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24 January 2011

News and notes
Wikimedia fellow working on cultural collaborations; video animation about Wikipedia; brief news
In the news
The 2002 Spanish fork and ads revisited; Wikipedia still failing to fail; brief news
WikiXDC
Wikipedians celebrate anniversary with US National Archives in Washington, D.C.
WikiProject report
Life Inside the Beltway
Features and admins
The best of the week
Arbitration report
23 editors submit evidence in 'Shakespeare' case, Longevity case awaits proposed decision, and more
Technology report
File licensing metadata; Multimedia Usability project; brief news
 

2011-01-24

Wikimedia fellow working on cultural collaborations; video animation about Wikipedia; brief news

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By Tilman Bayer

Wikimedia Foundation announces "GLAM fellow" working on cultural partnerships

Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama) has become the sixth recipient of a Wikimedia fellowship, for a one-year project (until December 2011) where he "will be working to build the capacity of the Wikimedia community to undertake partnerships with cultural institutions – known as GLAMs [Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums] a term he popularized", according to the announcement by the Wikimedia Foundation's Human Resources Manager Daniel Phelps. A Wikipedian since 2005, Wyatt has been doing volunteer work in this area for two years. He convened the "GLAM-WIKI" conferences in Australia (2009, Signpost coverage), and the UK (2010, Signpost coverage), and a Wikipedia workshop at the "Museums and the Web 2010" conference (Signpost coverage). Also in 2010, he volunteered five weeks as "Wikipedian in Residence" at the British Museum, a pilot project to facilitate collaboration between Wikimedians and the institution (see Signpost coverage).

Witty lama, who is currently based in Sydney, has also been the Vice President of the Australian Wikimedia chapter, and one of the hosts of the "Wikipedia Weekly" podcast.

Through his blog post last November, entitled "How to make cultural collaborations scale?", concerns were voiced that "the sheer number of collaboration projects being offered to us" meant that many such opportunities would be irreparably wasted unless there was a "consistent, easily findable, and easy to understand processes for handling potential partnerships when they are presented to us". He added that we must put in place processes to "scale-up our capacity to professionally manage" collaborations, whilst being "consistent with the grassroots nature of Wikimedia projects."

Work on documenting such processes has now started on the Outreach wiki (with http://glamwiki.org/ as a shortcut), where a "WMF Fellow's to do list" has been developed since December 20. The page also features a "'This month in GLAM' report". Volunteers will be invited to collaborate on improving the "Guide to batch uploading" on Commons during the next one or two weeks. In February, Liam Wyatt will travel to India (like other WMF staff before him), meeting with Wikimedians in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi to explore collaboration possibilities with GLAM institutions there.

Watch for an interview with Liam in an upcoming issue of the Signpost.

Video animation illustrates "The State of Wikipedia"

A 3:43 minutes long video titled "The State of Wikipedia", narrated by Jimmy Wales and produced by Washington D.C. based creative agency JESS3, was published last week on video sharing sites and on http://www.thestateofwikipedia.com/, under a CC-BY-SA license. It illustrates the history of Wikipedia with colorful animated computer graphics (some stills), accompanied by quirky electronic music. On its inception, Wales said that "As a founder of Nupedia, I led the group to establish a farm team of sorts for future Nupedia articles. We used a new software platform to make collaboration easy - the wiki; Wikipedia." Wales also commented about his current role on Wikipedia and the importance of the Foundation ("I still lead the community, and the Wikimedia Foundation helps us to make Wikipedia what it is today"), and looked into the future: "There has never been anything like Wikipedia before, and its future horizon is very very long."

On the company's blog, Leslie Bradshaw and Becca Colbaugh from JESS3 explained that the video was "aimed at teaching the layperson Wikipedia’s initial concept and consequent evolution into becoming one of the most visited web sites across the globe", and that it had been developed over months together with the Foundation, as the company's gift to Wikipedia on its tenth anniversary. Wikipedian William Beutler (User:WWB) was involved in the project as an Executive Producer. On YouTube, the video had received almost 83,000 views at the time of writing.

