The anniversary was celebrated in birthday parties worldwide, coordinated at the Wikimedia Foundation's anniversary wiki, which lists 291 events for January 15 alone (and some that are still to come), and was announced to Wikipedia readers by banners following those of the recently completed fundraiser. Preparations for the anniversary had started around April 2010, when the WikiX-l mailing list was set up, and intensified around November (see Signpost coverage: "Preparations for Wikipedia's tenth anniversary gearing up").
In several places, small conferences with Wikipedia-related presentations were organized on the occasion. The Birthday Bash miniconference in New York City was covered on the Huffington Post. In San Francisco, the West Coast WikiConference 2011 featured keynotes by Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki, and Kevin Kelly. Ziko reports that in Amsterdam, several events joined Wikimedians and GLAM representatives for presentations and discussions, where the Amsterdam Museum "surprised the crowd with a special birthday present: a usb stick with the entire pictorial collection of the museum, meaning 50,000 new files for Wikimedia Commons", and a Hack-a-ton brought developers together (see this week's Technology report). In the UK, two "key events" featured Jimmy Wales, who gave presentations in Bristol on January 13 (see also this week's "In the news"; the 650 free tickets for the event were gone by November), and at a birthday party in London not listed on the anniversary wiki but featured in a Reuters news video, attended by writer Cory Doctorow and musician Peter Gabriel who both expressed their support for Wikipedia to Reuters.
The anniversary wiki contains a photo gallery of Wikipedia birthday cakes. As reported by Sj, one of the puzzles of the annual MIT Mystery Hunt, released on January 15, was based on Wikipedia, as were some MIT hacks adorning the institution's buildings at the same time, such as a 3D version of the Wikipedia globe hung from the ceiling of the largest lobby on campus.
On the Wikimedia Foundation's blog, Jimmy Wales wrote about "A decade of thanks!", accompanied by a video message (that had been published on Vimeo last month and was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons last week, where users provided subtitles in many languages using the new Universal Subtitles function.)
On her personal blog, the Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner said that on the anniversary "we celebrate all the people who built this extraordinary thing. The engineers who made the code. The people who write the articles, fix the typos, smooth the text, localize the software, answer readers’ mail, and fight off vandals and POV-pushers. The donors, who pay the bills."
Both in Wales' video message and in Gardner's blog posting, as well as in the Foundation's press release on January 12, it was said that the first edit to Wikipedia had been made by Wales, typing in "Hello World!". However, according to the recently discovered archive of Wikipedia's early revision history (Signpost coverage), the first edit read "This is the new WikiPedia!" (starting the page HomePage), as pointed out by Wikipedia researcher Joseph Reagle [1] and developer Tim Starling [2]. Starling said that Wales might have been recalling the first edit to an earlier test wiki that was set up on the nupedia.com domain on January 10, 2001 and was later deleted.
In Nairobi, the anniversary coincided with the launch of a project to provide offline access to Wikipedia via CDs and USB sticks in Kenya's schools. The launch event took place at Strathmore University and was attended by more than 100 people, as reported by Wikimedian Jon Harald Søby. Ting Chen, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, gave a speech (draft, repeated at another Kenyan university) on the occasion, telling his African audience that "we are still far far away from our goal. And we are so far far away, among others, because we need you to help us. Without your help we will never fulfill our mission".
Wikipedia researcher Felipe Ortega (User:GlimmerPhoenix) called Wikipedia "a new digital incarnation of the commendable spirit" of the Three Musketeers, citing their motto: "One for all, and all for one". Having been interviewed on national radio show La Ventana together with admin Raystorm of the Spanish Wikipedia, Ortega recounted two stories from callers on how Wikipedia had changed their life.
WiseWoman from the German Wikipedia (an American expat who is a professor at Berlin's HTW) recalled various personal anecdotes about the history of the project, such as how she attended the founding meeting of Wikimedia Germany in 2004, first as an anonymous observer, but then signing up as a founding member after her former student Erik Möller recognized and welcomed her, and that her attempts to get Jimmy Wales invited as a guest professor at her school failed because "German Rules got in the way, there was no way we could get it sorted out."
The Wikimedia Foundation published three of its monthly reports last week, for October, November and December 2010, clearing out a recent backlog (the May and June reports are still to come). Apart from many items previously covered in the Signpost, they also contain new information.
In October, the operating revenue amounted to $3.2M, vastly exceeding the planned amount of $750K, due largely to an "anonymous $2M gift and several hundred thousand dollars of revenue related to community gifts as a result of pre-fundraiser testing." The October report offers some additional information about the most recent physical meeting of the Board of Trustees (whose minutes have not been published yet). In addition to the resolutions and votes recorded on the Foundation wiki, it mentions a vote to approve the final version of the 2010–15 strategic plan in advance. In December, the plan was "going through final copy and fact checking before publication".
