Screenshot of the "Upload to Wikimedia Commons" Android app, the winner of the mobile editing category
The final results of October's "coding challenge" were announced this week on the Wikimedia blog, with the top prizes going to "Upload to Wikimedia Commons" (a fully-functional Android app to facilitate uploads, pictured right), "mostEdited" (a user script that provides a list of articles undergoing periods of frenetic editing activity) and a user script that provides (via a tab) a slideshow of all the images in an article. Each winner received sponsored travel to a Wikimedia-themed event of their choice; in addition, two runners up in each category received certificates of excellence for their work.
When the project was announced, there were great hopes for the format breaking through and coding challenges becoming a regular event as a result. While the submissions to this trial contest were strong, WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller admitted that lessons would need to be learnt if the dream of regular challenges were to become a reality. Potential improvements for the future include a more streamlined judging process, the possibility of group projects, and a more useful "starter back" to get potential entrants into the swing of the competition. Overall, it seems likely that the contest format will be revived in some form later this year.
1.19 closing in on first deployment
With the amount of time until February 13 (the date selected for the deployment of MediaWiki version 1.19 to a more comprehensive test wiki) rapidly narrowing, a limited but still significant amount of work remains to be done. At this time, some 27 revisions still need to be reviewed, whilst a further 14 are in need of follow-up revisions to fix bugs or other errors (full report). Meanwhile, at least four bugs are still "blocking" widespread deployment and therefore must be resolved shortly (wikitech-l mailing list).
On the present timetable, 1.19, which includes a number of new features as well as dozens of bug fixes, is likely to be branched this week, allowing time for the branch to stabilise ahead of next week's test deployment. Should all go well, that deployment will be followed by a series of further deployments culminating in the release of the software to the English Wikipedia on 1 March (Signpost coverage).
Any slippage in that timetable would also result in MediaWiki's migration to Git being postponed, since migrating during the final stages of a release cycle is inherently undesirable. All indications are, however, that the WMF team leading the migration will be ready to begin their half of the process as soon as the deployments are out of the way: both the official timetable and a number of supporting documents – including a guide for developers – were updated this week in anticipation of the delicate switchover (wikitech-l mailing list).
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.
One of the photographs now available from the San Francisco HackathonSan Francisco videos available: WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller reported this week on the wikitech-l mailing list that videos from the San Francisco Hackathon January 2012 are now available on Wikimedia Commons, although their high quality makes prior downloading advisable. The seven videos, covering the six different presentations given at the event (held in the Californian city from January 20–22), join dozens of photographs that have already been uploaded. Away from the presentations, the three day hackathon also included time for various teams to work on a diverse range of showcase projects.
Wikimedians attend FOSDEM: As noted by Gerard Meijssen on his personal blog, several Wikimedians will be in attendance at FOSDEM 2012, an annual conference targetted at developers of free and open source software, and focused mainly on the European market.
Update breaks interwiki links: Updates made to the Wikimedia interwiki cache on February 1 temporarily broke the rendering of interwiki links on articles, it was soon reported on the English Wikipedia Technical Village Pump and at various other fora. Though the issue was soon resolved, some bad renderings of the links (often as plain red links) remain in various caching layers, prompting them still to be displayed for some or all visitors to the articles. Consequently, editors are encouraged to purge any pages they find to be affected by the problem.
File backend changes in progress: System administrators are now in the process of updating the way that Wikimedia wikis store media files to drastically increase the amount of redundancy that the system provides. The move to a system based on Swift (a system developed as part of cloud computing project OpenStack) will thus decrease the likelihood of total system failure, whilst at the same time making file storage as a whole more scalable to meet Wikimedia's rapidly increasing demands. Minimal disruption is expected as the new system gradually replaces the existing setup. In unrelated news, system administrator Asher Feldman has published a topology showing the relationship between the various Wikimedia databases as replicated (either instantly or with a degree of the notorious "replication lag") across different servers.
Tunisia is nestled between Algeria and Libya on the southern MediterraneanThe Wikimedia Foundation recently visitedTunisia as part of its Arabic Catalyst initiative, expanding on an Arabic Wikipedia convention and GLAM fellow Liam Wyatt's visit to Doha last November (Signpost coverage). The city is the first stop on a regional tour focused on "kicking off the start of Wikipedia awareness activities in universities and other independent spaces ... and helping connect current editors with new enthusiasts."
During the visit, two Wikipedians (Ciphers and OsamaK) and Moushira Elamrawy, a chapters relations manager on the Global Development team, took part in a lecture at the National School of Engineering on open licenses, free knowledge, and Wikipedia in education. According to Elamrawy, "It was a good chance to answer questions and misconceptions related to the use of Wikipedia in education [and] to meet with students of open source clubs who will form a starting point of Wikipedia clubs in their schools."
They also met with the managers of the National Library of Tunisia, convincing them to start work uploading their digital archive to Wikisource and Commons, and to adopt a computer system using Wikipedia as the default search option. Elsewhere, a meeting was organized with a presidential consultant, who seemed enthusiastic about potentially releasing the presidential photographic collection under a Creative Commons license, pending their digitization. The visit was documented by Radio Maliss, which interviewed the Foundation staff. According to Elamrawy, "it was a good start with lots of promising steps that need our follow up"; Jordan is the next stop on the tour, followed by Algeria.
Where the money comes from
More than a month after the conclusion of this year's record-breaking donation campaign, the Wikimedia Foundation has posted its analysis of the donator population, based on data gathered in last April's Editor Survey 2011. The data is constructed on five broad points:
Non-profit status not well-known: Put simply, "a lot of our readers are simply unaware of the fact that Wikipedia is a non-profit entity run entirely on donations from the general public. On average, 47 percent of our readers did not know this." Awareness was lowest in Russia (64 percent), Brazil (56 percent) and the United States (56 percent), and highest in India (61 percent) and Egypt (70 percent); graduate-level and higher readers were found to be far more likely to know of our non-profit status. With more than 400 million unique visitors every month, this translates into a significant population of unaware readers. 28 percent of readers who said they have edited Wikipedia were also unaware of this.
