The Wikimedia Foundation, in a press release on January 16, 2012, announced that in an unprecedented decision, the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18.
SOPA and PIPA protest
In conjunction with the protest, a few designs for the blackout screen were proposed
The blackout is in protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. The press release stated that, "If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States."
The release goes on to say that, "Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1,800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a "blackout" of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support."
This discussion was confirmed on Monday afternoon with a public statement made on the SOPA initiative action page.
The release included a statement from Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, who said, "Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation... This is an extraordinary action for our community to take – and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."
The release ends by urging Wikipedia readers to make their voices heard: "If you live in the United States, find your elected representative in Washington (https://www.eff.org/sopacall). If you live outside the United States, contact your State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs or similar branch of government. Tell them you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and want the Internet to remain open and free."
The release was quickly followed by a blog posting by Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. In it, she says that, "In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them."
Gardner goes on to quote Wikimedia Foundation board member Kat Walsh, adding that, "Like Kat and the rest of the Wikimedia Foundation Board, I have increasingly begun to think of Wikipedia’s public voice, and the goodwill people have for Wikipedia, as a resource that wants to be used for the benefit of the public. Readers trust Wikipedia because they know that despite its faults, Wikipedia’s heart is in the right place. It’s not aiming to monetize their eyeballs or make them believe some particular thing, or sell them a product. Wikipedia has no hidden agenda: it just wants to be helpful."
On the reason as to why this is a global action, rather than U.S.-only? And why now, if some American legislators appear to be in tactical retreat on SOPA, she says, "The reality is that we don’t think SOPA is going away, and PIPA is still quite active. Moreover, SOPA and PIPA are just indicators of a much broader problem. All around the world, we’re seeing the development of legislation seeking to regulate the Internet in other ways while hurting our online freedoms. Our concern extends beyond SOPA and PIPA: they are just part of the problem. We want the Internet to remain free and open, everywhere, for everyone."
A footnote of the post urges U.S. citizens to take action, and to contact their representative to let them know that they oppose SOPA and PIPA.
Following the press release, a banner alerting users of the blackout appeared throughout the English Wikipedia.
The Wikimedia sister projects are the publicly available wikis operated by the Wikimedia Foundation (including yours truly, the Wikipedia). The "basic" sister projects are the Commons, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, Wiktionary. There's also the Wikimedia Foundation wiki itself; Meta, which coordinates and documents what the Foundation is doing; the Wikimedia Incubator, where people can start an alternative-language version of a project; MediaWiki, where the software that all of this runs on is discussed and improved; and the Outreach wiki, plus a few others. Let's take a glimpse into what's going on with two of these.
The Commons
The Commons is a database of more than 12 million freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. Well, almost freely usable – a person does have to follow the terms of the particular license that the image was contributed with (which might require attribution and may also include trademarks, patents, personality rights, moral rights, privacy rights, or any of the many other legal causes which are independent of copyright and vary greatly by jurisdiction). Leaving that aside, though, some fascinating things have happened on the Commons recently. For instance, the National Archives and Records Administration is basically turning over the National Archives of the U.S. to the Commons. Not to be outdone, premier.gov.ru and government.ru are now CC-BY licensed and thus everything on those sites can now be moved to the Commons as well (with attribution), which will greatly increase the availability of American and Russian documents and images. A few months ago, a Wikipedia Takes Your City was held in Montreal – the winners won a Nikon D3100 camera and $300 cash.
As I write this, there's a discussion going on about whether a given photograph on the Commons should be speedy deleted (or deleted at all) if a privacy request is made. For example, let's say that you are in the closet about something and you attend a related activity (perhaps you LARP or attend a Skinhead festival). One of your friends at this activity asks to take your picture and you agree. The friend then posts the pictures they took to their Flickr account, tagging them as public domain photos. Someone then moves it to the Commons, following all relevant procedures, and you later find yourself as the posterchild of a Wikipedia article, potentially outed to family, friends, and coworkers, potentially causing you great embarrassment. You contact your friend, they delete the photo, you contact the Commons, prove that it's really you, and ask to delete that copy of the image. Should the Commons delete the photograph?