At the October meeting, the board held a discussion about "community health", including developing "a policy prohibiting both on- and off-wiki harassment of Wikimedia project participants, and responding to it it with global locking-out from the projects". A draft for such policy, to be "available for the board to review in early November", was to be developed by Board member Phoebe Ayers and Steven Walling from the Foundation's Community Department, whose work on a project "supporting the Board in thinking about harassment policies" had already been mentioned in the September report.
Following Mike Godwin's sudden departure as General Counsel, the October report notes the temporary hiring of Alisa Key as interim General Counsel, working with Michelle Paulson ("Michelle is running our daily triage and more tactical engagements, and Alisa is overseeing Michelle and determining our interim strategy, as well as taking care of any legal challenges during this interim timeframe"), and the start of the search for a successor, which included a reworking of the job description.
The report for November records that a representative of the Stanton Foundation was "very happy" with the then state of the Public Policy Initiative (which it is funding with $1.2 million): "This is exactly what we expected from the initiative. This is what we wanted. Keep going." Also noted are the development of an offline strategy ("to approach those without Internet access primarily through offline computer-based programs via education channels", see draft analysis of the "target market" and a historical overview of offline Wikimedia projects), the first interim report on the Brazil Catalyst Project (which "aims to develop open and collaborative approaches by which the Wikimedia Foundation can support the Wikimedia community in Brazil") and beginning efforts to formulate an "online webstore strategy" for the WMF.
The December report includes details about the "India technology fact-finding trip" undertaken by CTO Danese Cooper, Alolita Sharma and Deputy Director Erik Möller, who met with the Ministry of Communications and IT and many other organizations, IT companies and community members. A lease with a co-location facility for hosting the new Virginia Data Center was signed, and work was ongoing to restart the failed data dumps, an issue which also affected "our ability to generate various statistics, such as editing activity."
Also in December, finalist candidates for the position of National Program Director for India, who will head the new Wikimedia office in the country, were interviewed. The report noted upcoming keynotes by CTO Danese Cooper "at a regional FBI conference in Oakland, and at a conference for the State Department in Washington, DC." On the social side, the Foundation's "first white elephant/baby/puppy party" was recorded. Finally, the report mentions that "Sue Gardner took a three-week vacation, her first extended vacation since her hiring as Executive Director [in 2007]."
Achal Prabhala (User:Aprabhala) has been announced as the newest "Wikimedia Foundation fellow" by the Foundation's Community department. Prabhala, a Bangalore based writer and researcher, has been a member of the WMF advisory board since its inception in 2007. Chief Community Officer Zack Exley said that he "will be conducting field research in rural South Africa and India with Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians across three languages to explore ways to compensate for the gap in published/printed sources in many local languages." Prabhala explained that the project is about "a problem that bedevils everyone working in local languages in Asia and Africa, and it’s something we have no control over: the lack of published scholarly resources in these languages."
In the Community fellowship program, started in September (Signpost coverage), community members are employed full-time for a limited amount of time by the Foundation's Community Department to work on specific problems. See also last week's "News and notes": "Foundation announces fourth Community Fellow"
The tenth anniversary of Wikipedia on January 15 brought unprecedented amounts of media coverage (some of which had already begun earlier, see last week's "in the news"). Many reports recounted the history of Wikipedia, numerous notable pundits gave their interpretation of the project's significance, and prominent Wikimedians such as Jimmy Wales were much in demand for interviews and quotes.
British historian and author Timothy Garton Ash told readers of The Guardian that "We've seen America's vitriol. Now let's salute Wikipedia, a US pioneer of global civility", which he described as "an American invention which, for all its faults, tries to spread around the world a combination of unpaid idealism, knowledge and stubborn civility", contrasting it with "the vitriolic incivility of American political discourse, as heard on talk radio and cable channels such as Fox News". (A version of the same op-ed that appeared two days later in the LA Times omitted mention of Fox News and carried the less evocative title "Look it up: Wikipedia is turning 10".) The well-known motto "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet ..." was described by Ash as "almost Lennonist".
The Atlantic collected opinions from "All-Star Thinkers on Wikipedia's 10th Anniversary", including Bruce Sterling ("I worry about their frailty. ... Warm, kindly, humane Wikipedia didn't grow up in today's Internet. Now it's like a hothouse orchid the size of a barn."[3]), Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina ("Wikipedia underscores an evolutionary lesson: we've always gotten farther as a species collaborating than going it alone" [4]), Ethan Zuckerman ("Wikipedia's victory was getting the rules – and importantly, the rules for making rules – right, and trusting that the process would lead to substance" [5]) and Clay Shirky ("[Wikipedia] took one of the best ideas of the last 500 years – peer review – and expanded its field of operation so dramatically that it changed the way authority is configured" [6]). Jonathan Lethem's highly critical piece ("the generation of an infinite number of bogusly 'objective' sentences in an English of agonizing patchwork mediocrity is no cause for celebration") met with rebuttals by Wikimedians Andrea James on Boing Boing and David Shankbone on his personal blog.
