Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/In the media
| “ | They [mobile screens] really require us to do something that we haven't had to do as much on desktops: they require us to focus. | ” |
| — Director of Mobile and Special Projects Tomasz Finc | ||
This week saw the unveiling of some preliminary designs for Athena (named after the Greek goddess of "wisdom, courage [and] inspiration"), a new skin likely to sit at the heart of the revamped mobile site, but with possible connotations for the desktop site as well.
With the new mobile site rapidly becoming as feature rich as the desktop versions, there was a need for a design that could accommodate them in a usable fashion; the existing Vector skin, designed primarily with high resolution screens in mind, is largely unsuitable for this application. It is on this basis that Athena was created; if successful, it may even prove a successor to Vector on the desktop too.
The slick design (illustrated right) aims to pare down the number of features immediately offered to users in order to creating a page with a high usability factor on smaller screen sizes. When a device signals it has some additional capability, such as a larger screen, the design will then automatically adjust to provide a more useful display: a process being described as "graceful enabling" in contrast to the traditional model of "graceful degradation".
The new design for the mobile site would therefore follow an increasing trend among websites (such as YouTube) and programs (such as Mozilla Firefox) to group important actions together whilst hiding lesser used actions by default, particularly on mobile devices. The design, which is likely to be revised on the basis of user comments in the coming weeks, also aims to give greater visual focus to the edit button to encourage contributions.
With submissions closing on 9 November, the results of the first Wikimedia Coding Challenge (see previous Signpost coverage) are in. Five submissions met the submission requirements for the mobile uploading challenge; ten entries were accepted for "making Wikipedia appear more alive" challenge; and eight for the slideshow challenge. A further three submissions were rejected solely on the grounds of not providing enough supporting evidence in the form of a readme (full list of accepted submissions).
Reporting on the submissions, Erik Möller noted that there were "definitely a few that are worth a closer look". Nonetheless, there will no doubt be at least a little feeling of anticlimax about the contest, which had seen 500 potential entrants sign up within the first 24 hours. Even among submissions, quality varied, and there were a handful that looked as if little or no development work had been done to tailor standard code to the intricacies of the competition requirements. Nonetheless, developers and non-developers alike will take heart from both the high quality of a number of submissions, and the fact that so many potential coders signalled an interest, yielding many possible contacts when it came to expanding the developer base 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.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/Opinion
Nominations for the ninth annual elections to the Arbitration Committee have now opened, and will remain so for approximately a week (closing 23:59 UTC Monday, 21 November). Any editor is eligible to run as a candidate provided they meet the requirements for voters (at least 150 mainspace edits with their registered account by 1 November 2011), are in good standing and not subject to active blocks or site-bans, meet the Wikimedia Foundation's criteria for access to non-public data, and are prepared to identify to the Foundation if elected, and disclose any alternate accounts (barring those which have been declared to the Arbitration Committee prior to the close of nominations) in their nomination statements. At the time of writing, four eligible candidates have stepped forward, two of whom have served multiple terms on the Committee: AGK, Coren, Hersfold, and Kirill Lokshin.
The elections are run by the community independent of the Committee and its clerks; editors interested in helping to organise the elections are encouraged to sign up as volunteer coordinators. Election pages have been created, incorporating nomination statements, a guide to the candidates, questions for those running, links to individual voter guides and discussion pages. The 10-day nomination period (12–21 November) will be followed by five "fallow" days (up from two last year) to ensure all election pages are complete and accurate, to configure the SecurePoll voting interface, and to allow voters additional time to research, discuss and pose questions to candidates.
The voting period will last 14 days (27 November – 10 December), up from 10 days last year. The vote will then be audited for up to a week by independent scrutineers drawn from the ranks of non-native stewards, to ensure the election is free of double-voting, sockpuppetting, and other irregularities. The results will be announced on the election page. Jimbo Wales is expected to ceremonially announce the appointments shortly after.
A well-attended community RfC established the Committee's numbers as 15 (down from 18 in 2011 and 2010), with a uniform two-year term for incoming arbitrators. Due to an extraordinary last-minute motion by the Committee to remove a sitting arbitrator, Iridescent, for inactivity, eight arbitrators are due to continue their service in 2012 without re-election. Seven vacant seats are expected to be filled by this year's election, with terms starting on 1 January 2012.
The RfC determined that the minimum level of support necessary for a successful candidacy will be 50%, and that a shortfall in successful candidacies would be acceptable, opening the door to the possibility that the Committee will begin the new year with fewer than 15 arbitrators. Another conclusion of the RfC was that that unlike last year's election, there will be no limit on the number of questions voters may ask of candidates (although replying is not mandatory), and that any serious voter guide will merit inclusion in the election navigational template.
The Arbitration Committee is a critical institution of the English Wikipedia; experienced and committed editors are urged to seriously consider standing for election.
Asaf Bartov, head of Global South Relationships, announced the finalization of a Wikimedia Participation Grants Program this week. In his post, Bartov explained that "Wikipedians can often make additional progress toward our vision of free knowledge freely available for everyone in the world, by participating in physical meetings, events, or conferences. Such participation often entails travel costs, and sometimes accommodation, visa, and other costs too. These costs are often prohibitively expensive for a volunteer’s personal budget, who is already donating valuable time and effort."
The new program, funded jointly by the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Germany (see the German chapter's post), aims to alleviate this cost by providing Participation Grants for community members to "cover travel, accommodation, registration, and other costs associated with participating in an event or activity, in furtherance of the Wikimedia Mission." Other self-sustaining Wikimedia chapters (ie. not funded by the Foundation) are also invited to contribute to the community "pool."
This program is similar to the general grant program, which funded 44 projects in 2010–2011 totaling $300,000. To receive a Community Grant, members must apply at Grants:Participation by creating a subpage with a description of their planned participation, background information about themselves, and the expected impact of their participation. The submissions are evaluated on a weekly basis by a special committee; in addition to the open process outlined on the page, participants must also send an e-mail to participation at wikimedia dot org with their full legal name. If their request is accepted, participants are also expected to write an open report describing their experiences with the program. A list of current and closed requests, from when the process was still in the works, can be found here.
In a continuation of its analysis of this year's Readers Survey, the Wikimedia Foundation has posted its results on reader perceptions of quality on Wikipedia. The overall quality of Wikipedia was graded based on five individual measures on a 10-point scale:
These results were then compiled into a Quality Perception Index, shown above. The global QPI average (the survey was administered in 16 countries) is 7.92 out of 10. Readers in predominantly English-speaking countries (US, Canada, UK, South Africa, Australia and India), where 94% or more of respondents used the English Wikipedia, were above average with an 8.02; as compared to other areas, with 7.85. Japan "was a definite exception, with only 16% of the readers reporting similar ratings." How readers compared Wikipedia to other top websites is next on the agenda.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/In focus
Two cases remain open:
Three requests for cases are also outstanding:
However at this time it looks like all of them will be declined. No clarification or amendment requests were finalized this week, with the possible exception of the Russavia-Biophys request that has been refiled as request for case.
This week also saw the opening of nominations in the ninth annual elections to the Arbitration Committee (see "News and notes"). Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/Humour
