Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/In the media
The Wikimedia Foundation's Engineering Report for September 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. Many of the projects mentioned have been covered in The Signpost, including the switchover to protocol-relative URLs, the release of the new mobile site, and the ongoing deployment of 1.18 to Wikimedia wikis. The report's writers also chose to highlight a new roadmap of what the development team will be working on over the coming months (although the map appears considerably incomplete at time of writing).
Also announced were the successful replication of article text data from the WMF's main bank of servers, in Tampa, Florida, to the new data centre in Ashburn, Virginia; the first trials of basic Wikimedia Labs functionality; that the WMF was looking into ways of accepting text-based reviews of articles in addition to the current system of star rankings; and a recent overhaul to the system of gadgets (which will, it is hoped, allow for a WMF shared gadget repository). A test wiki that ran the very latest MediaWiki revisions (to emulate a process known as continuous integration, which Wikimedia hopes to adopt as a standard in the near future) is expected in early October, with full https support later in the month.
It was not all positive news, however. Also mentioned in the report, under the heading "lowlights", was the results of an investigation into three short outages that occurred on 26 September. The investigation concluded that the first was caused by an important cable being "accidentally knocked loose" during separate maintenance work (proposed solution: add more redundancy to the older server racks), that the second was caused by the 1.18 upgrade affecting the database cluster responsible for the CentralAuth login functionality (solution: potentially give it its own cluster), and that the third was caused by a combination of the 1.18 upgrade and a series of particularly expensive database queries being run at the time (solution: kill queries more effectively in future).
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.
siteparams option of its API.Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Opinion
Editors of the Italian Wikipedia have shut the site down in protest against a law currently going through the Italian parliament. User:Vituzzu, an editor on Italian Wikipedia, explained the reasons behind the debate:
Today, unfortunately, the very pillars on which Wikipedia has been built – neutrality, freedom, and verifiability of its contents – are likely to be sunk permanently by paragraph 29 of an Italian Law also known as "DDL interception".
This legislative reform proposal, which the Italian Parliament is debating currently, provides, among other things, a requirement to all websites to publish, within 48 hours of the request without comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to their image. Unfortunately, the law does not require an evaluation of the claim by an impartial third judge: the opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required in order to impose such correction to any website.
Conversely, anyone who feels offended by any contents published on a blog, an online newspaper and most likely, even on Wikipedia, can directly request the removal of such contents and its permanent replacement with a "corrected" version, aimed to contradict and disprove the allegedly harmful contents, regardless of the veracity of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources.
Discussion in the "Bar" (equivalent to the English Wikipedia's Village Pump) resulted in broad support from editors for a "blackout", with all pages redirected to a page based on Vituzzu's words. This was done on October 4 and is still in force as of publishing time. The blackout has received some mainstream attention from various international news outlets; notable English-language reports include the BBC and the Washington Post. The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) issued an official statement supporting the Italian Wikipedians. In notable individual reactions from the Foundation-l mailing list, Sue Gardner tentatively supported the move, and Mike Godwin, the former legal counsel for the WMF, applauded the news, saying "It's very hard to get a government to change its mind. You have to challenge government officials in a big, dramatic (and usually longer-lasting) way to get their attention and make them responsive." However, there were also dissenting views. Kat Walsh, a WMF board member, believed that a complete blackout may have been going too far:
I agree that for a protest to be effective, it must cause real disruption, enough to cause people to see the effect and get attention. I'm not even sure what I would suggest as an alternative--perhaps a shorter duration of complete blackout, and a gigantic sitenotice afterward (or beforehand)? Advertising the existence of mirrors? Allowing people to access articles in a tiny window below a gigantic notice? I'm not sure. I think the action that was done may be too much, that maybe something could have been done to generate as much attention without cutting off access as much.
Discussion among community members is continuing at Meta's Wikimedia Forum.
For the second largest book fair in Europe, Swedish chapter Wikimedia Sverige produced three short films about why different target groups should edit Wikipedia. These films covered librarians, teachers and senior citizens respectively. Wikimedia Sverige has offered to help out anyone who wants a version in their own language. More information and localization efforts here.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/In focus
Two cases remain open, Abortion and Senkaku Islands; the second is very close to finished.
The Arbitration Committee is still seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates presented for appointment to the CheckUser and Oversight teams (see previous Signpost coverage). Comments concerning the suitability or unsuitability of the individual candidates may be made publicly or submitted privately via email to the committee until 23:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC). It is expected that by October 10 appointments will be announced from the list of approved candidates:
CheckUser: 28bytes • AGK • Courcelles • Elockid • HelloAnnyong • Keegan • Kww • Mentifisto • WilliamH
Oversight: Courcelles • Fluffernutter • WilliamH Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-03/Humour