In a different article ("Wikipedia – an unplanned miracle", The Guardian), Shirky focused further on Wales' and Sanger's "radical" idea of "putting the people who care in charge, rather than anointing experts or authorities". Shirky said that a wiki "has at its core only one social operation: I care." He explained that "what looks like a stable thing is in fact a result of ceaseless attempts to preserve what is good, and to improve what isn't. Wikipedia is best understood not as a product with an organisation behind it, but as an activity that happens to leave an encyclopedia in its wake".
Wired UK published a series of articles in the form of a "Wikipedia Week", one of them ("Viewpoints: what the world thinks of Wikipedia") featuring opinions by Larry Sanger, Wikipedia researcher Joseph Reagle, Robert McHenry (former editor-in-chief of Britannica), Wikipedians Siska (from Indonesia, cf. Signpost coverage) and User:WereSpielChequers, and others.
As an example for "how disruptive to our understanding of the world can Wikipedia be", an anniversary article on ReadWriteWeb compared the Wikipedia article Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814) to the entry on the same topic in the 1970 edition of the American Peoples Encyclopedia, noting that the paper encyclopedia left out vital information about the battle ("a story of deeply racist betrayal"). "It's like Wikipedia is to the encyclopedia what Wikileaks is to a White House press conference."
Indian news outlet NDTV explained "How Wikipedia wooed and won the world", using a short summary of its early history and quotes from German sociologist Christian Stegbauer.
Die Zeit, the largest German weekly newspaper, featured Wikipedia on its title page with the headline "Das größte Werk der Menschen" ("the greatest work of human beings"); its coverage included an article by German Wikipedian Logograph about the daily work of an administrator. Die Zeit also programmed a web widget showing animated recent article edits from the German Wikipedia that can be used on any website.
Al Jazeera quoted a wide range of commenters, from Wikimedia's own Sue Gardner to critic Andrew Keen (noting that the article about him was in a vandalized state at the time of the interview).
In China, the Communist Party's newspaper People's Daily published an overall positive article (in Chinese - Google translation) about Wikipedia as a "knowledge revolution", comparing collaboration on Wikipedia to "children's collective participation in the 'clay sculpturing' game, full of creative, playful pleasure".
Mashable worried "Wikipedia celebrates 10 years, but will it survive another decade?", and defended Wikipedia against its "reputation for loopy reportage", pointing out that "Wikipedia is, in the best-case scenario, an antidote for the echo chamber of the web." One of the statements in the article, that "two Ayn Rand devotees, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, created Wikipedia" drew a rebuttal by Sanger: "I am not, and was not, an 'Ayn Rand devotee.'"
On Inside Higher Ed, a librarian described how she had "come to appreciate the way that Wikipedia in so many ways helps students understand fundamental features of how information works", familiarizing them with the concept of references and demonstrating "that knowledge itself is a community project" and not "just for school."
US website Politico observed that "Wikipedia has become a go-to reference guide for political insiders and mainstream Americans alike", quoting several experts, one of them describing Wikipedia as "the 800-pound gorilla that flies" and "itself a political achievement".
PCMag.com's editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff warned "Wikipedia: You Still Can't Trust It", pointing to the history of the article about himself, and alleging bias in the article about Microsoft. NetworkWorld listed "The 10 biggest hoaxes in Wikipedia's first 10 years" and the Huffington Post compiled a slideshow of "the funniest vandalized entries".
Canada's National Post seemed to remain on the fence about Wikipedia ("10 years on, Wikipedia’s potential still unknown"). Alluding to Larry Sanger's announcement of Wikipedia on January 17, 2001 ("Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes"), the newspaper said: "When Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger started out, all they were asking for was five or 10 minutes of your time. Instead, we’ve given them a decade."
Slate.com used the Wikipedia article on Jesus "as a guide to the online encyclopedia's 10-year history", surveying its version history since the page was started on March 3, 2001 by Jimmy Wales (sample: "On Jan. 19, 2005, Wikipedia Jesus got a security detail; unregistered users were now forbidden to edit the page").
On his "The Wikipedian" blog, William Beutler (User:WWB) described how he was interviewed by Ukrainian TV station INTER.TV about Wikipedia on the occasion of the anniversary.
Notably absent from the anniversary coverage was UK website The Register, whose harshly critical (and at times highly inaccurate) reporting has accompanied Wikipedia during most of the last ten years.
