Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/In the media
Foundation developer Rob Lanphier gave an update this week on the next milestone release of the MediaWiki software, version 1.17 (wikitech-l mailing list):
| “ | The code review group continues to make headway on the backlog of outstanding checkins in "new" status. We peaked at 1400 unreviewed check-ins [updates to the software] back in September, last month we were at 800, and now we're now under 300.
We *hope* this means we can push a 1.17 version of MediaWiki to production sometime this month, with a tarball [i.e. a release to non-WMF sites] available some time after that. That still looks like a bit of a stretch goal, but more plausible now than the last time this came up. |
” |
Due to the way Wikimedia wikis are run, they already benefit from some, but not all, of the updates present in 1.17. Most external sites have not yet been able to take advantage of these changes.
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/2011-01-10/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/Opinion
The annual celebrations of Wikipedia Day on January 15 will be of unprecedented dimensions this year, as Wikipedia completes its first full decade. As reported earlier ("Preparations for Wikipedia's tenth anniversary gearing up"), the Wikimedia Foundation has set up a separate wiki to coordinate events – at the time of writing, it listed over 300 events in over 100 countries – and has been supporting these by offering anniversary-themed merchandise, such as buttons and T-shirts. The wiki is currently being advertised via banners on the English Wikipedia.
Considerable worldwide media coverage of the anniversary has already begun, see this week's "In the news".
The WMF's Chief Community Officer Zack Exley has announced that Swedish Wikipedian Lennart Guldbrandsson (User:SvHannibal) has become the fourth recipient of a Community fellowship. He has joined the Outreach team and during his fellowship will work on two of its projects: the Bookshelf Project (focusing on translation and dissemination of the project's instructional material about Wikipedia) and the Account Creation Improvement Project. Guldbrandsson/Hannibal is a longtime Wikipedian, founder and first chair of the Swedish Wikimedia chapter, and author of a book about Wikipedia.
In the community fellowship program, started in September, community members are employed full-time for a limited amount of time by the Foundation's Community Department to work on specific problems (Signpost coverage). The first fellow, Steven Walling (User:Steven (WMF)), is currently coordinating celebrations of Wikipedia's upcoming tenth anniversary (see above) and is also working on the Contribution Taxonomy research project (Signpost coverage). He was followed by Victoria Doronina (User:Mstislavl) and Maryana Pinchuk, who around the end of September started an eight-week research project to develop methods for writing histories of Wikimedia projects (Signpost coverage).
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/In focus
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, but closed one today, leaving one case open.
The deadline which has been set for evidence submissions in this case is 15 January 2011. The original deadline, 3 December 2010, was extended after parties made requests to have more time to present their evidence. At the time of writing, except for this, no further evidence or workshop proposals have been submitted on-wiki during the week.
This case concerns allegations about misrepresentation of sources, disruptive editing, and WikiProject Military history (the Mil-Hist WikiProject). The filer and main party of the case, Communicat (talk · contribs), made a series of accusations about the behavior of editors of the Mil-hist WikiProject. He also alleged that World War II articles rely on orthodox Western sources to the exclusion of non-Western or significant-minority Western positions. Other editors, including editors from the WikiProject, made accusations about Communicat's editing and behavior. Evidence and workshop proposals were submitted (see earlier Signpost coverage), and the drafter of the case, arbitrator Newyorkbrad, posted a proposed decision for voting on 6 January 2011 which attracted votes from 13 arbitrators. The case came to a close today.
On 5 January 2011, Piotrus (talk · contribs) requested the Committee to lift his modified topic ban which bans him from "articles about national, cultural, or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about these topics". The ban is set to expire on 2 March 2011. On 6 January 2011, Newyorkbrad indicated that arbitrators are waiting for others to comment, including on whether the topic-ban should be lifted altogether or whether the wording of the topic ban should be clarified. The question about the wording being clarified arose after this arbitration enforcement appeal. Although an editor has supported Piotrus' request, two administrators have repeated their requests for the restriction to be amended - to better-communicate ArbCom's intent in a clearly worded editing restriction.
On 14 December 2010, Jayjg (talk · contribs) requested the Committee to lift the topic ban that was imposed on him at the conclusion of the case. The Committee accepted his request and a motion was passed; Jayjg is no longer banned from Arab-Israeli conflict-related articles.
On 30 November 2010, Koavf (talk · contribs) requested for his Community sanctions to be lifted. Arbitrator Newyorkbrad formally proposed a motion on 3 January 2011 to terminate the restrictions that were placed upon Koavf in the Koavf arbitration. 12 arbitrators supported the motion and it was adopted on 6 January 2011. On 9 January 2011, clerk NuclearWarfare pointed out that the motion does not address the community sanctions. Newyorkbrad apologized for the delay and proposed to copyedit the motion. He said that unless an arbitrator objects to the change he made to the motion ([1]), it will be considered adopted as if the Community sanctions have also been removed. As no objections were made, the motion was passed today.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-10/Humour