Briefly

2011-01-24

The 2002 Spanish fork and ads revisited; Wikipedia still failing to fail; brief news

Concerns about ads, US bias and Larry Sanger caused the 2002 Spanish fork

A recent interview has shed new light on the 2002 fork of the Spanish Wikipedia and the influence it may have had on the development of Wikipedia as a whole, and ignited a controversy between Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales about the stance on advertising in the early phase of the project.

Edgar Enyedy, an early activist on the Spanish Wikipedia who describes himself as "some sort of unofficial leader together with Javier de la Cueva" of the fork Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español, was interviewed by Nathaniel Tkacz of the "Critical Point of View" (CPOV) Wikipedia research initiative, on whose blog the interview was first published on January 15 ("‘Good luck with your WikiPAIDia’: Reflections on the 2002 Fork of the Spanish Wikipedia". See also the recent Signpost interview with Tkacz and fellow CPOV member Johanna Niesyto).

Concerns about possible plans to use advertising on Wikipedia are often named as the main reason for the fork. Enyedy confirmed that remarks about ads in a February 2002 announcement by Larry Sanger triggered the exodus of the Spanish Wikipedians ("Bomis might well start selling ads on Wikipedia sometime within the next few months, and revenue from those ads might make it possible for me to come back to my old job"), but insisted that several other issues played an important role, including concerns about the insufficiently international nature of Wikipedia - an "American shadow [that] marked the first point of contention between myself and Sanger and Wales." As examples, he named the fact that "the basic pages ('what Wikipedia is not', 'be bold', 'how to start', 'sandbox', etc) were all in English; we had the American logo in English and so on", but also referred to issues that are in some form still relevant today, such as the internationalization of the interface: "The software, for example, was not translated at all and it cast an English (language) shadow over the entire project", and cultural differences between Europe and the US regarding sexual images ("Former AOL users used to remind me that explicit biology images are widely accepted among us, but would be considered inappropriate on the American version"). The Spanish Wikipedians also differed from their English counterpart by introducing a stylebook, and an index based on the Universal Decimal Classification.

A main reason for the fork was objections to the leadership of Wikipedia's chief organizer Larry Sanger:

Also contributing to the decision to fork was a distrust of Jimmy Wales' intentions, who to Enyedy seemed reluctant to steer Wikipedia into a non-profit direction.

Asked by Tkacz how the right to fork (granted in principle by the Wikipedia's free license) looked in detail in this case, Enyedy said that the activists had to download and transfer the articles one by one. (The accessibility of timely Wikipedia dumps continues to be a point of debate today.)

Enyedy said that the Enciclopedia Libre, while still active today, "was not intended to last. It was merely a form of pressure. Some of the goals were achieved, not all of them, but it was worth the cost", and emphasized its continuing influence:

According to Tkacz, Enyedy said "that he has been approached several times a year since 2002, but has never shared his story because the people contacting him were either mainstream journalists or people from wikimedia and he wasn't convinced they would let him tell his version of the story".

The abstract of a talk about the fork given at Wikimania 2005 also mentions issues that led to its creation.

Reactions by Wales and Sanger

On January 20, Wired UK published an abbreviated version of the interview ("The Spanish Fork: Wikipedia's ad-fuelled mutiny"), which included reactions by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

Sanger objected sharply to Enyedy's statements, saying that "the only sort of person who could seriously describe my role as an Orwellian "Big Brother" is a radical anarchist, for whom even the slightest possible exercise of authority is outrageous oppression. To be sure, Wikipedia had quite a few of such vocal characters in its early days. The story has not yet been fully told just how they essentially took over with the blessing of Jimmy Wales". But Sanger agreed that the fork "might well have been the straw that finally tipped the scales in favor of a 100% ad-free Wikipedia."