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On January 13, Jimmy Wales was in Bristol, UK, to celebrate the anniversary (coinciding with the city's "Festival of Ideas"). He presented at the Bristol Cathedral and Bristol University's Victoria Rooms (video recordings) and received considerable media attention (example: "Jimmy Wales outlines Wikipedia future for Bristol"). MacWorld [7] and technology news website Tech.blorge ("Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: App stores a clear and present danger]") highlighted his personal remarks that the app store model introduced by Apple was "a threat to a diverse and open [IT] ecosystem", arguing that "we own [a] device, and we should control it." On this issue of net neutrality, however, Wales "argued that many of the concerns ... were hypothetical and didn’t pose an immediate danger. While he noted the entire issue was complicated ... he said elements of the campaign for net neutrality were 'highly overblown'."
In contrast, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner said in an op-ed for The Guardian that "the fate of network neutrality (the concept that aims to keep the internet open and free) is under attack everywhere, particularly in the mobile space, and I'm continually surprised by how few Americans seem to understand the issue and why it matters", wondering if "the power of Wikipedia to join people together in a vast social enterprise was just an aberration. I fear that the conditions that gave rise to it may be disappearing". (See also earlier Signpost coverage: "Wikipedia as a poster child for net neutrality")
In a video interview, The Daily Telegraph asked Jimmy Wales about differences between the various language versions of Wikipedia. He said that there were "kind of the same", fueled by "a certain geek culture which transcends national culture", and that the Wikipedia communities he had seen around the world consisted mostly of "the same kind of people" – "super geeky and really smart", although for example meetups in India were still even more male-dominated than those in the US or UK. Regarding the controversial fundraising banners featuring his personal appeal, Wales was quoted as saying "there were 9 million people asking me to stop staring at them". But according to a portrait in The Globe and Mail ("Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales: The man with all the answers"), Wales still doesn't frequently get recognized in public "except at Apple stores and in Germany, where Wikipedia apparently has become a minor national obsession." The article also quoted Mitch Kapor, who "has known Mr. Wales since 2003 and acted as an informal mentor", and credits him with leadership skills that avoid exercising direct authority – "a less farsighted person would be tempted to retreat from volunteer control, decentralized [power], and anonymity".
A BBC radio feature recounted the beginnings of Wikipedia, based on an interview with Jimmy Wales, who named inherently funny word as one of his favorite articles on Wikipedia.
An article on The New York Times "Bits" blog titled "Wikipedia Marks 10 Years of Edit-It-Yourself", illustrated with a photo of Jimmy Wales demonstrating Wikipedia in 2001, said that according to Wales, despite efforts to make the uploading of media easier, "the site would never become flashy", quoting him as saying "we are not going to become Facebook, we are not going to become MySpace or YouTube". Sue Gardner stated that "Wikipedia is modest. It isn’t a beautiful site. It looks a little awkward — sometimes the writing is a little bit awkward," but that people still have "a deep and abiding affection for it." In addition to Brazil, she named Egypt as a possible location for a new office of the Wikimedia Foundation (after the one which is going to open in India in the next months). In a Reuters interview [8], Gardner emphasized that the Foundation would remain a non-profit: "We don't move in the world of IPOs and valuation and investment. We never talk about it, we never think about it."
Other lists of media coverage:
In her anniversary message on the Foundation's official blog, Sue Gardner observed:
| “ | There’s been a lot of thoughtful media coverage over the past few weeks ... What makes me happy about the coverage is that it seems like people’s attitudes towards Wikipedia have finally turned an important corner.
In its early years, Wikipedia was one of our culture’s dirty little secrets: everybody used it, but very few were comfortable saying so. ... Today though, journalists, educators and culture critics are finally embracing Wikipedia, acknowledging that its strengths vastly outweigh its weaknesses, and that its fundamental premise works. (A reporter told me the other day that mocking Wikipedia is “so 2007.” LOL.) |
” |
On Wikipedia Review, a web forum devoted to criticism of Wikipedia, regular participants seemed to agree with Gardner's observations, lamenting the positive media coverage of the anniversary as "just another measure of how badly The Wikipedia Review is falling down on the job of educating the public about the real nature of Wikipedia, Wikia, and the Wikimedia Foundation", and observing that "the 'comments campaign' clearly hasn't worked – not enough people read these [a reference to the frequent posting of negative comments by Wikipedia Review members in the comments sections of online news articles]. What is needed is PR for the other 'Wikipedia Story' on US or British or other national media."
"Global Watchtower" (a blog of a Massachusetts-based market research company about "Globalization in Practice") reports that on January 7, "in the run-up to Children’s Day, Thailand’s Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announced the launch of the complete English-language Wikipedia in Thai. This was presented as a gift of knowledge to the children of Thailand from the government and local business partners". The 3.5 million articles were machine-translated by translation company Asia Online and are already online (example – translation of scrimshaw, the provenance and license of the text appear to be stated correctly). Proofreading is to be done by ten employees of the company who will concentrate on the most popular articles, as well as by "crowdsourced" volunteers who will also be able to add content – the company's vice president explained that "we will add social networking components over time to enable discussions of the content and nurture the creation of more Thai-focused content." Global Watchtower called it "quite possibly the single largest translation project currently underway." It appears to have been already discussed by the Thai Wikipedia community.