Editors much more likely to donate: According to the survey, 26 percent of editors participated in the drive, versus just 3 percent of those who read Wikipedia. Women were more likely than men to donate multiple times (over the years). Donations to local chapters were similar to donations to the overall drive: a much higher percentage of editors participated than did those who simply read Wikipedia.
The Wales factor: An appeal from Jimbo is a popular reason for donating, but people in different regions are motivated differently. The top two reasons for donating were "I saw an appeal from Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder)" (34 percent) and "I felt a small donation would be welcomed" (37 percent). 61 percent of Canadian donors thought of donations "as a way of contributing since they don’t edit", whereas 75 percent of Russian donations came directly from Jimbo Wales' appeal; a total of 15 percent were motivated by appeals on social sites and elsewhere.
Regional variation: About a quarter of our respondents said they would donate; readers from the US, Egypt and India were the most likely to say they would do so. After the survey informed survey takers of Wikipedia's non-profit status, 24 percent of survey takers said they would donate. Readers from India (42 percent), Egypt (33 percent) and the US (33 percent) were most likely to support, and from Germany (13 percent), France (11 percent) and Japan (15 percent), the least. As expected, editors were more likely to donate as well, with 49 percent indicating intent to do so.
Affordability: Readers cited affordability as the biggest reason for not donating: "About 46 percent of those readers who do not donate said this is because they cannot afford to make a donation." The value of the US dollar, and possibly unawareness of the denominations, are two possible reasons for this. 68 percent of Japanese readers and 57 percent of Indian readers cited affordability for not donating, as well as 60 percent of UK participants.
Further information and discussions on donations, fundraising, and where the money will go have been collected at Meta.
What prompted you to donate money to Wikipedia?Why have you chosen to not donate to the Wikimedia Foundation? Please choose all that apply.
Brief notes
A 1930s Soviet textbook for native speakers of Veps, a language that now has its own Wikipedia
Board of Trustees: Two chapter-appointed seats on the Foundation's Wikimedia Board of Trustees are now open for nominations. The two members will take up a two-year seat on the board, starting 1 July 2012. The chapters have issued a call for nominations by everyone who believes they or someone they know would be suitable." The process for nominations is outlined here.
Wikimedia India portals: Wikimedia India has announced the creation of a series of new portals for Indic content; a new landing page, a revamped charter wiki, a new wiki for charter members, and a blog for Indic content. Content for the planned Indic language landing page has been created, and the .in framework will soon be online.
Move-to-Commons drive concludes: The January 2012 Move-to-Commons drive is now closed. The participants claimed 20,000 files relocated from the English Wikipedia to Commons, and regarded it as a success, having reached double their initial upload goal.
Milestones: The following Wikipedia projects reached milestones this week: the Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles, the Banyumasan Wikipedia has reached 25,000 total pages, the German Wikisource has reached 80,000 text units, and the Western Punjabi Wiktionary, Wikimedia Belgium chapter wiki, and the Veps Wikipedia have opened for editing. Veps has only about 4,000 native speakers, most of them in the Republic of Karelia, Leningrad Oblast and Vologda Oblast within the Russian Federation. Veps is one of the few languages closely related to Finnish, and has a separate literature and orthography.
After a week of voting, the Arbitration Committee closed this case, which stemmed from contentious editing at articles relating to Muhammad. The final decision includes a series of principles to guide editors in such content disputes. One principle points out to editors that "in controversial instances, reminding fellow editors that 'Wikipedia is not censored' will often be the beginning, not the end, of a well-informed analysis regarding inclusion or exclusion of content...a consensus for inclusion or exclusion should be sought based on the community's collective editorial judgment, well-informed by knowledge of the relevant subject matter and, where applicable, by Wikipedia's policies and guidelines."
After noting the relevant principles, the Committee made findings of fact regarding the locus of the dispute and the conduct of specific parties. By a divided vote of 6 to 4, arbitrators have asked the community to hold a discussion on the inclusion (or not) of Muhammad images, in order to establish a final and "definite consensus". Additionally, the Committee voted to ban one editor and admonish others who it found were "seriously disruptive". Lastly, standard discretionary sanctions will be applied to all pages relating to Muhammad, broadly interpreted.
Betacommand 3 was opened to address the multitude of sanctions in effect on this editor. A motion to close reached a net four votes today, which will bring this recently-deadlocked case to an end.
This week, a remedy to ban Betacommand for "no less than one year" gained the support of a majority of arbitrators (with five arbitrators opposing). This follows on the Committee's agreement to "supersede" the community sanctions which came after weeks of debate over proposals to restrict Betacommand's editing abilities. No such proposal had received enough support to pass.
This case was opened to review alleged disruptive editing on WP:MOS and article naming pages. Since 29 January, 10 editors have given evidence. Several parties claimed that specific editors were to blame for the disruptive editing. The evidence phase closes 12 February, with a proposed decision due to be posted by the end of the month.
This case was initially opened due to the actions of several administrators in relation to a user who was blocked over perceived incivility. The evidence and workshop pages were closed after submission deadlines passed. A proposed decision was delayed for the second time, and is now scheduled for 13 February. The three drafting arbitrators have a long series of evidence submissions to analyze in coming to their proposed decision.
This case was brought to the Committee by an editor to appeal a site ban that was imposed by Jimbo Wales. The expected proposed decision, as mentioned in previous Signpost coverage, is yet to be posted. The tentative date for release had been in early January, but is now a future unspecified time.