Wiktionary
The English Wiktionary "aims to describe all words of all languages using definitions and descriptions in English" (topical since I'm writing this in English for the English Wikipedia). Thus, a given word which exists in multiple languages will feature multiple writeups on the same page. The word pancake, for instance, only really exists in the English language. The Spanish word for "pancake" is pancake (looking at the pancakes that most English speakers are used to, instead of crêpes). This is true for basically every language, so the pancake page is relatively spartan when compared to wikt:test, which has a considerable amount of text on the page since it exists in multiple languages. The tabbed language trial was meant to test a style of vertical compression which pushed all the foreign language variants into one bunch, navigable by tabs on the left. You can test this out for yourself by selecting "Enable Tabbed Languages" at wiktionary:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. The trial recently ended, with ongoing discussion at Wiktionary:Beer parlour#Tabbed Languages trial is over (amongst other places).
Australian "Wikimedians to the Games"
If you live in Australia, you'll be excited to hear about the History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia/Wikimedians to the Games initative (in cooperation with Wikinews, Wikipedia, the Commons, and Wikimedia Australia), a contest to send two Australian editors to London to cover the 2012 London games. If, like me, you don't live in Australia, you can only dream about what might otherwise have been possible.
Although the exact actions to be taken through the Wikipedia SOPA initiative are uncertain as of publication, there is general consensus for a single-day blackout on January 18, to coincide with similar actions by several other prominent sites. At the time of writing, the proposal for a full multinational blackout holds the widest support, with just under 500 editors in favour. Among the first to cover the story has been the CBS News site ("Wikipedia to join Web blackout protesting SOPA").
The Signpost asked the head of communications for the Wikimedia Foundation, Jay Walsh, what the significance is of acting in concert with other major sites? Will this really produce a politically effective message beyond acting in isolation?
Jay Walsh, the Foundation's director of communications
"The Wikipedia community has chosen January 18th because that date the US House of Representatives had scheduled several committee hearings that day to discuss SOPA and other legislation related to online piracy. Though the hearings have been rescheduled, likely due to the increased public attention around the issue, the threat of the legislation moving forward continues. When many [Internet organisations] and projects align and protest like this there’s clearly a big net effect. There’s no question this makes the story bigger than if one site, say Wikipedia alone, made a protest. Ultimately, though, it doesn’t look like we’re just following in the steps of others.
Our community has had strong views about this from the beginning, and doesn't appear to be viewing activism in terms of how other sites are responding. Conversely, I’d say a lot of those other sites are very much looking to Wikipedia to see how our community is responding."
What are the trigger points, so to speak, for persuading voters to contact the politicians? What do American voters respond to? Is the creation of newsworthiness in the media by the protest just as important as the direct persuasion of voters to lobby the politicians? Are there really two aims?
"As you know the RfC is still in progress [early Tuesday UTC], so we’re speculating and we absolutely don't want to pre-empt that process. But based on what we’re seeing, the focus of the message on the Wikipedia blackout page is likely to be action-oriented, with strong encouragement that the US voters reading the message get in touch with their representatives and voice their displeasure over SOPA and PROTECTIP.
This effort is newsworthy to the US and global press, and it’s very significant because it will expand the story beyond tech and media insiders to a wider public. Up to this point, many people have not heard much about the issue. The two issues go hand in hand and should create a virtuous loop of calls in opposition to the proposed legislation."
Did the Italian Wikipedia’s protest action last year achieve its goal of stopping the passage of the Italian law that would have had significant implications for Internet freedom?
"The WP.it community would be in the best position to speak to that, but it certainly does look like their efforts stopped that law and compelled the Italian Parliament to add amendments to make it less noxious. This gives us some context on the thinking around SOPA of course – I think everyone in the community is aware of the strength of that effort."
We asked what the dangers might be for the project if these two laws pass.
"It’s safe to say that the SOPA project page has a lot of viewpoints listing those dangers. Provided you’re talking about what the dangers to Wikipedia are if SOPA passes, there are still a lot of crazy and bad things in SOPA/PROTECTIP to be concerned with. The Electronic Frontier Foundation runs through the most important of those points here.
Although these points may not seem to be immediately threatening to Wikipedia, they would fundamentally change the structure of the free and open Internet. This is a terrible precedent – it could hurt other sites. It could make finding and sharing information – and growing Wikipedia internationally – very difficult. It could hurt the way that finance works on the web. In short, anything that stops the free flow of information – any massive powers granted to the US government would create an unpredictable situation for any web project. And so much of these bills is just not well-defined: there are many, many grey areas."