Next month, the eighth steward elections and confirmations will take place on meta-wiki. This is a good time to explain what stewards do and how the arrangements for stewards have changed over the past few years, so that participants in the election and confirmation process know the context, and new candidates know what to expect.
The Stewards' policy says that stewards have complete access to the wiki interface on all Wikimedia wikis, including the ability to change user and group rights. They are tasked with the technical implementation of community consensus, and with dealing with emergencies (for example, cross-wiki vandalism, and checkuser and oversight requests). Stewards aim to make no decisions as stewards, but are empowered to act as a member of any permissions group on any project with no active member of that permissions group. For example, wikis without administrators may call on stewards to fulfill that role; stewards will act as a bureaucrat as needed on wikis without bureaucrats. The position of steward was originally created to dissociate rights management from software development and systems administration. Stewards can also be involved in testing user rights and new software functions.
In 2010, eight new stewards were elected by the Wikimedia community, while 26 out of the 31 then-stewards were confirmed. Although a committee decided in all conscience about the confirmation process last year, there had been issues about some of their decisions, so the process will be changed for 2011. Because of the departure of Cary Bass as Volunteer Coordinator, stewards now have to organize the whole election themselves, with input from the Foundation's Head of Reader Relations, Philippe. The Board of Trustees decided that this time they will abstain from confirming the result of the new elections. As a result, stewards attending Wikimania 2010 at Gdańsk – about a third of all stewards – discussed how to change the election/confirmation process to encourage more volunteers to become stewards. Since these discussions didn't reach consensus, the 2011 elections will be held under the same arrangements as for previous years: to become a steward, a candidate will need to obtain at least 30 votes in favor with an 80% support ratio to become a steward. But since the guidelines for eligibility in this election have changed, only users who have been admins for at least three months in one Wikimedia project will be allowed to nominate themselves for stewardship; we hope this might discourage frivolous candidatures!
Last year, four stewards resigned (Oscar, Effeietsanders, Mike.lifeguard, and Sir Lestaty de Lioncourt), leaving only 30 stewards. As usual, only a few stewards are carrying out the bulk of the workload, a situation that unfortunately didn't improve after the 2010 election (see the stats). Some of these users who were highly active with crosswiki work before their election were unable to maintain their level of activity in their last term. Only two of the "new" stewards, dferg and Jyothis, were in a position to provide regular assistance with stewards' main tasks: looking out for new abusive usernames in the IRC channel #cvn-unifications, and incorrect edits in smaller projects via #cvn-sw, both as members of the Small Wiki Monitoring Team. Most other stewards helped out more whenever they were needed in #wikimedia-stewards, or with assigning bot and user rights. Almost every steward was quite active within the last year (details), and only one, the Foundation Board member Sj, may lose his rights because of inactivity. For the rest, any positive or negative feedback can be mentioned in February's confirmations, to be held simultaneously with the elections of new stewards.
While global sysops gave considerable help to smaller wikis in fighting vandalism, there has been no decrease in the amount of work that must be handled exclusively by stewards. Given the reduction in stewards' numbers, new candidates will be welcome, even if they haven't yet gained much interwiki experience. Only a few users who could be helpful as stewards are currently interested in doing crosswiki work, so other volunteers are also asked to take part in this election. If their communities trust and support them, they may be successful in convincing those users who are more active in steward-related work as well. Some users who have been elected this way have become skilled in their role! So, don't hesitate to nominate yourself as a steward if you've been an admin on any Wikimedia wiki for at least three months. You'll have time to do that until February 6 (see above for prerequisites).
Stewards should not expect accolades; instead, like a lot of roles on Wikimedia sites, it's hard work if you play for keeps. Stewards are often the first ones who have to deal with new software functions, and have to test them to protect sometimes thousands of users from difficulties. The bugs they identify are then reported to Bugzilla. Unfortunately, not all major bugs have been fixed (see out-dated list). It's no big issue for bugs like bug 20267, which are only transparency issues and can be avoided by people's good faith; but stewards also report security-, data-protection-, or privacy-related bugs such as bugs 19725, 21279, 23126 (!) and 23310, which are not yet fixed. They appeared when the CentralAuth interface was changed in 2009 because of bug 18183 and others. For example, some stewards still use an alternative function in CentralAuth to hide oversightable usernames, so m:Special:Log/globalauth has to be cleaned up from time to time by local oversights.
The function of bug 20954 forces stewards to switch on global oversight rights, just to be able to review potentially oversightable edits by users whose username stewards have quickly had to hide from logs and article histories. Following a software change, SUL accounts that are locked and hidden are no longer prevented from logging in, but only from editing wikis. This means that if they visit a new project, another account will be attached to their global one (see bug 23126), and their abusive username will be added to another local log. So the most work stewards have to deal with is caused by registrations of abusive user names (mostly on smaller projects from which they proceed to bigger projects). Such behavior first evokes global (b)locks or global hideuser actions, followed by checkusering of their accounts, sock puppets and IPs, so that also the latter can be globally blocked. This work is critical for the well-being of the whole Wikimedia project.
