The Wikimedia Foundation's report covering its activities during the month of August has been published on the Wikimedia blog. Among those items not to have received coverage in earlier editions of The Signpost is the publication of a final list of projects completed as part of the Wikimedia Summer of Research (WSoR) scheme, which ended in August (a Summary of Findings has since been compiled). In similar news, an update was given about the Kaggle Data competition, where teams were asked to "predict the number of edits a Wikipedia editor will make, based on a training dataset" in order to share in a cash prize (see previous Signpost coverage). According to the report, the competition, which is drawing to a close, has attracted "79 teams, 167 participants and 743 submissions".
The Foundation was also active in its pursuit of a more global editor base during August. For example, the report describes how the Head of Global South Relationships, Asaf Bartov, visited Kenya for four days. During the trip he delivered "five public talks on university campuses in Nairobi and Mombasa as well as a tech outreach talk at the Nairobi iHub". He also led a workshop for local Wikimedians and scouted out potential local partners for a more substantial expansion into Kenya. In addition, the WMF Engineering department investigated the possibilities of the USSD protocol in facilitating mobile browsing (an issue also covered in this week's "Technology report"). Meanwhile, the report announced the start of an Education Program in Canada, to which 1700 students are signed up, and a $40,000+ support package for a WikiConference in Mumbai in November (further information is available via foundation-l).
The monthly report also gives publicity to the activities of departments who do not otherwise receive it. For example, the human resources department noted that although it was still behind its target for hiring new staff, it has been able to close the gap, whilst it was also reported that the legal department would be receiving four legal interns, and it was "happy to have their support" in the next few months. According to the report, it has also recently engaged with two external firms: MarkMonitor, to help it track registration of trademark-infringing domain names (for example, cases of typosquatting; see previous Signpost coverage) and Californian law firm Hiaring Smith, to help it manage its existing portfolio of trademarks both in the United States and abroad. The legal teams also finalised the Foundation's internal legal policies during August.
In addition to the Hungarian Wikipedia's 200,000 articles, mentioned above, the following projects also reached major milestones:
I didn’t necessarily expect to feel vivid, spontaneous emotions about the 9/11 attacks on this 10th anniversary. I suspected that too much time had passed, that 10 more years in journalism had only given me that much more cynical, objective distance.
But of all things it was a simple Wikipedia timeline of 9/11 that got to me. It turned out to be rather effective at dredging up one of the scariest feelings from that horrible day a decade ago: the enormous, unprecedented scale of the attacks combined with too little information from one minute to the next to be able to guess how much bigger the disaster might get.
I literally felt my heart thud-a-thump faster and faster in my chest as I read down the Wikipedia page.
On the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Noam Cohen of The New York Times explores the mentality and perspectives behind Wikipedia's portrayal of the topic, and specifically the concerted effort to omit mention of the conspiracy theories that appear only in the fringes of the international media portrayal of the attacks. In particular, Cohen, who often writes about Wikipedia, highlighted the distinct lack of links between the main article describing the attacks and the article on the conspiracy theories that dispute the widely accepted version of events. Indeed, as Cohen writes, "there is no description of the celebrities who have endorsed the view; no mention of poll results on the subject that show some support among the public; no account, even, of the attraction of conspiracy theories in a time of crisis".
As Cohen admits, not everyone is happy with the status quo, which is distantly removed from the consensus reached on other articles such as that describing the Rorschach test. He quotes User:Arthur Rubin, who argues that although those who believe the conspiracy theories are pushing against the consensus, the phenomenon deserves coverage. "Although the theories are fringe," wrote Rubin, "the fact that there are theories is a mainstream phenomenon." In related news, the state of links to a special "Sep11" wiki created in the aftermath of the attacks was discussed on the wikitech-l mailing list. As of time of writing, the domain name sep11.wikimedia.org redirects to the correct target (the Internet Archive) but URLs of the form http://sep11.wikimedia.org/wiki/ do not.
Independent branding agency Moving Brands have unveiled a redesign of the Wikipedia logo, after being invited by Viewpoint Magazine to participate in their Brand Lab initiative. Asked to showcase their skills through a hypothetical redesign of a global brand, Moving Brands selected Wikipedia, based on "an initial assumption that they provided an incredible, free learning resource but were hampered with a weak brand and a ubiquitous but unimpassioned following". The Wikipedia redesign resulted in a minimalist "W"-logo made of five interconnected lines, drawing on the project's five pillars concept (mockups are available on Flickr). The consultancy identified Wikipedia's failure as an inability thus far to "communicate its own story, its offer and its role in capturing, building and disseminating global knowledge".