Jimmy Wales issued a much shorter statement:

Sanger objected even more sharply to Wales' statement, questioning the veracity of the first sentence, first on Twitter ("He was long in favor; I long opposed. Apologize, pls!"), then on his personal blog, recalling or citing various statements by Wales about ads from 2000 to 2002 ("From the beginning, Wales let me know in no uncertain terms that, once it garnered enough traffic, Nupedia would become ad-supported"). Sanger said that in December 2001 (when all other Bomis employees had to be laid off and his own position appeared to hinge on possible advertising revenue), he "was still uncomfortable with the idea of ads being run to support me, even in a non-profit context". The discussion then continued on Jimmy Wales' user talk page, where Wales said that "I don't see what the discrepancy is supposed to be", and Sanger accused him of lying.

Five-year bet about Wikipedia's failure concludes: "My prediction is wrong"

In December 2005, US law professor Eric Goldman (User:Ericgoldman) bet his friend Mike Godwin (later to become Wikimedia's General Counsel) that within five years "Wikipedia inevitably will be overtaken by the gamers and the marketers to the point where it will lose all credibility", if it would not give up its open editing model. ("Wikipedia Will Fail Within 5 Years", Eric Goldman's blog). Godwin predicted that anonymous editing would still be possible, even though "I think part of the design of Wikipedia was to allow for the evolution of contributor standards, even though as a 'foundational' principle anonymous contributors will always be allowed to edit it. Such evolution ought to be enough to keep Wikipedia alive and vital in the face of a changing digital environment." ("Will Wikipedia Fail in Five Years?", Godwinslaw.org). In 2006, Goldman reiterated his prediction for 2010 (Signpost coverage).

The bet was to be decided on December 2, 2010. On January 14, Goldman revisited the bet on his blog, admitting that "My 2005 Prediction of Wikipedia's Failure By 2010 Was Wrong". He identified the introduction of Nofollow on Wikipedia and anti-spam techniques developed by volunteers as the main reasons that Wikipedia is still able to resist spammers and marketers, but also noted other changes that he sees as "less salutary". While remaining somewhat skeptical about the sustainability of Wikipedia's model (citing his 2009 article "Wikipedia's Labor Squeeze and its Consequences", cf. Signpost coverage), Goldman (who is also a participant in the Foundation's Public Policy Initiative) praised the usefulness of the site: "I visit it daily as part of satisfying my intellectual curiosity. Happy 10th anniversary, Wikipedia!"

In a recent blog post ("Wikipedia is not a place for promotion"), Wikipedia researcher Felipe Ortega (whose statistics on Wikipedia editing frequencies had started debates about Wikipedia's sustainability in 2009) voiced concerns similar to Goldman's, identifying "conflicts around self-promotion in Wikipedia" as one of the "main challenges for Wikipedia over the next 10 years".

Briefly

2011-01-24

Wikipedians celebrate anniversary with US National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Signpost writer Aude has been one of the organizers of the WikiXDC event and is also involved in the FedFlix digitization project at NARA.
A gray haired man speaking in-front of a podium marked "National Archives and Records Administration 1985"
US Archivist David Ferriero giving opening welcome remarks


Reader comments

2011-01-24

Life Inside the Beltway


WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
The southern facade of the White House.
Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre.
A farmers market in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.
Great Hall of the Library of Congress.
The Boy Scout Memorial sculpted by Donald De Lue and located at The Ellipse.

This week, we visited WikiProject District of Columbia which covers Washington D.C., the capital district of the United States and home to over 600,000 residents (more than the entire state of Wyoming). The project began in April 2007 and has grown to include 23 pieces of featured content and 44 good and A-class articles. WPDC is also home to a collection of featured and valued pictures. Members contribute to the Washington D.C. Portal and, because of the national importance of many monuments and institutions within the District, frequently see their content on the United States Portal.