Wikipedia celebrates its 11th birthday as Commons breaks another milestone
The 12 millionth file on Commons
15 January is Wikipedia's birthday, and this year marks 11 years since The Free Encyclopedia first went online. 2011 saw the total number of articles pass the 20 million mark (now close to 21), the number of unique visitors 400 million, individual page requests 16 billion per month, and 282 Wikipedia languages currently available. Wikimedians gathered to celebrate so-called Wikipedia Day, including "meet-ups, hack-a-thons, a bicycle rally, a kite festival in India, and a picnic in Caracas."
As the medicine-related articles on the English Wikipedia alone receive 150–200 million page views each month, and the articles are read by medical professionals and the public alike, project leaders believe "that this project will have a significant impact on the availability of good health care information wordwide and that this, in turn, is likely to save many lives and to improve the quality of life of many people globally." Volunteers are needed to improve the content of these medical articles in English, to help simplify them, translate them, and incorporate the translated articles back into other language Wikipedia projects.
Brief notes
Call for Stewards: Preparations for the 2012 stewards elections are underway. Stewards are users with unfettered interface access across all wikis, generally acting in emergencies, dealing with cross-wiki vandalism, implementing community consensus, and acting as administrators and bureaucrats on wikis that lack a significant user base with permission rights. Candidate submissions are open until 28 January, and questions may be asked of candidates until 6 February. Voting, both in confirmation of existing stewards and for candidates, will begin on 8 February.
Wikimania 2012 scholarships open: Applications for travel scholarships to attend Wikimania 2012 are now being accepted. Full and partial scholarships will be offered this year by the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as some chapters. The deadline to apply is February 16, 2012.
Bids for Wikimania 2013 open: With the election of juries completed, bids for the location of Wikimania 2013 are now open. A number of bids have already been submitted.
Wikimedians to the Games begins: Wikimedians to the Games (W2G) began on 10 January this week. The initiative is "an opportunity for two Australian Wikimedians to go to London and cover the 2012 Summer Paralympics held in London for Commons, Wikipedia, and Wikinews." Participants log points by editing and improving topics related to Australian Paralympics. The current, first round is a qualifier for the second round, to start on 22 April 2012, which will see the top two of four finalists sent to the event.
Global Development midyear report: The Global Development division of the Wikimedia Foundation has published its midyear report for 2011–12, covering activities in mobile and offline development and initiatives in India, Brazil, and the Middle East.
Wikimedia Israel report released: Wikimedia Israel's October–December 2011 report has been released. The report covers a wide range of activities during the last quarter of 2011, including the organization of a general assembly, a variety of GLAM projects, an annual meetup, and a series of wikiphoto hunts.
Office hours: IRC office hours were held on 12 January this week with Sue Gardner. The overwhelming topic of the discussion was SOPA, and a potential wiki-blackout over the act. The Article Feedback v5 team also held office hours this week, on 13 January.
Product manager for new editor engagement hired: The position of product manager for new editor engagement was filled this week by Fabrice Florin, previously a contractor for the Foundation, who will "take the lead in articulating and refining, in partnership with the community and the engineering team, the requirements for some of our most important features: those which will help us increase the engagement and retention of new contributors to Wikimedia projects." As Erik Möller explains, Florin is also the first Wikimedia employee with an IMDB entry, having directed a 1984 documentary named "Hackers." His full bio can be found here.
This week, we ordered a round with WikiProject Beer. Started in March 2005, the project has seen many ups and downs, shifting from a thriving community in 2006 to a battlefield in 2007 to a shell of its former self in 2008. Since then, old and new contributors have gradually rebuilt the project, which now includes over 100 members working on 1,700 pages. The project covers the beverage, breweries, brands, festivals, organizations, drinking games, and drinking establishments. Contributors are invited to peruse the project's collection of online sources when creating and expanding articles. WikiProject Beer is part of the large WikiProject Food and Drink family, serving as a parent for the Pub Task Force and sharing resources with the Beverages Task Force, Bartending Task Force, WikiProject Wine, and WikiProject Spirits. We interviewed SilkTork and Farrtj.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Beer? What kind of beer do you prefer?