Another example concerns a problem on the Portuguese Wikipedia which has been keeping stewards busy. In November 2010, all terms of their active bureaucrats and checkusers ended so that stewards now have to do all their work (for example at m:Steward requests/Checkuser). New elections seemed to have failed because of the community's deep inner conflicts. So, there is currently an arbcom case dealing with a possible abuse of a former checkuser, which also involved global sysops and oversight requests.
If you think that you're willing and able to help out with any of these cases (and possible new ones), please do not hesitate to do so and join the steward elections!
Reader comments
This week, we turn our attention to WikiProject Cricket. Started by Jguk 2 in December 2004, it is one of the most active projects around, with 194 members. An enduring WikiProject with six years under its belt, it boasts 59 Featured articles, 48 Featured lists, 76 Good articles, a Featured portal and a Featured topic – with a total of 21,039 assessed articles. It might come as a surprise to some that cricket is the world's second most popular sport, after association football. First documented as being played in southern England in the 16th century, it had become the national sport of England by the end of the 18th century. The sport's growth is tied to the expansion of the British Empire, and by the mid-19th century, the first international matches were being held. Today, the game's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), has 105 member countries. With a history spanning over 400 years, there is a wealth of cricket content out there, with Wikipedia becoming a major source of information related to the sport.
The Signpost interviewed project members Harrias, Dweller, SGGH, BlackJack, AssociateAffiliate, Moondyne and Mattinbgn, and asked what motivated them to become members of WikiProject Cricket.
Both Harrias and Dweller were working on cricket articles and as a result, were invited to join the project. SGGH, Jack, AssociateAffiliate, Moondyne and Mattinbgn have all been avid cricket fans since they were young, and it was natural for them to gravitate towards the subject on Wikipedia. Dweller said, "We try to be a friendly bunch and in turn, I often invite others I spot editing about cricket to join the Project. We're good at collaborations, working on important articles and Featured material, and that alone is a good reason to join. I think the work we did, led by YellowMonkey, on "The Invincibles" Featured Topic, is a model of this kind of group editing." Jack has written material on the subject elsewhere, and when he started using Wikipedia, he noticed that there was a lack of coverage prior to the start of Test cricket in 1877, and decided to get involved and rectify that. Long-time member Moondyne added,"I think my very first cricket article was creating a stub on Bill Lawry in late 2004. That led me to join the [then] recently created Cricket project. It's possibly because of the nature of the game that WikiProject Cricket members are the most courteous and helpful bunch of Wikipedians I've come across. Many have come and gone but all have been fine people to collaborate with." Mattinbgn has a reasonable library of cricket books at hand: "It seemed like the one place where I could contribute with an adequate level of background knowledge using high quality sources. It also seemed like a place where collaboration on articles was positively appreciated with little sense of ownership of articles."
With over 20,000 articles associated with the project, how do project members keep up? Everyone agreed that the project benefits from a large number of committed editors. Some, like Harrias, concentrate on specific areas, such as Somerset County Cricket Club. Reinforcing this point, AssociateAffiliate said, "It is all down to the commitment of members, many of whom have contributed answers here and who contribute amazing articles to the project. Last year, I went through all the Hampshire redlinks and created articles for outstanding redlinked players, without going into too much detail on each. But contributors like Harrias can find the most obscure of players and find out so much info about them! My focus is on county cricket and minor international cricket, with thousands of players needing articles, expect that 21,029 to increase rapidly!" There is also good coordination on the project's talk pages, and any urgent matters are dealt with swiftly. "There's such a diversity of interests and we have so many members, it just seems to happen. As long as there are defined and achievable goals, people will gravitate towards completing them," added Moondyne.
We asked how the project managed to get so many articles promoted. Almost all said that YellowMonkey's FA drive for the "The Invincibles" was one major factor. Harrias believes that statistics also play a role; "we are lucky to be writing about a topic about which there is a lot written, and perhaps more importantly, a formal level of recognition (for example, Test cricket), and a lot of statistics. Without those statistics for example, I doubt there would be even half as many FLs. I think the key thing for other projects is to get some formats they are happy with for certain types of articles, formats that have passed FA/FL themselves, and use these as rough templates for any further articles that look to progress along that track. It might not guarantee success, but it certainly helps." For Dweller, the tremendous enthusiasm for the subject helps to generate high quality content; "this is mirrored in the offline world by the enormous publishing industry revolving around cricket. With such a long history – around 300 years of so-called "Major cricket" and about 130 years of "Test match" international cricket – it's unsurprising that there is much to write about. And there is so much quality material freely available on the internet. This, combined with the collaboration mentioned above, is a great basis for developing quality material." Jack offers a different perspective: "I have always taken the view that the project needs quantity because we have far too many redlinks. I would rather see the massive list of biographical redlinks produced by Bobo192 turn blue before we get any FAs. I see the priority to be our breadth of coverage. But all credit to those who have produced prize articles and I would say the main reason for CRIC's success in the FA sphere is "The Invincibles" topic... I must also mention my fellow Yorkie Sarastro1 who has written several major articles working mostly by himself, especially Wilfred Rhodes, an article about a world-class Yorkshire cricketer which I once condemned on its talk page. That was before Sarastro joined us and the article isn't rubbish now."