The analysis prompted discussion on the foundation-l mailing list about Wikimedia as a brand. Whilst there was little support for the specific logo that MovingBrands had designed, there was agreement with their analysis of the image issues Wikimedia faces, including the integration of Wikipedia and its sister projects into a single brand. "Wikipedia has a strong, widely recognizable brand, while the sister projects and the Foundation [itself] don't", wrote Orionist, while Michael Snow suggested that logo redesign, although an attractive move for other companies, was ill-suited to Wikipedia, given that the existing globe logo is well-known. Instead, respondents on the list felt that more obvious links to sister projects were the key to a more integrated Wikimedia family.
This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Australian Politics. Started in May 2005, the project has built up a collection of over 8,000 pages, including 12 pieces of featured content and 17 Good and A-class Articles. Like many topics related to Australia, WikiProject Australian Politics is supported by a parameter of WikiProject Australia's unified banner template. The project is also related to WikiProject Australian Law and WikiProject Australian History. We interviewed seven of the project's members.
Pete (Skyring) is from Canberra, home to the parliament of Australia. While not as active as he once was, he still keeps an eye on political subjects because "living in the national capital, federal politics is as present as the weather to me." He deplores biased coverage of political parties and politicians, including editors wrangling over trivial information like former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd eating his own earwax.
Orderinchaos joined in 2006 when he noticed massive gaps in the coverage of several states as well as at the federal level. He admits "there's still a *long* way to go, but a lot of the foundations are there now." He thinks this project differs from others he's worked on because "it's more like a meeting space than a workgroup – several of us are or have been very very active in one area and we use the space to ask questions, raise issues or ideas, or bring anomalies to a wider audience."
Roisterer describes himself as "an Adelaide lad" but he was working as a journalist in New Zealand when he first joined Wikipedia in 2004. He studied Australian politics at university "so it was logical to work on politics articles (although I tend to stick to long-dead politicians to lessen the danger of getting embroiled in disputes)."
When Frickeg joined in early 2007, he was upset by gaps in coverage of federal politics, particularly the large number of redlinks for politicians. He's focused considerably on politics at the federal level and in New South Wales.
Canley has always been interested in politics in general and Australian politics in particular "so it was pretty much inevitable I would gravitate to this project." He sees additional challenges in improving Australian topics because "we don't have the luxury of public domain government works and images, so there's a lot more work to do to get decent articles and photos going." Despite the challenges, he enjoys doing research, "whether it's popping into the library or delving into online references such as Trove and Picture Australia, government gazettes or election and parliamentary data." He agree with Pete that "there is a tendency towards trivia and recentism, but that's pretty much the case everywhere."
Satu (SatuSuro) feels that the "ground level Local Government politics in Australia" are not covered well by both the Australian mainstream media and by Wikipedia. Because "most editors appear to be interested in the big picture, national level" he hopes to elaborate on "the forces and the issues in political activity at local government" and the many regional issues that tend to be under-reported.
Nick-D is from Canberra and began contributing to Wikipedia in November 2005. He is also an active member of WikiProject Military History and many of the Featured and Good Articles he helped build are related to the Australian military.
The last time the WikiProject Report featured a project covering Australia was in 2007 and many Australian projects are semi-active or inactive. Do you feel that Australia is under-represented on the English Wikipedia? What are some difficulties faced by Australian WikiProjects?
Australia's political system shares similarities with Britain's Westminster parliamentary system and the federal system of the United States. Has there been any sharing of information, templates, or expertise with WikiProjects or individual editors from outside Australia?
Did WikiProject Australian Politics undertake any special initiatives during the 2010 federal election? Is there work still to be done updating articles after the election? Are there any steps being taken to prepare for the next election?
The project is home to 12 Featured Articles and Lists, 15 Good and A-class Articles, and a variety of Featured Pictures. Have you contributed to any of these articles or images? What are some challenges of bringing Australia-related content to featured status?
What are the project's most pressing needs? How can Wikipedians living inside and outside Australia help the project's efforts?