We interviewed four members of WikiProject DC. epicAdam lives and works in the District. His general interest in his hometown's history and culture motivated him to help bring the main Washington D.C. article up to featured article status. Missvain lives in the Logan Circle neighborhood of the District and has made it her goal to document all public art in DC as part of WikiProject Public Art. She made a presentation at last weekend's WikiXdc event. Kumioko lives in Virginia but works in DC and is interested in the history of the area. SchuminWeb is an admin who lives in suburban Maryland, but works and spends much of his time in the District. He founded WikiProject Washington Metro and did most of the writing for October Rebellion and Fraser Mansion, bringing both of them up to Good Article status.


What kind of DC articles do you typically focus on?

epicAdam: I work mostly on aspects of history, politics, culture, and transportation that relate to the city as a place, not just as the capital of the United States.
SchuminWeb: I work on a lot of public transportation articles, as well as a few pockets here and there of DC-related stuff.
Kumioko: I work primarily on biographies but lately I have been working in a wide array of areas trying to clean up and build up the articles relating the DC and the United States in general.
Missvain: The majority of my work revolves around public art in Washington and the stories behind them.


Does the District's prominence as a tourism destination help or hinder the project's efforts to provide good photography with each article?

epicAdam: It both helps and hinders. It is certainly a help when it comes to finding pictures of the National Mall, federal buildings, museums, monuments, etc. However, those areas comprise only a very small portion of the city, which leaves much of the city un-photographed. In addition, there are many images of the same location which gives variety in artistry, but a small range of options in terms of photo content that can actually be used in the article.
SchuminWeb: For those areas that are touristy, sure, the tourist traffic could only help in getting photos. However, for much of the city, one wouldn't really venture over some of those ways as a tourist. That is where it's more like any other city, in that you're going to have someone local do the photographing because they're familiar with it.
Missvain: No problem for me. I have a photography background and feel comfortable fighting the crowds, luckily, that's rarely a problem for me. I do not have a car though, so, I have to often rent one to get to some of the places I document.


How far does the project's scope extend? Are neighboring areas of Virginia and Maryland included in the project?

epicAdam: The general consensus has been to restrict the project's scope to the District of Columbia itself and I agree with that approach. Clearly, there are certain people, places and things in Maryland and Virginia that are essential to the understanding of the District and therefore can be included within the WikiProject DC's scope. However, the vast majority of content associated with Maryland and Virginia can be best covered by their own respective WikiProjects.
Kumioko: I agree, although it might be a possibility in the future to create a project or task force that covers the entire metro area. I think its best to leave DC with DC things. A couple exceptions I could think of might be the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery but for the most part the scope is fine as it is.


Does the project collaborate with any other projects that share a DC basis?

Kumioko: I have seen collaboration between Washington Metro, United States, Virginia and Maryland but that's about all I can think of. There are projects for the Smithsonian Institution and Library of Congress that could and will play a role in the DC project.
Missvain: I do write articles about Smithsonian objects and the basis for my project revolves around the SIRIS database documentation of sculptures the Smithsonian did in the 90s. I am hoping to get more involved in the GLAM projects.


There has been some discussion about consolidating WikiProject DC's assessment and tagging functions with WikiProject United States. How will this affect the project? Do you foresee similar integration occurring between WikiProject US and the projects covering each of the 50 states?

Kumioko: WikiProject DC has already been added to {{WikiProject United States}}, the {{WikiProject District of Columbia}} replaced with the WPUS/DC banner and displayed prominently at the top of the WPUS landing page. This was done for several reasons after consulting the other members of the DC project and after discussing the issue on the projects talk page. With that said, WikiProject District of Columbia is its own project and runs autonomously from WPUS. The two projects are not merged nor does DC fall "under" US. It just shares the banner template and WPUS helps support it because it has a much bigger pool of members.
SchuminWeb: I originally was wary about the idea, but then was assured that the DC project pages would not be merged out of existence, since a big entire-US project talk page would be way too large to handle. If adding some structure above the DC-level project gets more eyes on the articles and leads to great improvements, then that's probably a good thing. DC would seem to be a good testing ground for this, since it is a project with a smaller scope, and if it works well for the DC project, one would think that it would work for the other state WikiProjects.
epicAdam: I am rather against combining WikiProject DC with WikiProject United States. To do so continues a misguided notion that the only reason the District is important is because of its status as the nation's capital. It has been my focus to reveal Washington as a city with real people who live and work here, many of whom have no connection to the federal government whatsoever. In my mind, WikiProject United States is so broad in scope that to try and integrate local WikiProjects under its purview would be a useless effort.