SilkTork: I am a beer writer, so it was natural to join a project dealing with that topic. At the time I joined it was a large, active and friendly project, and we made positive progress on working together on articles, sorting out the categories and building up a set of article guidelines. Unfortunately there was a period of dissent over using home brewing style guidelines as reliable sources, and it became unpleasant as there was a lot of edit warring and arguing. Most participants, myself included, drifted away, and the project diminished. Fortunately the users at the heart of the dissent have left and not edited for some years, so it would be great if people returned and new members joined. There have been a trickle of new members joining who have been doing good work; User:Farrtj is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable new member who has written a Good Article on Stones Brewery.
Farrtj: WikiProject Beer was the first Wikiproject I joined. As a casual Wikipedia user I had always found that Wikipedia articles always suited my needs, until I encountered the beer related articles, many of which I considered to be weak. For the first time I saw articles where I could feasibly expect to improve an article. I may write about beer in the future, and this project seemed like good training ground for that. I like stout most of all.
On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate Wikipedia's coverage of beer and related topics? Are there aspects of beer that are better covered than others?
SilkTork: We need more people to work on improving articles. We only have two Good Articles: Beer and Stones Brewery, and one FA, noitulovE (which is about a Guinness advert, and not directly a beer article). I have been tinkering with Brewing for years, and keep meaning to get back to work on the Guinness article and its related articles: Guinness Brewery, Diageo, Arthur Guinness. Guinness was a Good Article but was delisted in 2007. If people have a favourite beer or brewery, they are urged to join the project and get writing!
Farrtj: I see Wikipedia's coverage of beer related articles as a weak point in Wikipedia's arsenal, but maybe that's because beer and breweries are an area that I have considerable expertise in. I don't wish to be negative, but I will say that whilst my experience of WikiProjects is fairly limited, WikiProject Beer seems to suffer from a serious manpower deficit.
What are some of the biggest challenges to improving articles about beer? Does the project deal with a considerable amount of vandalism? How frequently does the notability of drinks and pubs become an issue?
SilkTork: Now that the disputes are behind us, I think the main problems are 1) enthusiastic beer drinkers listing their favourite beer brands, sometimes with their personal opinions on the flavour, rather than providing encyclopedic material; 2) brewers writing their own articles in advertising language; 3) a lack of decent reliable sources from which to build articles; and 4) not enough people willing to write in depth and quality on beer related topics.
The notability of individual brands and pubs is an issue. It is difficult to pin down notability as some brands and some pubs may be mentioned or reviewed many times on the internet - informal beer and pub rating websites are very common, and there are also a number of beer bloggers.
Farrtj: Manpower deficit is the prime issue. I don't really disagree with what User:SilkTork says on the issue.
How difficult is it to find images for beer articles? Are there any articles badly in need of photography to which the readers of the Signpost could easily contribute?
SilkTork: There are many images stored in Commons - though more are always welcome. There have been problems in the past with people stringently applying copyright law to images of beer labels and putting up beer images for deletion, sometimes entire categories, but since Mike Godwin said: "I don't believe there's a copyright problem with photographs of wine-bottle labels", deletion nominations of both wine and beer labels have declined markedly.
Describe the relationship between WikiProject Beer and its parent, WikiProject Food and Drink. Does WikiProject Beer collaborate with WikiProject Wine or WikiProject Spirits? Have you been involved in any of the task forces for bartending, pubs, and beverages?
SilkTork:User:Jerem43 of Food and Drink works closely with Beer, and is responsible for much of the look of the project pages. While many beer articles fit under Food and Drink, many also fit under WikiProject Companies, and much of the material in our notability guidelines is taken from WP:ORG. The Pub Taskforce was set up with great enthusiasm by a few of us a while back, but then drifted. It would be awesome if people could get behind that to work on organising and assessing our many pub articles - too many of them are advertising stubs for non notable pubs, but some of the material could be used in the nearest appropriate settlement article. John Brunt V.C. (public house) could be merged into Paddock Wood, for example. Indeed, I'd like to see more information on pubs in settlement articles, such as Covent Garden#Pubs and bars, as that puts them in context.