Anything else you'd like to add?
Next week, we'll find a better excuse than "my dog ate it." Until then, visit the library's secret archive while you're cutting class.
Reader comments
* Nanga Parbat (nom; related article), also known as the "killer mountain" for the number of climbers who have died trying to conquer it, is displayed at the top. At 8,125 metres (26,658 ft), it's the ninth-highest peak in the world and the second-highest in Pakistan, and forms the western anchor of the Himalayan Range. The image includes a clear view of several glaciers.
Wikimedian User:Waqas.usman told The Signpost, "I took the component images of this panorama mid-afternoon on 28 June 2005, using a 35 mm Panasonic Lumix FZ15. The field of view—that is, the angle captured from left to right as you scroll across—is between 120º and 150º (the full 180º image consists of 17 images stitched together, but was reduced to provide a uniform horizontal dimension). The panorama shows the north face of Nanga Parbat from a point just north of the base camp. We later descended to the closest village, Beyal, which lies between Fairy Meadows camping ground and the base camp on this southbound trek.
"We arrived at this vantage point shortly after crossing the combined width of more than 500 metres (1600 ft) of the two glaciers you can see in the right half of the picture (Ganalo Glacier, and another referred to as 'Old Branch of Rakh Glacier' on Google Earth). In the left half of the image is the much bigger Rakhiot (Raikot) Glacier. This was at about 3,900 m (12,800 ft)—an altitude that takes several days to get used to, with the oxygen down to about 70% of its sea-level proportion; altitude sickness can be a real problem up there if you're not used to trekking that high. 35°14′15″N 74°35′21″E .
"The image might deceive you as to the real distances involved. The straight-line distance from us up to the peak of Nanga Parbat was about 8 kilometres (5 mi), with a gain in altitude was more than 4.2 kilometres (2.6 mi)! To get an idea of the scale, take a look at the image at full res: to the right of the left-side glacier, not far from the bottom of the image and below a patch of green, you can just make out a small brick-and-mortar shelter—a pretty decent sized building, probably more than 3 × 4 m (10 × 15 ft). To its left is a tiny light-blue object, which is a two-to-three-person tent. The hut and tent were probably about 1.5 kilometres (close to a mile) from where I set up the camera."
* Arnold Genthe: autochrome nude (nom; related article). Arnold Genthe was an early exponent of Autochrome Lumière, the principal colour photography process in use before the advent of "subtractive" colour film in the mid-1930s. Patented in 1903 and first marketed in 1907, the autochrome was loaded into the camera with the bare glass side facing the lens, so that the light passed through the mosaic filter layer before reaching the emulsion—a completely different method from black-and-white plates.
This image, displayed at the right, was edited before nomination by Chick Bowen, who explained the rationale and the process: "We do not have a single featured autochrome, nor do we have a single photographic nude, nor anything by Genthe, who was one of the best-known California photographers before Adams." Chick Bowen set out to overcome what he called "this triple oversight" by choosing this image for artistic reasons. "As nudes go, I feel this one makes particularly clear the goals of modernist, artistic nude photography; the circular form with one hand over the head calls to mind the famous Edward Weston picture of Bertha Wardell. It also shows the way the imprecise color of an autochrome can be an aesthetic strength." This was a tricky edit, apparently (here is the original).
"Autochromes have a typical grid-like chromatic pattern, which is visible in a high-resolution scan of the plate, but this wasn't the way they were traditionally viewed (which was in a small handheld viewer, sort of like half a stereoscope). To reduce the obviousness of this pattern, I applied a very slight blur and downscaled a little bit."
Three other images were promoted, and can be viewed in medium size by clicking on "nom":
* Marabou Stork (nom; related article), a massive bird species that probably reaches a height of 150 cm (60 in) and weighs more than 9 kg (20 lbs), with a wingspan of at least 3.5 m (10.5 ft). This specimen was photographed in Mikumi National Park, Tanzania by User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim in June. It breeds in Africa south of the Sahara, occurring in both wet and arid habitats, often near human habitation, especially waste tips. It is sometimes called the "undertaker bird", due to its shape from behind: cloak-like wings and back, skinny white legs, and sometimes, a large white mass of "hair."