With a lot of emotions of national pride on the table, how do project members maintain a neutral point of view? Most agree that this is not a problem for them, although it is a concern for SGGH; "Ha... this is my biggest grumble. A lot of articles out there have been written long ago in this emotional flair Wisden-style "his crisp drives like sniffing at a newly mown lawn drew the most poetic of vernacular from astonished supporters" and all that nonsense that fits beautifully into Wisden but not into Wikipedia. So, so many of the articles out there still have this problem, most of them saying "he was the best so-and-so" and so forth. It takes a lot of pruning. You can write with flair and passion in an article and still keep it suitable for Wikipedia..." Dweller believes that much of what is written about precedes the lifetimes of the editors; "The POV is less about national rivalries–as an Englishman, I've contributed far more to Australian biographies than English ones–than trying to avoid hagiography. Fortunately, cricket literature abounds with material about controversies and the foibles of former greats. Even Donald Bradman, whose feats dominate not just cricket history, but arguably, the history of sport, has generated a substantial daughter article about controversies involving him." For Jack the "national pride" is 99% good-natured as the sport itself is the thing and not national affiliation; "Several of my favourite players over the years have been non-English. I admit I write mostly about English cricket because that accounted for nearly the whole sport until the second half of the 19th century, but I have tried to develop coverage of other countries too and wrote outline histories of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, for example." Despite being a patriotic Englishman, AssociateAffiliate manages to keep well within NPOV, but as for others, "It is one of the more annoying aspects of the project that you can go on, say articles about Sachin Tendulkar and Shakib Al Hasan, they're like patriotic cult worship articles at times, with all sorts of "he is the best", "he is a god" nonsense appearing. Kevin Pietersen and Shane Warne are cricketing gods, but you don't see me include that in their articles! One of the newer cricketing nations, Afghanistan for example, has such a fan following. Thus far I've managed to avoid articles like the Afghanistan national cricket team, or player Hameed Hasan becoming the opposite of NPOV. Hard work, but I'm winning so far!" Moondyne said, "Bias from national pride often appears in hagiographies particularly from the sub-continent and star players like Tendulkar seem to suffer from it the worst. But it's nothing that can't be managed." On the other hand, Mattinbgn believes that national pride is not really an issue among the major contributors, "but dealing with "drive-by vandalism" during big matches and tournaments can be annoying."
We wanted to know what are the most pressing needs for WikiProject Cricket, and what new contributors can do to help. Despite the project having over 20,000 articles, all who were interviewed wanted to see more content. In addition to this, Dweller laments that in addition to the prime need of removing redlinks (listed here), "following some debate, we have just amended our notability criteria, which means we need to review some of our biographies, as some may no longer have the automatic notability of WP:ATHLETE." SGGH thinks that the Project needs more adherence. "We need to be writing neutral, properly worded articles not just flowery phrase-fests. We could always use a few less "no, he is the greatest" arguments over at Tendulkar, Richards and Lara pages, but I suppose they keep up the spice and the interest." Jack would like to see more articles on international matches and tours, while AssociateAffiliate is very concerned about redlinked players: "Over the last year I reckon I've created about 1,000 articles on cricketers. So help in that area would be nice! As of October 2010, the first 10 teams on the redlink list had 2,029 players needing articles. Also, anybody with knowledge of cricket in the smaller cricketing nations of the Associate and Affiliate members of the International Cricket Council." Mattinbgn also thinks that a more geographically diverse group of contributors would help; "Australian and English content is reasonably well developed but other areas of the world have great scope for improvement. The Indian sub-continent is the epicentre of modern cricket, but there are relatively few large-scale contributors from that area of the world. The same applies for South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies. A more topically diverse set of featured content would also be very welcome. The project is strong on biographies but weaker on venues, seasons, national, sub-national and club teams and "national articles" such as Cricket in South Africa."
When asked if there were any final words, there was friendly banter regarding the recent Ashes series, which was won by England. Moondyne brought up the Wikipedia Cricket Quiz, which has been running for over five years with 1,275 questions posed and answered: "I guess it to be the most popular cricket quiz in the world and has led to countless improvements to Wikipedia articles." For Mattinbgn, WikiProjects such as WikiProject Cricket are great pools of in-depth knowledge about their subjects and as such, a very useful resource for Wikipedia. Those editors who focus on site-wide systems and standards such as templates, categories, Manual of Style, etc. could make much better use of these projects by speaking to them before proposing major changes in areas for topics covered by these projects. I think that WikiProject Cricket has been very approachable when its views are sought in a cooperative, collaborative manner."