The Empire of Brazil(emblem on left) was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil. It was ruled for most of its existence by Emperor Dom Pedro II(right). This week, the Signpost interviews Lecen, the writer of these two featured articles and several others.
This week, The Signpost begins a six-part series of interviews with editors who combat systemic bias – bias that naturally grows from the demographic groups of the encyclopaedia's contributors. The assumption here is that the uneven demographics show up in an imbalanced coverage of topics in featured content. For our inaugural report, we interviewed Lecen, who has written nine featured articles relating to Brazil and Portugal, including Empire of Brazil, Pedro Álvares Cabral, and the new featured article Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias.
On his interest in Brazil and Portugal, as well as how they compare to topics from the Anglosphere. "The almost predominant existence of stubs was a factor, but the main reason was when I realized the true potential of the English-language Wikipedia. If Latin was once the lingua franca, nowadays this role is played by English. Writing articles for the Portuguese-language Wikipedia would severely limit the flow of information. But writing articles in English? Any person, anywhere, could easily translate articles from English to their own native languages. And that was precisely what happened. The featured article I wrote about Emperor Pedro II of Brazil has been translated into French, Spanish , Italian and even Romanian! This inter-language spreading of knowledge is one of the most admirable and fantastic traits of Wikipedia."
This inter-language spreading of knowledge is one of the most admirable and fantastic traits of Wikipedia
"Brazil has been increasingly prominent in the international arena in the past few years, mainly due to its economic power and territorial size. Unfortunately, the interest in Brazil on Wikipedia has not become remarkable yet. How many editors have been working on Brazil-related articles? They could fit in a Volkswagen Beetle. There is too much to be done."
On the challenges and special considerations/prejudices faced. "The lack of support is what bothers me the most. Ask someone to help review an article related to the American Civil War and you'll see at least a dozen editors sharing their views. Now try to do the same with a Brazil-related article. Time passes and, if one or two editors appear, you could say that the day was worth it."
"Did I find any difficulty? Of course. I successfully nominated nine articles to become featured. All are somehow tied to the histories of Brazil and Portugal. I can affirm that in 95% of cases, I had excellent relations with the reviewers, who helped me by giving their counsels and even criticisms, which allowed me to improve those articles a lot. The remaining 5% of reviewers involved only two or three editors; few, it's true, but enough to weaken anyone's will to persist writing."
If the English Wikipedia wants to become an encyclopedia ahead of its time, it must get rid of its own prejudices and become what it truly should be—universal.
Suggestions for editors interested in combating systemic bias. "When possible, use books in English as the main source and fill the empty spaces with information taken of books written in the native tongue. In Pedro II of Brazil, I based my work almost completely on the excellent Citizen Emperor: Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825–1891 by Roderick J. Barman. I used dozens of other sources, but at least someone who does not speak Portuguese can verify the information given."
"Now, speaking of cultural differences is far harder. I sincerely believe that Wikipedia should be bold and, as a basic rule, keep the names of foreign monarchs (but only the ones from Western cultures) in their original form. What is the problem on reading an article about Nikolay II of Russia, or Wilhelm I of Germany or Fernando VI of Spain? We have a William I, German Emperor and Wilhelm II, German Emperor! It's unnecessarily confusing! There is also nothing weirder than reading about Dmitry Bogrov and Pyotr Stolypin and bumping into ... Czar Nicholas II of Russia. What is that? A British monarch among Russians? As I mentioned earlier, I'm referring only to Western cultures, since most use the roman alphabet. If the English Wikipedia wants to become an encyclopedia ahead of its time, it must get rid of its own prejudices and become what it truly should be—universal."
Featured articles
Garrett Hobart, US vice-president and subject of a new featured articleLife recreation of Plateosaurus gracilis, a species of the subject of a new featured article, PlateosaurusThe border between the US and Mexico at San Diego – Tijuana. This new featured picture is from the US Army.A Ruffe in the Pärnu River of Estonia, a new featured pictureThe National Library of Bulgaria, a new featured picture
Seven featured articles were promoted this week:
Faryl Smith (nom) by J Milburn. Smith, a British mezzo-soprano who was born on 23 July 1995, rose to fame after participating in the 2008 run of Britain's Got Talent. Despite finishing outside the top three, she signed a contract with Universal Classics and Jazz and released her debut album, Faryl, in March 2009; the album became the fastest-selling solo classical album in British chart history. This was followed in November 2009 by her second album, Wonderland. Smith, who attends Southfield School for Girls, has also been active in charity and live performances.
