Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/In the media
Work concluded this week on this year's MediaWiki-related Google Summer of Code projects. Of the seven projects that made it to the half-way stage, all passed their end of term assessments and will now submit their work to Google for auditing. (Google will then issue a final monetary reward to contributors for their volunteer development efforts over the summer.)
Of the seven projects, then, a number are likely to have an impact on Wikimedia wikis, including student Salvatore Ingala's project to make gadgets more easily customisable. One of his two mentors, Max Semenik, stressed that the project had been designed to make it compatible with the Foundation's own work to improve the usability of gadgets, and so it was unlikely to be discarded. He was also pleased with his student's progress in general, adding that constant intervention to keep the project on track and up-to-standard had not been necessary, with advice focussed only on small bursts at the beginning, middle, and end of the timeline. Yuvi Panda's attempt to make the compilation of large article subsets easier via a new extension also seems to fill a need onwiki. Other potentially Wikimedia-related projects include Kevin Brown's experimental ArchiveLinks extension and Aigerim Karabekova's work on Extension management. Also of interest is Akshay Agarwal's progress on separating the logic of logging in and registration from its presentation, with a view to allowing new ways to log in in future.
Other projects included work on the Semantic MediaWiki variant and on a Facebook-esque "status update" feature.
The Wikimedia Foundation's Engineering Report for August was published last week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (because of the discrepancy of Wikimania, the August report was published approximately two weeks after July's). Many of the projects mentioned have been covered in The Signpost, including the Wikimania and Developer Days, progress on HTTPS support, major work on customized campaigns for the Wiki Loves Monuments event, and the increasing readiness of both MediaWiki 1.18 and a new mobile platform for Wikipedia.
Nonetheless, the report also contained developments, which, although classified as major, have not yet received external coverage. In particular, a new team was set up within Wikimedia engineering to support a renewed effort at making Wikimedia-related software both readable and in particular more writeable in other languages (localisation and internationalisation). Comprising four staff members, its primary aim is to provide "a set of tools to facilitate editing in languages using a non-Roman alphabet". Also of note was a significant operations team meeting, focussed on improving its workflow and re-prioritising outstanding projects. Other projects which saw progress include data dumps (improved ability to restart failed processes without having to throw away previous progress) and the visual editor project, where the possibility of having a transaction-based edit system is being looked at. Such a system would allow for edits to be more easily merged in the event of edit conflicts.
Also included in the report was news that, after new users began to use the WikiLove extension as an easy way to send messages to other users, a new tool will be developed to provide a more consistent framework for this action. Meanwhile, developer Neil Kandalgaonkar "continued to work on real-time collaboration and is close to presenting a [working] demo" while Ian Baker "investigated and started to work on a chat system to be integrated to the concurrent editing interface, for collaboration and live help". Another project to look out for in the future is a renewed effort to allow a safe subset of arbitrary code to be included in pages to simplify template syntax.
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.
Hackathons try to convert potential developers and technical contributors into full-time members of the development community. This relies on publicising the events to local technology interest groups, which requires volunteer help via social media such as Twitter and Facebook. (For example, the hackathons scheduled for New Orleans and Brighton are currently in the publicity-generating stage.)
https://commons.wikimedia.org as a second, (albeit still buggy) secure alternative to the http:// address. By incorporating developments regarding protocol relative links, the new site should provide a more integrated and secure browsing experiencing than the existing https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/ site when fully complete.
index.php?title=Foo&action=Bar), suggesting that they should become redirects to a uniform system of special pages (which are already in use for some actions such as blocking users). http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/247348Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/Opinion
The results are unlikely to calm the rhetoric on either side of the debate. With mild support shown overall—the most general question had a median result of 6 (on a scale from 0–10, where 5 was "neutral")—there is probably enough encouragement to ensure that the proposal is not abandoned altogether, and some useful results were gathered with regard to priorities. On the other hand, about 3750 respondents (16% of the sample) gave a score of zero to the broadest question, "It is important for the Wikimedia projects to offer this feature to readers", the clearest indication yet that a significant body of editors would oppose the implementation proposed by the Foundation regardless of its features. (This result looks set to be endorsed by a poll run in parallel on the German Wikipedia which currently indicates that about fourth-fifths of Wikipedians there are opposed to the measure as stated.) A third group consider the referendum to have been badly mismanaged in a way that would render the result meaningless.
As British Wikimedian Michael Peel commented, the poll probably points towards a "no consensus" result. As a result, the next move of the Foundation is unclear. In all likelihood it will choose to alter the proposed implementation to build a new consensus, since it is dubious as to whether the Foundation could now meaningfully proceed without convincing at least a small proportion of those currently skeptical to the idea. One possible compromise would be on whether or not there was a single global implementation of the filter. User:FT2 added that "enabling on some wikis and not on others" may yet be a good way to "leave more people feeling fairly satisfied".