Next week, we'll catch up with the 51st state of the United States where the license plates read "taxation without representation." Until then, take a self-guided tour of the WikiProject International Archives.
The Signpost welcomes our two new admins:
At the time of publication there was one live RfA: GiantSnowman, due to finish 21 January.
Choice of the week. We asked FA nominator/reviewer EdChem for his choice of the best FA this week:
My choice, however, is the article on the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway which describes the most eventful opening of a railway line that one might imagine. I'd generally expect that 105 kB for an article on the opening of a railway line would be overkill, or (let's be honest) dull. But with a derailment, an unrelated fatality, a Prime Minister pelted with vegetables, a world land speed record, a politician resigning on an issue of a lack of representation for his constituents, a funeral attended by an estimated 69,000 people. and the opportunity to a learn a new word ("deodand"), this article has plenty to hold your interest. Kudos to Iridescent: this is an impressive article and well worth taking the time to read."
Two featured lists were delisted:
One topic was promoted:
One featured topic, Celebration, was delisted for insufficient coverage of the topic.
Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.
Reader comments
The Arbitration Committee opened one new case. Two cases are now open.
The filer, LessHeard vanU (talk · contribs), alleged that there was a sustained and possibly coordinated campaign to have the article, Shakespeare authorship question, reflect a certain point of view. Concerns about tendentious editing, ownership, and attempted outing were also raised. Drafter Newyorkbrad noted that evidence should be submitted within a week, and set 30 January 2011 as target date for a decision.
Further evidence submissions were made during the week, including shortly after the evidence phase was set to close (see Signpost coverage from 11 January 2011). Since 25 November 2010, no editors have submitted any proposals in the workshop. During the week, analysis of evidence was received from one party, but no proposed final decisions were received from any editor.
The information reflects the state of cases at the time of publication.
Reader comments
The Foundation's Engineering Update for January (and covering the activities of December) was published last week on the Wikimedia Techblog, giving a brief overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in the last month. It summarised the developments:
| “ | In December, the fundraiser was in full swing, with a portion of the Engineering team... supporting the fundraising infrastructure. Danese Cooper [CTO], Erik Möller [Deputy Director], and Alolita Sharma were in India for most of the month, while much of the rest of the team was focused on the ramp-up to MediaWiki 1.17. | ” |
In addition to the increasing focus on the 1.17 release of the MediaWiki software and other major developments covered in recent editions of the Signpost, a number of items had their statuses updated since the last Engineering Update. For example, as touched upon in the report's executive summary, technicians travelled to India during the month "to assess technical gaps to success in India." The report noted some of the conclusions of this work: "some areas of localization were identified to standardize on Indic language wikis, such as editing tools and font rendering... [and] offline reading was a recurring topic". In other news, an invitation-only "data summit", cancelled last year, was rescheduled for early February; work progressed rapidly on a new "virtualization cluster" for improved testing; a minor update to the "pending changes" software was released; and a contract was signed with PediaPress to add openZim support to the Collection (PDF-generating) extension. Developers are also looking into better integrating with Kiwix to provide offline copies of Wikipedia to areas with poor or patchy internet coverage, including India.
December also saw the appointment of CT Woo as the Foundation's new Director of Technical Operations (Signpost coverage). The position of "bugmeister" - overseeing the creation and maintenance of bug reports - was removed from the hiring list, but without an appointment. Developer Robert Lanphier explained the decision (wikitech-l mailing list):
| “ | We talked to some excellent candidates, but we found it was a trickier spot to fill than we first anticipated, and that we need to rethink our hiring order a little bit. However, as was pointed out on IRC, we've had this hire in our plan for quite some time, and the need is pretty great. Rather than just continue to let this work go undone, we've asked Mark Hershberger (a man of many hats) to step in and fill this role while we sort out our longer term plan. After he wraps up his work on the 1.17 release, he's going to dive into the bug database and start sorting. | ” |
This week also saw a get-together of GLAM (Galleries-Libraries-Archives-Museums) staff, Wikipedia contributors and MediaWiki hackers in the Netherlands (Gerard Meijssen, TheDJ). The meetup, timed to coincide with Wikipedia's tenth anniversary (see this week's "News and notes", saw a number of topics discussed and work completed:
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According to Ziko, the Wikisnaps tool coded by TheDJ "has a good chance to become the most famous result [of the Hack-a-ton]: With this Apple App, you can take a photograph with your iPhone and upload it within a few seconds to Wikimedia Commons. An Android version is about to come. At the presentation, this tool received a long warm applause."
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.
