by law blogger Rober Ambrogi), Sue Gardner said about Godwin's future prospects that
| “ | we wish him all the best, and we hope that he will continue to do the same kind of work he’s always done -- helping to advance people’s online freedoms. We think he’s really good at that work, and we hope it’s what he continues to do. | ” |
Among the Wikimedians commenting on Godwin's departure was Board member Kat Walsh (User:Mindspillage), who thanked him for his work noting that
| “ | Since the nature of the job means sometimes you can't talk about everything you're doing [...], he may not have gotten all the public appreciation he deserves for his work, but he has really been a great champion of the foundation and the movement, and guided WMF through a major expansion and some truly crazy situations. | ” |
Until the call for nominations starts on 14 November, the parameters of the election are open to community feedback. There is a draft set of nine questions for all candidates (discussion here); voters will also be able to ask a unique question of each individual candidate on the public pages, and any number of questions on candidates' user talk pages. Editors interested in helping to organise the elections are encouraged to sign up as volunteer coordinators.
The Arbitration Committee is a critical part of the English Wikipedia; experienced and committed editors are urged to seriously consider standing for election.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/In focus
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, but closed one, leaving none open.
This case concerns accusations of wiki-hounding and disruptive editing, and was filed by Stevertigo, a Wikipedia editor since 2002. He alleged that several editors deem his editing to be "disruptive" or "in need of banning" because they "still hold the grudge that previous cases did not find in their favor regarding [Stevertigo]". He also alleged that he "largely won" an argument against two editors in relation to the Time article, and that those two editors began editing the Punishment article due to an undue interest in Stevertigo's editing rather than due to an interest in the article. The case moved to the proposed decision phase during the week, and within 48 hours, 11 out of 12 active arbitrators finished voting on the decision. The case was closed shortly thereafter.
Earlier in the week, the Committee made an announcement that sparked a brief controversy. The Committee confirmed that Polargeo was the subject of several investigations, and that he requested for his tools to be removed earlier this month. It also stated that "Polargeo has created and/or used at least ten alternate accounts in a manner neither consistent with Wikipedia's policies nor meeting the minimum standards expected of administrators." The Committee's decision was that Polargeo will need to make a successful request for adminship if he wishes to regain his administrator tools. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-10-25/Humour
