Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-03/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-03/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-03/In the media
One of MediaWiki's (and by implication Wikimedia's) longest standing issues - how wikitext can be made more friendly to new and inexperienced users, resurfaced this week. A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) solution would allow for editors to use a word processor-like interface to view articles during editing as they would appear after saving, before converting them into the relevant wikitext (see previous Signpost coverage from last August). David Gerard, writing on both the Foundation-l and Wikitech-l mailing lists, suggests that this could raise participation by a significant amount, but the problems were vast:
| “ | Starting from a clear field makes it ridiculously easy... Wikia wrote a good WYSIWYG [editor] that works really nicely on new wikis...[but] we can't start from a clear field - we have an existing body of wikitext. So, specification of the problem:
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” |
Responses to David Gerard's post raised even more possible issues, among them the lack of a defined syntax for wikitext and Wikimedians' reliance on (often idiosyncratic) templates. George William Herbert added "'We can't do away with wikitext' [has] always been the intermediate conclusion (in between 'My god, we need to do something about this problem' and 'This is hopeless, we give up again')".
In celebrating the new year, Magnus Manske - one of the original MediaWiki developers - also demonstrated his first attempt at an in-browser solution of the issues, entitled "WYSIWTF" (wikitech-l mailing list).
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/2011-01-03/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-03/Opinion
On January 1st, the Wikimedia Foundation announced in a press release and a blog posting that the annual fundraiser had exceeded its goal of $16 million - contributed by more than half a million donors, an average donation of $22, during 50 days, making it both the shortest and the most successful fundraiser to date. (As the Foundation's Moka Pantages explained to ReadWriteWeb, a discrepancy to the real-time donation statistics - which shows a cumulative total of $13,457,989.11 at the end of day 50 - is caused by the fact that the latter only count online donations, excluding donations made by checks and to individual chapters.) According to earlier announcements, the fundraiser was set to run about two months until around Wikipedia's tenth anniversary on January 15th, but some banners displayed in the last days of the year proclaimed $16 million as "our 2010 goal", according to a TechCrunch article titled "Wikipedia Still $1M Short Of Fundraising Goal For 2010 (And Why I Donated)".
While the now familiar banners showing Jimmy Wales' appeal for donations were still displayed in parts of the world on January 3 (chapters, rather than the Foundation itself, choose the banners in some areas, per geotargeting), Philippe Beaudette, the head of the WMF's fundraising team, announced in the blog posting that
| “ | we are transitioning into the contribution phase of the campaign. We will be running banners for the next few days to thank everyone who came together in the spirit of creating and 'effectively disseminating the sum of human knowledge available for all.' We will also begin to celebrate Wikipedia’s tenth birthday, with banner ads encouraging readers to join us in a local celebration.
We want to invite every one of the readers of Wikipedia and its sister sites to make their first edit, or upload their first photograph, and join our community of volunteer contributors ... |
” |
According to Beaudette's November 4 announcement, these invitations to edit will also be featured on some of the remaining banner ads, reflecting the integrated view of donors, readers, and Wikipedians as part of the same community that is embraced by the Foundation's Community department.
On the Foundation-l mailing list, Wikimedia's Deputy Director Erik Möller addressed some criticism about the intrusiveness of the fundraising messages (such as the use of animated banners during the last days):
| “ | ... the size and graphical visibility of the banners this year have certainly pushed my own pain points as to what I consider an acceptable balance. At the same time, I've had countless conversations in past years with people who didn't even notice that we were fundraising.
Prior to this year, we didn't really have a good sense exactly what the ceiling of the fundraiser would be, because we'd never pushed it as hard [as] we could before we reached our goal. |
” |
Möller defended the fundraising team's judgment in keeping the balance between achieving effectiveness and avoiding intrusiveness, citing its decision to disable the banners completely for registered users at some point of the campaign, and the fact that "in spite of the proven effectiveness of the Jimmy appeal, the team switched away from it for extended periods of time". One of the alternative banners had generated controversy last month for describing Sue Gardner as "Wikipedia Executive Director". Chief Community Officer Zack Exley first defended the inaccurate job title by the "need to connect with millions and millions of readers", most of whom have never heard about Wikimedia, but later accepted the criticism ("I learned my lesson! Thanks for teaching it"); the banner was changed.
See also this week's "In the news" for further media coverage of the fundraiser's closure.
In a resolution last month, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees amended its bylaws to extend the terms of Board-appointed Trustees - board members that are chosen by the board itself, currently four of the ten Trustees - from one to two years. This had been part of the recommendations of the Board's "Governance Committee" (aided by the philantropy firm Omidyar Network) that were already accepted in principle at the Board's October meeting (Signpost coverage). In a subsequent vote, the Board reappointed Stu West and Jan-Bart de Vreede until December 31, 2011, and Bishakha Datta and Matt Halprin until December 31, 2012. Halprin had joined the Board in 2009 while being a partner at Omidyar (see Signpost coverage: "Omidyar Network gives $2M grant, new board member to the Wikimedia Foundation"), but is no longer involved with the firm according to his LinkedIn profile. The Board also reappointed Jimmy Wales to his position as "Community Founder Trustee" until December 31, 2011.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-03/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-03/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-03/In focus
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases this week, leaving two cases open.
Ten editors have so far submitted evidence since the case was opened on 22 November. On 27 December, Ryoung122 (talk · contribs) started to submit a holding statement with preliminary evidence.
Following the request on 14 December 2010 by Jayjg (talk · contribs) to have his editing restrictions from this case lifted, Arbitrator Risker formally proposed a motion to terminate the topic ban. As of publication, the motion has already received the required number of supports from arbitrators, but has not yet been closed. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-03/Humour