Next week, we'll follow clans of feral cats into battle. Until then, read previous issues of the Report in the archive.

Reader comments

2011-01-24

The best of the week

New featured picture: User:Diliff's passing snap of Eilean Donan Castle in far northwest Scotland at sunrise
This week's "Features and admins" covers Saturday 15 – Friday 21 January (UTC)


New administrators

The Signpost welcomes Gimme danger (nom) as our newest admin. Danger has been editing for four and a half years and has participated in many Wikipedia tasks. Among these are the help desks, speedy deletions, backlogs, and assisting new editors' contributions; an example of Danger's larger achievements is the clearing of WikiProject Wisconsin's assessment backlog of some 5,000 articles. Danger self-describes as "fundamentally a gnome".


From the new featured article Bombing of Singapore (1944–1945): A Royal Air Force motor transport driver surveys damage in September 1945
NASA's Ariel fly-by in 1986. The second-largest of Uranus's 27 moons is water-ice and a dense non-ice component in equal parts
User:Cygnis insignis's picture of the basket flower from southwest Australia, from the new featured article Adenanthos obovatus
Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status:
  • Ariel (moon) (nom), the brightest of the 27 known moons of Uranus, discovered in 1851 and named for a sky spirit in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and Shakespeare's The Tempest. Almost all knowledge of Ariel comes from a single fly-by of Uranus performed by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986; however, it managed to image only 35% of the moon's surface (nominated by Ruslik0 and Serendipodous). Picture at right
  • Interstate 80 Business (West Wendover, Nevada – Wendover, Utah) (nom), a highway with historical significance, and which is the main street between those twinned cities on the Nevada–Utah border (Admrboltz).
  • Windsor Castle (nom), one of the best known castles in England, with a fascinating political, social, and architectural history (Hchc2009).
  • Maya stelae (nom), stone monuments fashioned in the Classic Period Maya culture that are remarkable for their stylistic variety (Simon Burchell).
  • Fantastic (magazine) (nom), probably the only magazine launched as a result of the Korean War, it lasted for 28 years, making it one of the more durable science fiction and fantasy magazines, and was instrumental in popularising the "sword and sorcery" genre (Mike Christie).
  • Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō (nom), commissioned in 1922, was the world's first commissioned ship designed and built as an aircraft carrier, and the first aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Cla68).
  • Section 116 of the Australian Constitution (nom), about a provision of the Australian Constitution that sets uncertain boundaries for establishing any religion, imposing religious observance, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion by the federal government; this clause has been judicially interpreted in a significantly narrower way than a similar provision in the US Consitution (Mkativerata).
  • Bombing of Singapore (1944–1945) (nom), the US and British air raids on the Japanese-occupied island during 1944 and 1945 (Nick-D). Picture at right
  • SMS Rheinland (nom), the third German dreadnought-type battleship built for the Imperial Navy (Parsecboy).
  • Battle of Sio (nom), a minor battle, but one of a series that nominator Hawkeye7 hopes to assemble into a featured topic on the New Guinea campaign.
  • Almirante Latorre-class battleship (nom), another article in The ed17's South American battleship series, this one tells the tortured tale of two Chilean ships ordered during the 1907–14 dreadnought arms race.
  • Pennatomys (nom), the "snowy winged mouse", an extinct Carribean rodent (Ucucha).
  • Adenanthos obovatus (nom), from the Southwestern Australian floristic region, which has more flowering plants than Europe and Asia put together (Casliber and Hesperian). Picture at right


From the newly featured List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts: others): a Buddhist ritual gong-stand nearly a metre high, made of copper; the gong had been lost and reproduced in the late 12th to early 13th century.
Seven lists were promoted:

Four featured lists were delisted:


Seven images were promoted; each can be viewed in medium size by clicking on "nom":


One sound file was promoted: Bright College Years (nom and link to related article), a performance of the first and third verses of Yale's unofficial alma mater by the 2006 Yale Whiffenpoofs. It is the first choral a cappella performance to reach featured sound status.