Stanley Holloway (nom) by Cassianto. English stage and film actor, comedian, singer, poet and monologist Stanley Holloway was born in London on 1 October 1890. After a period as a clerk, he stage acted for a brief period of time before becoming an infantryman in the First World War. In 1919, after the end of the war, he found success with Kissing Time; by the 1930s he had become a major star. During World War II, Holloway made several short propaganda films and played in more war films. He later found international success with several incarnations of My Fair Lady. Holloway died on 30 January 1982 of a stroke.
1st Provisional Marine Brigade (nom) by Ed!. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, an ad hoc Marine infantry brigade of the United States Marine Corps, was activated five times between 1912 to 1950. It was first formed to fight in the 1912 Cuban revolution, then deactivated; this deactivation lasted 29 years. After the US entered World War II, the brigade was constructed from the 6th Marine Regiment to garrison Iceland, with another activation to conduct an amphibious landing of Guam. After the war, the brigade participated in an organizational shift, then was activated briefly in 1950 to participate in the Korean War.
Garret Hobart (nom) by Wehwalt. Garret Hobart, born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on 3 June 1844, was a lawyer and later vice president of the United States under William McKinley. Joining the law office of Socrates Tuttle after graduating from Rutgers College, Hobart went on to marry Tuttle's daughter Jennie. During the 1896 Republican National Convention, a group of New Jersey delegates pushed for Hobart to run as vice-president; after he was nominated, he proved to be a popular figure and adviser to McKinley until Hobart's death on 21 November 1899.
White-necked Rockfowl (nom) by Rufous-crowned Sparrow. The White-necked Rockfowl, which measures 38 to 41 cm (15 to 16 in) in length, is a mainly insectivorous bird species found along the Guinean coast of Africa. The Rockfowl is monogamous and nests in mud formed into a deep cup; it lays an average of four eggs yearly. As the birds rarely fly long distances – they mainly travel by hopping and short flights – Rockfowl colonies are generally isolated from each other. The species is currently considered Vulnerable, threatened by habitat destruction.
Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias (nom) by Lecen and Astynax. Caxias, born 25 August 1803, was a Brazilian army officer, politician and monarchist. After becoming a junior officer in the country's war for independence in 1823, in 1825 Caxias was relocated to Cisplatina and tried unsuccessfully to stop it from seceding. Throughout the reigns of Pedro I and Pedro II he remained a loyalist, and in 1856 he was chosen to be president of Council of Ministers. By 1861, Caxias was Marshal of the Army and leader of the Conservative Party; he died on 7 May 1880 after years of failing health.
Plateosaurus (nom) by HMallison. Plateosaurus, a genus of plateosaurid dinosaurs from the Late Triassic period (around 214 to 204 million years ago), was an early bipedal herbivorous sauropodomorph from what is now Central and Northern Europe. The genus, divided into two species, was discovered in 1834 by Johann Friedrich Engelhardt and described three years later by Hermann von Meyer; it is the fifth discovered genus that is still considered valid. Among the dinosaurs best known to science, in the past several decades it has been completely restudied, leading to new interpretations of its biology, posture and behaviour.
Featured pictures
Ten featured pictures were promoted this week:
Ruffe (nom; related article), created by Tiit Hunt and nominated by J Milburn. The Eurasian Ruffe is a freshwater fish found in temperate regions of Europe and northern Asia, with populations also introduced to the Great Lakes in North America. This new featured image was taken in the Pärnu River in Estonia.
The fluorine economy (nom; related article), created by Fallschirmjäger and nominated by TCO. The new featured picture, a clickable graph, depicts a simplified version of the economy fed by fluorite, using 2003 data. In 2003, fluorite mining alone was a $550 million industry. Fluorite, the raw mineral, has many applications, including the production of Teflon and Freon, while the pure form, fluorine, is used for refining uranium.