* Crowned Lapwing (nom; related article), with its characteristic black crown intersected by an annular white halo. The species occurs from the Red Sea coast of Somalia to southern and southwestern Africa. It is adaptable and numerous, with bold and noisy habits. (Created by User:Muhammad Mahdi Karim)
* Pied Oystercatchers (nom; related article), taken at Austin's Ferry, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia (created by User:JJ Harrison, who says, "The one on the left has just flicked a small mussel towards its mouth.").
Five articles were promoted to featured status:
* 1991 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), the first season in over 24 years in which no hurricanes[nb 1] developed from tropical waves, which are the source for most North Atlantic tropical cyclones. Nevertheless, the season featured Hurricane Bob, which at the time was among the ten costliest US hurricanes, caused billions of dollars in damage, mostly in Massachusetts, and 17 deaths. (Nominated by Hurricanehink)
* Northrop YF-23 (nom), a single-seat, twin-engine fighter aircraft designed for the United States Air Force in the 1980s. An unconventional-looking aircraft, it had diamond-shaped wings, a profile with substantial area-ruling to reduce drag at supersonic speeds, and an all-moving V-tail. The cockpit was placed high, near the nose of the aircraft. The aircraft featured a tricycle landing gear configuration with a nose landing gear and two main landing gear. (Sp33dyphil) Picture at right
* Caroline of Ansbach (nom), 1683–1737, the queen consort of King George II of Great Britain. She put up with his mistresses, and became involved in generational family rows among the Hanoverians. She and Robert Walpole—the first British prime minister—were credited with jointly exerting great control over the King. (Ruby2010 and DrKiernan)
* USS Constellation vs La Vengeance (nom), an action between frigates of the French and US navies during the Quasi-War, in 1800. The battle resulted in severe damage to La Vengeance, which was forced to flee. (XavierGreen)
* SMS Grosser Kurfürst (1913) (nom), the second battleship of the four-ship König class. Grosser Kurfürst served in the German Imperial Navy during World War I. Her name refers to Frederick William I, the Prince-elector of Brandenburg. (Parsecboy)
Two featured articles were delisted:
* Point Park Civic Center (nom: referencing, prose, and lead).
* T-34 (nom: referencing, comprehensiveness, and image compliance)
Three lists were promoted:
* List of NK Maribor seasons (nom) (Nominated by Ratipok.)
* List of Florida Marlins team records (nom) (Albacore.)
* List of World Heritage in Danger (nom) (Bamse.) Picture at right
Two cases are currently open:
There are pending requests for clarification for three cases: Transcendental Meditation movement (since August 26), Digwuren (since August 24), and Ireland article names (since August 19). There are also two cases with pending requests for amendment: Race and intelligence (since September 3) and Russavia-Biophys.
The two-year-old date-delinking case, concerning the automated removal of date-autoformatting in articles while the relevant WP:MOSNUM guideline was still in flux, has now been amended. Ohconfucius, who was sanctioned in the original case, requested that the last remaining sanctions be removed, arguing they were outdated and that this was a matter of simple housekeeping. Arbitrator opinion was cautious: Jclemens wrote that "The last time we lifted sanctions on an editor sanctioned under this case, I regretted it, because the future behavior in the area was problematic." Risker was strongly of the view that "this should be going in the opposite direction". However, Xeno felt that, if there were any current issues, they appeared to be outside of the intent of the original sanctions and agreed with Ohconfucius that rescinding those was simply housekeeping—an opinion that carried the day 8 to 5.
In addition to the remedies covered last week, Cirt has also been desysopped (for "admitted violations of the neutral point of view and biographies of living people policies"), but may reapply for adminship by filing a new request for adminship at any time. This additional remedy eventually passed 6 to 5 in support; Cirt has since said that he is "not considering" applying for his admin bit back at this time.
The committee announced today that they were seeking applications from suitably qualified users to serve on the CheckUser and Oversight teams. Editors were encouraged to self-nominate by emailing arbcom-en-b
lists.wikimedia.org. The application period is scheduled to close on 18 September 2011; then the committee will review the applications to decide which candidates will move forward to the community consultation phase. Of note, the committee indicated that due to "increasing activity from the South Asian, Southeast Asian, or Middle Eastern regions, CheckUser applications are particularly sought from people ... familiar with the ISPs and typical editing patterns of any of these regions." Further information on the process is available on a special 2011 CheckUser/Oversight appointments page.