Mani Pande, Wikimedia Head of Global Development Research, has revealed on the Foundation's blog a new metric as a tool for analysing community health: the Wikipedia editor satisfaction index (WESI). The WESI is based on the answers to two questions.
The two options from Question 1 are scored for one point each: +1 if the response was a positive adjective, and −1 for a negative. The response to Question 2 is scored as +2 for helpful, and −2 for feedback having been "a bad experience". Added together, they span a range from +4 to −4, which is normalized to a 0–10 scale.
The initial results of compiling the index were greeted by Pande as "encouraging": around 47% of respondents gave a score of 10/10, and about 77% of the editors surveyed scored 7.5 or higher, which she took to indicate that "the majority of our editing community is very satisfied with their experience" of the project and have "a healthy assessment of fellow editors". Delving deeper into the breakdown of the findings, Pande isolated three factors critical to determining an editor's satisfaction with their contributing experience: being offered help, enjoying the respect and recognition of their peers, and receiving adequate explanations for when their contributions are reverted. It is expected that the WESI will be established as an ongoing metric for measuring satisfaction, to yield further insights into the self-reported experiences of Wikimedians in the future.
The last week saw the following milestones among WMF-supported projects:
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/In focus
One case has closed and three remain ongoing.
In the case, opened to examine the meta issues involved in biographies of living persons, all proposed principles, findings of fact, and remedies have passed. All but one (Manipulation of search engine results) passed without opposition.
Among the findings, the Arbitration Committee reaffirmed that "all editing of articles must comply with the biographies of living persons policy", but did not find any specific editors at fault. "The subject-matters of the evidence and workshop proposals in this case have been wide-ranging, including evidence of some troublesome edits and problematic interactions between editors, but not to a level that the Committee believes necessitates any findings or remedies against specific editors at the present time."
Drafting arbitrator Newyorkbrad acknowledged that some may "feel that the decision comprises a series of generalities and does not discuss or resolve the specific BLP and user-conduct disputes raised in the evidence", but explained that he did not "find this case to be a suitable vehicle for proposing findings and remedies aimed at specific editors".
This dispute, between Cirt and Jayen466, is also nearing completion.
The committee passed relatively standard principles on collegiality, maintaining a neutral point of view, undue weight, biographies of living people, and fair criticism and personal attacks. A more atypical principle on "bias and prejudice", which passed only 6–4, argues that editors should avoid "engaging in a pattern of editing that focuses on a specific racial, religious, or ethnic group and can reasonably be perceived as gratuitously endorsing or promoting stereotypes[, bias or prejudice]." Concerns that the new principle judges "outcome rather than methodology" were raised by one arbitrator who argued "NPOV contributions that use RS'es" should not be rejected merely because of the subject matter of their edit, writing that "if one is to observe that in America, Asians tend to be better educated than whites, is that promoting a stereotype against white people?". Concerns were also raised about the principle applying to religious groups; some anti-religious editors, particularly those focusing on fringe groups, arguably do very necessary work fighting bias, but yet could be said to be evincing their own "bias and prejudice against the members of the group". Another arbitrator wrote that "there are plenty of hypersensitive people on Wikipedia floating around any topic of high emotional content. What such editors sincerely believe to be [so] may [in fact] be dispassionate, NPOV editing." Another arbitrator, clarifying the wording, said, "Work done by the words 'gratuitously' and 'invidious' should not be underestimated; legitimate criticism of any group or individual, consistent with applicable policies, is not proscribed."
Both proposed findings of fact are in the process of passing. Cirt was found to have placed undue weight on negative issues in BLPs and articles on new religious movements using poor sources, which he had previously admitted. Jayen466 was found to have engaged in inappropriate conduct in respect of Cirt, primarily by being over-focused on Cirt's editing and by being indiscriminate in his accusations about Cirt.
Remedies that have passed so far include a topic ban prohibiting Cirt from making any edit to articles relating to new religious movements or their adherents, and another restriction prohibiting Cirt from editing any article that is substantially the biography of a living person where (1) the notability of the BLP subject relates to politics, religion, or social controversy, or (2) the subject of the edit relates to politics, religion, or social controversy. A proposed remedy to desysop Cirt, introduced late in the process, is being voted on. Interaction between Cirt and Jayen466 will be restricted. Administrators have been authorized to enforce the restrictions with blocks starting at up to one month in length and the committee has reserved the right to desysop with a simple motion in the future.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-09-05/Humour