Jeremy Doyle (nom; related article), created by Sport the Library and nominated by Crisco 1492. The new featured picture, a donation from the Australian Paralympic committee, shows gold medalist Jeremy Doyle. Although Doyle, who became a paraplegic at the age of four after a car accident, was best known for playing wheelchair basketball, he also played wheelchair hockey and represented his country in Counter-Strike at the World Cyber Games twice.
Panoramic view of the Colosseum (nom; related article) by Paolostefano1412. The subject of this featured picture, the Colosseum, was the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman empire. Constructed in c. 70–80 A.D., the Colosseum was capable of seating 50,000 spectators and was used for everything from dramas to mock sea battles. Although in a semi-ruined state, it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Rome.
Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir (nom; related article), created by KennyOMG and nominated by Katarighe. The city of Srinagar, of which this new featured picture provides a panoramic view, is the summer seasonal capital of Jammu and Kashmir and one of the largest cities in India not to have a Hindu majority. The city's name is derived from the Sanskrit words śrī (venerable) and nagar (city).
Cholaralkali membrane process (nom; related article), created by Jkwchui and nominated by TCO. The new featured picture, a diagram of the membrane cell process for the electrolysis of sodium chloride solution, shows how the membrane cell works. The most common chlorlakali process, the membrane cell uses a multi-stage process to convert brine into chlorate.
Netherlandish Proverbs (nom; related article), created by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and nominated by Crisco 1492. Netherlandish Proverbs, a 1559 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, shows literally-interpreted visualizations of contemporary Dutch proverbs. This includes choice bits such as "To be a pillar-biter" ("To be a religious hypocrite") and "To marry under the broomstick" ("To live together without marrying").
US–Mexico border (nom; related article), created by Gordon Hyde and nominated by ComputerJA. This new featured picture, by a Sergeant First Class of the US army, depicts the contrast in population densities at the border between the US city of San Diego and the Mexican city Tijuana. The San Diego side is far sparser.
National Library of Bulgaria (nom; related article) by MrPanyGoff. The Saints Cyril and Methodius National Library, the national library of Bulgaria, is in the city of Sofia and was built in 1878. According to photographer MrPanyGoff, the image was taken in winter to ensure that the greatest possible amount of the facade would be visible, with the early-morning shooting session to avoid crowds.
Thomas Cranmer (nom; related article), created by Gerlach Flicke and nominated by Crisco 1492. This new featured picture, a portrait of English Reformation leader and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, was originally painted in 1545. Cranmer, born in 1489, established the first doctrinal and liturgical structures of the reformed Church of England and developed new doctrinal standards. He was executed in 1556 for heresy by the Roman Catholic queen Mary I.
Pieter Bruegel's 1559 painting Netherlandish Proverbs, which depicts 100 literal interpretations of contemporary Dutch proverbs. The painting is a new featured picture.
The Betacommand 3 case remained at the proposed decision phase this week. Originally the case was opened to address the multitude of sanctions in effect on the editor. None of the proposed remedies, ranging from site bans to editing restrictions, has garnered adequate support to pass.
This open case entered its third week. The case, which is one of the most active at present, was initially opened due to the actions of several administrators in relation to a user who was blocked over perceived incivility. Substantial activity took place in both the evidence and workshop pages, on which multiple users presented evidence and proposals. The current date set for the posting of a proposed decision has been extended to 29 January.
The case was opened to address which depictions of Muhammad, if any, are appropriate to display in the respective articles, and has had substantial activity in its fourth week. Drafter AGK recently posted an outline of the proposed decision. In the outline, he noted several principles and findings of fact, as well as remedies that include discretionary sanctions, topic and/or site bans, as well as admonishments. The full proposed decision is expected to be posted over the next few days.
This open case continued into its fifth week. It was brought to the Committee by the editor to appeal their site ban that was imposed by Jimmy Wales. The expected proposed decision, as mentioned in previous Signpost coverage, is yet to be posted. Discussion has continued on the workshop and workshop talk pages over the past week.
