Finance meeting fallout and Gardner recommendations to be finalized
Many communities make up the Wikimedia Foundation.
According to the unofficial collaborative statement the Finance meeting 2012 in Paris on fundraising and Wikimedia Foundation–Chapters relations (Signpost coverage: Feb 13, Feb 20) delivered no substantial progress in regard to the ongoing debate on financial relations between the foundation and Wikimedia chapters.
On the other hand the conference was seen as a step to improve the communication climate in the run up to the annual Wikimedia conference in Berlin at the end of March, and the Board of Trustees also clarified its interpretation of the Haifa letter (Signpost coverage).
However, the summit revived the Haifa debate about the chapters council proposal. Proponents of the basic concept argue that establishing some sort of international permanent body to represent chapter interests will both improve the cooperation among the participating organizations and strengthen the position of the chapter system as a whole in negotiations with the foundation. That represents a shift from the stance taken at Haifa, where the idea was mainly seen as a defensive move by some chapters in response to what was interpreted as aggressive action by the WMF. Neither the notes nor the unofficial statement made clear how this body would help to resolve the short term debates on finance or fit into the ongoing wider movement roles debate.
Instead, discussions about the council in Paris revolved around better coordination and the possibility of improving accountability standards among chapters through self-assessment and inter-organizational peer reviews. There are two models, called B and KISS, in early stages of discussion. Both reflect the largely continental European composition of the chapter communities and are nicknamed Bismarck (B) and Metternich respectively. While KISS focuses on a simple three stage structure with equal representation of all involved chapters, B includes significantly more paid employees to keep up with the capacity of WMF staff.
The board of the Austrian chapter took a lead by formally declaring its preference for KISS, and empowered its responsible board members to enter further negotiations. The outlined global debate timeline is hoped to lead to results in the run up to or at the Berlin conference between March 30 and April 1.
Editor comments requested
Foundation executive director Sue Gardner will be presenting her final recommendations on fundraising and dissemination of those funds to the WMF board on March 9, 2012
According to a note on Meta, Sue Gardner is to present her final recommendations on fundraising and the dissemination of those funds to the Board of Trustees on March 9. She welcomes further discussion right up until that deadline, according to community liaison Maggie Dennis' note on the page; as long as the report is marked "draft", she is open to making changes.
It is unclear how aware individual editors on the English Wikipedia are that to provide input on WMF decisions such as the current proposals relating to fundraising and the distribution of funds, they must participate actively on the Meta website (although recent controversy surrounding a Meta-based request for comment on an English Wikipedia administrator will have heightened the site's profile locally). Judging from the amount of discussion of Sue Gardner's draft proposal, there is very little awareness among editors.
Draft report highlights
Gardner stated in her draft report that she had hoped that her finalized recommendations on fundraising and funds dissemination would receive consensus support, but at this point she doubts this will happen, as the many past proposals and suggestions on how to move forward have historically not been supported and the problems remain unsolved. However, she warns that the status quo cannot continue:
“
And yet, the current situation is not sustainable: it’s damaging to individual and organizational relationships in the movement, it's not very efficient, and it isn't effectively safeguarding against various risks.
”
In the draft, Gardner criticizes the current Wikimedia structure that "enshrines" chapters based on geography. The chapters have no common mission. As they are considered "key" participants, the foundation has given the chapters two board seats on the Board of Trustees, whereas none of the Board members are selected specifically by ArbCom members, stewards, administrators or general members of the editing communities.
“
By extending special consideration to chapters and not to other groups or individuals, Wikimedia Foundation is privileging chapters at the expense of others: saying that chapters are more important, more central, more core.
”
The 160 countries of the world that do not have chapters do not benefit from special privileges dispensed by the foundation, nor does any editor not active in a chapter, regardless of their status in the community (including the en.wp community), such as ArbCom members, stewards or those in any other community-elected position.
“
The Wikimedia Foundation makes special efforts to recruit chapters representatives to our other lists such as ComCom and the treasurers list. The Wikimedia Foundation has been encouraging chapters to payment process in the annual campaign, and is encouraging them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually – in some cases, millions of dollars. It has been encouraging them to create permanent staff and infrastructure supporting their work. It is signing agreements that effectively give chapters "exclusivity" in their geography, and committing to consulting with chapters before the Wikimedia Foundation takes any action – even meetings! – inside their country.