Reader comments
Wikimedia Labs: soon to be at the cutting edge of MediaWiki development?
23 April 2012
MediaWiki 1.20wmf01 hits first WMF wiki, understanding 20% time, and why this report cannot yet be a draft
16 April 2012
What is: agile development? and new mobile site goes live
12 September 2011
The bugosphere, new mobile site and MediaWiki 1.18 close in on deployment
29 August 2011
Code Review backlog almost zero; What is: Subversion?; brief news
18 July 2011
Wikimedia down for an hour; What is: Wikipedia Offline?
30 May 2011
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
25 April 2011
What is: localisation?; the proposed "personal image filter" explained; and more in brief
21 March 2011
On Thursday, the WMF Fundraiser Engineering team posted an update on how preparations for this year's fundraiser were progressing. They reported recent improvements in logging changes to CentralNotices, expanding the number of payment providers (for example, to allow donations in more currencies to be accepted), general bugfixes and other improvements. According to the team's project tracking software, Mingle, progress this year has resulted in at least 22 additional features (known as "cards") being implemented. With a number of tests and trials already being run, the advanced state of the project prompted the WMF's Philippe Beaudette publicly to commend the seven-person team, describing them as "enormously talented young... men and women".
Perhaps more controversially, the Fundraiser Engineering team have been trialling a development framework as yet uncommon in Wikimedia cycles. "Agile development" focusses on short iterations, each including their own design and production stages, improving the product iteratively. Iterations, known as sprints, are separated by retrospectives during which problems are analysed. The benefit of such a scheme, agility, can be described as responsiveness to changing requirements and priorities as designers, software engineers and managers work (normally literally) side-by-side. By contrast, under the waterfall model, the incumbent framework at Wikimedia, product changes are put through a lengthy but comprehensive design process before coding begins. In doing so, requirements are fixed early, tasks divided between teams and deadlines set; not so with agile development, now in use in Fundraiser Engineering, supported by Mingle. Although early signs look promising, critics of the agile development framework will no doubt wait for the fundraiser to come and go before judging its success.
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| — The Agile manifesto | ||
Since Thursday, a percentage of visitors to Wikimedia's mobile site will have experienced a slightly different browsing experience. The old Ruby site has been converted into a newer PHP implementation that replicates the existing feature set. Nonetheless, the extension was built not merely to mimic, but to entirely surpass, existing functionality. New features, such as basic editing and uploading interfaces, are scheduled for next year; at the moment, visitors wishing to edit must transfer to the main site, which is not customised for display on slow connections and small screen sizes. The new extension is also built to take better advantage of Wikimedia's existing technical infrastructure in order to filter out and handle requests from mobile devices more effectively.
As such, the project forms an important part of the Foundation's vision of expanding its editor base into "Global South" countries such as Brazil and India, where mobile phone (and mobile Internet) usage can be considerably higher than traditional forms of Internet access. As a result, "Wikimedia should have a strategy that allows Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects to be easily read and edited using mobile technology" according to the Foundation's white paper. The white paper, published in March this year, outlined ways of achieving the targets outlined in its five-year plan, including halting the decline in the number of editors.
The English Wikipedia served approximately 580 million pages customised for display on mobile devices last month, up more than 90% compared to August 2010 (full statistics). Since the switch was made, a number of bug fixes have also gone live (a full list of bugs found in the new extension, and possible new features, is also available).
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.
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Rd232 was an active editor and administrator on the English Wikipedia from late 2004 until August 2011, when he retired. The following humorous poem reflects the experiences and interactions of new users and the established community, and was written shortly after retirement from the project.
The views expressed are those of the author only. Other editors will often leave opposing views and potential corrections in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds. If you have one in mind, please leave a message at the opinion desk.
With apologies to Lewis Carroll (The Walrus and the Carpenter)
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The Walrus and the Carpenter "If seven maids with seven mops "O Readers, come and walk with us!" The eldest reader looked at him. But four young newbies hurried up, Four other newbies followed them, The Walrus and the Carpenter "The time has come," the Walrus said,
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"But wait a bit," the newbies cried, "A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "But not on us!" the newbies cried, "It was so kind of you to come! "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "I weep for you," the Walrus said. "O newbies," said the Carpenter. |