New interface placements are being trialled as part of the second phased of the ArticleFeedback version 5 trial, including one where the tool is fixed to the bottom-right of the screen (pictured)
Having spent three weeks collecting data on which interface design prompts the most useful feedback, the ArticleFeedback version 5 trial entered its second phase this week. This phase will look at the impact of interface placement on the quality and quantity of feedback solicited from the small percentage of pages on which the extension will be active. As Oliver Keyes, a WMF Community Liaison helping with the tool described:
“
Even with Wikipedia readership reaching half a billion users per month, the feedback form its current position (at the end of the article) doesn’t see a whole lot of activity. In this test, we’ll be experimenting with a more prominent way to access to tool. When a user loads the page with the test version of the Article Feedback Tool, they will see an "Improve this article" link docked on the bottom right hand corner of the page.
The introduction of this link will undoubtedly increase the amount of feedback. We need to, however, understand how it affects the quality of the feedback. ... As with the last tests, it'll be on a very small subset of articles and probably won't be noticed by most people. ... We'll also be doing some preliminary analysis on whether such a prominent link cannibalizes editing behaviour.
”
It is possible for logged-in users to hide the display of both the current version 4, and the new version 5, of the ArticleFeedback extension via their user preferences; an RfC is also currently open for editors wishing to influence the future direction of the extension, particularly with regards to handling textual feedback such as general comments about the article. As already noted, it is planned that phase 3 will focus on the impact of the extension on editing levels. Phase 4 is set to focus on the impact of the tool on readers; phase 5 will look at its longer term impact on editor levels. Although versions of the extension are trialled on the English Wikipedia, other wikis also run versions of it.
In brief
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.
Feedback dashboard improved: The FeedbackDashboard, currently used to display user comments made via the MoodBar extension, underwent an upgrade this week. According to a post on the English Wikipedia technical village pump, "MoodBar feedback posts are now listed within a user's contributions log; we have added a "Top responders" leaderboard to the Dashboard; [and] there is now an "Unanswered" filter for feedback dashboard". A number of more minor changes were also deployed.
Harassment policy drafted: Volunteer Development Coordinator Sumana Harihareswara described how she had begun drafting an official anti-harassment policy specifically targeted at "tech conferences and hackathons" but with potential application to all WMF events (wikitech-l mailing list). Operations Engineer and partial critic Peter Youngmeister noted that such a policy is useful "when you either a) want to kick someone [whose] actions are unacceptable out of your event or b) something bad happened and the organizer wants to be able to point to the policy and say 'that was against our policy.'" Most of the feedback received since the mailing list post has been positive, suggesting that the policy could come into force as early as this week at the San Francisco hackathon (20–22 January).
Wikimedia Tech receives interns: The WMF is to benefit from the expertise and time of a number of part-time developers, according to an announcement on the wikitech-l mailing list. According to the announcement, the "four bright college students already know web development and have had internships at Facebook, Google, and Microsoft... it's a bit like Google Summer of Code, but [with] a part-time team rather than one full-timer".
1.18 upgrade "most difficult MW upgrade" for external sites: A post by DanB noting the multitude of issues he faces upgrading a large corporate wiki from MediaWiki 1.17 to MediaWiki 1.18 triggered a discussion about how problems such as these could be avoided in the future (wikitech-l mailing list: 1, [2]). As DanB noted, the purpose of his post was to be "constructive & helpful, not blameful: ... I'd just like to describe what kinds of things broke for a reasonably active wiki run by well-meaning people, and to document how we fixed them".
Improving Facebook embedding: There was a discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list to improve the way Wikimedia links "embed" into Facebook, for example, by suggesting that the initial thumbnail image should be the one used in an infobox. However, whilst separate issues concerning language variants could be fixed, the problem with images seemed to be the result of Facebook not following its own rules on thumbnail selection, Daniel Friesen explained, making it a difficult issue to fix.
IPv6 and Wikimedia: Two separate threads were started this week on the English Wikipedia technical village pump to look at issues surrounding the impending global transition to from version 4 to version 6 of the Internet protocol (usually referred to as IPv4 and IPv6 respectively). The first highlighted possible problems with rangeblocks, while the second related to a number of issues, including problems with the current CheckUser setup and how IP address user talk pages function.
PostgreSQL support improving: Developer Antoine Musso announced the creation this week of a new unit test interface backed by a PostgreSQL database layer, in addition to the existing interface which uses a MySQL backend. Since most conventional testing is done on top of MySQL (the current DBMS of choice for Wikimedia wikis), the new project is expected to drastically improve the number of bugs and regression caught before code goes live.
