Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/In the media
With the dust settled from the first two phases of the deployment of MediaWiki version 1.18, on October 4 the full rollout programme began. Since small but technically interesting wikis had been the focus of the first two phases, only 2% of traffic had been routed through MediaWiki 1.18; now, all visitors and editors will be able to take advantage of its new features, which include support for gender-specific user pages and better directionality support for RTL languages. According to a post on the Wikimedia blog, progress with the final phase was slightly slower than anticipated but still good, with the French, Polish and English Wikipedias, along with Wikimedia Commons, having their version of MediaWiki updated within the first four hour window. Other wikis were then transferred during secondary windows on October 5 and 6.
The deployment did not go perfectly, however, and a number of bugs have since been discovered with 1.18; as of time of writing, approximately 40 open ones are currently being tracked under the auspices of bugmeister Mark Hershberger, although few are serious. The list of bugs reported but not yet fixed includes problems with the watchlist API (bug #31526), the localisation update system (bug #31559) and the display of <math>...</math> (bug #31442). Responding to the relatively high volume of bugs found despite a recent emphasis on improving Wikimedia and MediaWiki's pre-release test infrastructure, Hershberger appealed for help in writing unit and/or parser tests for key bug fixes to ensure that regressions are spotted more quickly in the future. If this is the case when 1.19 nears deployment (currently scheduled for late this year), the whole process would be likely to pass off "a *lot* smoother", wrote Hershberger (wikitech-l mailing list).
https support comes to Wikimedia wikisAlso announced this week was the https switchover. Writing for the Wikimedia Foundation blog, operations engineer Ryan Lane said that the secure.wikimedia.org domain had been officially deprecated. Lane advised security-conscious visitors to simply change http to https in their URL instead to take advantage of new functionality which has taken months of planning to achieve (including the introduction of protocol-relative URLs). In addition to a noticeable speed improvement over its secure.wikimedia.org forerunner, Lane was clear on the benefits of the switchover to full https functionality:
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The deployment of new https functionality was commended by many commentators; one wrote that "the lack of proper HTTPS" support had in his eyes been a long-standing issue with the site. At time of writing, support for secure browsing on the mobile site has not yet been enabled (bug #31333) – there are no plans to enable mobile support until the mobile and non-mobile sites are fully merged – but the core support for non-mobile devices outlined by Lane in his blogpost at least appears to be working correctly. HTTPS Everywhere, a popular browser add-on designed to make it easier to use the secure version of a website where it exists, is in the process of being updated to take advantage of the new format (wikitech-l mailing list).
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.
This week, Tomasz Finc, the WMF's Director of Mobile and Special Projects, issued a call for potential app developers for the Google Android operating system, whilst developer Jack Phoenix appealed for help with the Video extension.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/Opinion
The Wikimedia Foundation announced this week that they have received a $3.6 million grant from the Stanton Foundation. According to the press release from the Foundation, the funding will go to support development of the long-awaited visual editor and other technical improvements including the addition of editing facilities to the new Wikimedia mobile site. The grant can also be put towards any project that "make[s] Wikimedia a friendlier and more understandable environment for new editors".
| “ | The Stanton Foundation is a long-time funder of the Wikimedia Foundation, and I am thrilled they're increasing their investment in us. The Stanton Foundation was one of the first institutions to recognize that Wikipedia is a serious educational endeavour that's having a significant impact on people around the world. I will always be grateful to them for taking a risk in first funding us, many years ago." | ” |
| — Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation | ||
The $1.2 million grant in 2010 from the Stanton Foundation helped fund the Public Policy Initiative and a 2008 grant of $890,000 helped fund usability improvements. This week's $3.6 million donation is the largest ever to have been received by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/In focus
The Arbitration Committee closed one case this week, Senkaku Islands. Another case, Abortion, is still pending before the Committee.
Senkaku Islands has closed, a month and a half after it was originally filed by Qwyrxian. Two parties were topic banned, Tenmei indefinitely and Bobthefish2 for a year, and the former was also banned from Wikipedia for a year; Arbitrators cited the editor's past Arbitration sanctions in another topic area in the decision. Unusually, the Committee also considered an indefinite ban for the editor; but while five Arbitrators supported it, they did so only as an less-favored alternative to the 1 year ban. STSC was given a warning.
Standard discretionary sanctions were also authorized for the Senkaku Islands topic area, marking the sixth time in the past twelve months that the Committee has authorized discretionary sanctions. In contrast, from October 10, 2009 to October 10, 2010, the Committee only placed a topic on discretionary sanctions three times. The case also marked the first time the Arbitration Committee has devolved the authority to place discretionary sanctions; any "uninvolved administrator may, after a warning given a month prior, place any set of pages relating to a territorial dispute of islands in East Asia, broadly interpreted, under standard discretionary sanctions for six months if the editing community is unable to reach consensus on the proper names to be used to refer to the disputed islands."[nb 1]
Public commenting on the candidates for checkuser and oversight functionaries (see previous Signpost coverage) has concluded, and the Committee is expected to release its decision on who it is appointing by October 15. This deadline has been pushed back several times in previous stages of the appointment process; the decision date was originally to be October 5. The list of candidates that ArbCom is considering is:
The Committee also received two requests for clarification, one on WikiProject Conservatism (which was filed as a case request)[1] and the other on the propriety of administrators overturning unblocks by the Arbitration Committee. It closed two other clarification requests, one on the naming of Ireland articles and the other on Eastern Europe. The Committee also continued to consider a request for amendment by William M. Connolley, who had filed a request lifting removal of sanctions imposed on him in Climate change. As of publication, an unusually high number of 24 other editors had commented on the request, most of whom had been previously involved with William M. Connolley or the topic area in some form. The Committee received an additional amendment request from mediator Steven Zhang, who requested that two editors recently topic banned at Arbitration Enforcement be allowed to continue editing a mediation discussion page. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-10-10/Humour