New featured picture: Tracy Caldwell Dyson in the Cupola module of the International Space Station observing the Earth below during Expedition 24
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


2011-01-24

23 editors submit evidence in Shakespeare case, Longevity case awaits proposed decision, and more

Two cases are currently open. The Committee opened or closed no cases during the week.

Open cases

This week, 23 editors submitted in excess of 12,000 words (~103kb) in on-wiki evidence. A workshop proposal was also submitted by one of these editors. As reported last week, the amended deadline for evidence submissions is 30 January 2011.

Longevity (Week 9)

Evidence submissions closed on 15 January 2011. One party added 66kb to his analysis of evidence (see Signpost coverage from 17 January 2011). Drafter Kirill Lokshin has not yet submitted a proposed decision on-wiki for arbitrators to vote on.

Other matters

The Committee conditionally suspended the indefinite block of SanchiTachi (talk · contribs). The conditions are such that SanchiTachi is:

  • subject to a 1RR restriction, and
  • warned to avoid certain types of commentary.


The information reflects the state of cases at the time of publication.


Reader comments

2011-01-24

File licensing metadata; Multimedia Usability project; brief news

File licensing metadata support on the way

On Wikimedia wikis, most important information about files (such as author and copyright information) is buried within the file description page itself, and is difficult for automated tools to extract. Last week, a new development project aiming to separate elements of that data into a separate database table, and exposing it via the MediaWiki API, was announced (wikitech-l mailing list). Developer Bryan Tong Minh described the project:

Technical issues were discussed on the mailing list, as was the possibility of expanding the scheme into extracting other forms of data from pages, on a par with Semantic MediaWiki. Michael Dale suggested that it could be discussed at the forthcoming Data Summit. In the mean time, contribution on the current project talkpage was requested.

"Indisputable improvement" in multimedia uploading

The finished licensing tutorial, an SVG that has been translated into more than 25 languages since its publication in November

Also last week, the Multimedia Usability project published a report about its achievements. The project, funded by a $300,000 grant from the Ford Foundation from October 2009 to November 2010, created the new "upload wizard" and a cartoon-based licensing tutorial (see previous Signpost coverage). With these in place, the report heralded an "indisputable improvement" in users' experiences of the upload process:

In brief

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.

  • Wikimedia Germany (WMDE) has decided not to hold a developer meetup around its international Chapters' conference in March (as it had done last year), but will instead run a hackathon in May, in addition to the combination of technology presentations and programming sessions available at Wikimania 2011 in August (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • Developer Magnus Manske posted a series of updates on how his WYSIFTW editing tool: development is progressing, but at the cost of processing time, particularly on older browsers, though even this is being improved rapidly (wikitech-l mailing list, see also previous Signpost coverage for context).
  • Ryan Lane noted that his integration of OpenStack - software which allows users to test their code changes on various browser/operating system configurations without actually possessing them - into MediaWiki has been successful in generating an alpha-release extension (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • The JSMin JavaScript compressor has been retired in favour of more free alternative compressors after it was determined that JSMin's condition that it "be used for Good, not Evil" rendered it incompatible with MediaWiki's General Public License (GPL), which does not restrict reuse in any way (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • WMF developer Robert Lanphier posted a report into the revisions that still need to be reviewed before the release of MediaWiki version 1.17 (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • Single user login (SUL) was broken briefly on Saturday as the result of developer error. The problem is in the process of being fixed permanently (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • A job opening for an Operations Engineer has been posted. The position reports to the (recently hired) Director of Operations, and is tasked with "designing, developing and optimizing the technical infrastructure and operations of the Wikimedia Foundation projects and maintaining the security, scalability and availability of the web properties".

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