”
Gardner is convinced that the "enshrining" of the chapters as key is the wrong approach for the foundation, as it violates the basic principles of the movement:
“
Essentially: I believe that a model that privileges geography above all else is the wrong one for our movement: it doesn't really support who we are and what we do. I believe this is why the number of editors involved with their chapter is fairly small: because chapter work is specialized and particular: it isn't for everyone. I don't blame editors for not getting involved with their chapter, and I don't blame chapters for not achieving higher involvement by editors. To be clear: there's nothing wrong with chapters. What's wrong is that the Wikimedia Foundation’s actions have had the effect – to date – of enshrining the chapter model as the central organizing principle for the movement: the Wikimedia Foundation has been trying to make chapters into something they're not.
”
Chapters council
Indeed, currently a Chapters council is being proposed to centralize the organization of all the chapters as well as control their organization and activities. The Chapters council, among other activities, will "determine consensus positions on common chapter interests and represent them in relations with the Foundation, the project communities, and interested external parties". This, in effect, appears to remove individual chapter autonomy so that the chapters will speak in one voice.
Brief notes
WMF mid-year review: The Wikimedia Foundation staff Mid-Year presentation to the Board of Trustees from February 3 has been published. Besides presenting key figures for the organization, the review focused on main issues such as new editor retention, the global education program, progress on mobile, and the upcoming visual editor. The presentation is available here.
Proposed Education report: A regular Wikipedia:Education report has been proposed (potentially to run in the Signpost), and a prototype perspective piece written by Thelmadatter. The report is envisaged as covering Wikimedia education programs from the perspective of the contributing volunteers, as opposed to foundation staff or regular members of the community. Comments and suggestions are solicited.
New administrators: The Signpost welcomes our latest administrator, Dpmuk, whose successful RfA was remarkable in light of his comparatively low edit count (7,000).
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, edited jointly with the Wikimedia Research Committee and republished as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
Wikipedia research at CSCW 2012
The annual 15th ACM conference on computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW 2012) featured two sessions about Wikipedia Studies. The first one was titled "Scaling our Everest" (in amusing contrast to an earlier metaphor for the role of Wikipedia in that field of research: "the fruit fly of social software"), and covered four papers. A second session likewise comprised four papers and notes. Below are some of the highlights from these two sessions.
Gender gap connected to conflict aversion and lower confidence among women
Since January 2011, Wikipedia's "Gender gap" has received much attention from Wikimedians, researchers and the media – triggered by a New York Times article that cited the estimate that only 12.64% of Wikipedia contributors are female. That figure came from the 2010 UNU-MERIT study, which was based on the first global, general survey of Wikipedia users, conducted in 2008 with 176,192 respondents using a methodology that had raised some questions (e.g. about sample bias and selection bias), but other studies found similarly low ratios. A new paper titled "Conflict, Confidence, or Criticism: An Empirical Examination of the Gender Gap in Wikipedia"[1] has now delved further into the data of the UNU-MERIT study, examining the responses to questions such as "Why don't you contribute to Wikipedia?" and "Why did you stop contributing to Wikipedia?", finding strong support for the following three hypotheses:
"H1: Female Wikipedia editors are less likely to contribute to Wikipedia due to the high level of conflict involved in the editing, debating, and defending process." ("Controlling for other factors females were 26% more likely to select 'I got into conflicts with other Wikipedia contributors' as a reason for no longer contributing. The coefficients for being afraid of being 'criticized' [31% higher probability to be selected by female users as a reason against becoming more active in Wikipedia], 'yelled at', and 'getting into trouble' are all significant".)
"H2: Female Wikipedia editors are less likely to contribute to Wikipedia due to gender differences in confidence in expertise to contribute and lower confidence in the value of their contribution. "
"H3: Female contributors are less likely to contribute to Wikipedia because they prefer to share and collaborate rather than delete and change other's work."
A fourth hypothesis likewise tested a conjecture that has been brought up several times in discussion about Wikipedia's gender gap:
"H4: Female contributors are less likely to contribute to Wikipedia because they have less discretionary time available to spend contributing".
However, the paper's authors argued that this conjecture was not borne out by the data, instead finding that "men are 19% more likely to select 'I didn't have time to go on' as a reason for no longer contributing."
Making sense of NPOV
A paper titled "From Individual Minds to Social Structures: The Structuring of an Online Community as a Collective–Sensemaking Process" [2] looks at how Wikipedia editors talked about the Neutral point of view (NPOV) policy in the period of July 2005 to January 29, 2006, using Karl Weick's model of sensemaking and Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration for its theoretical approach. The paper's focus was on "how individual sensemaking efforts turn into interacts"; in other words, trying to understand how editors came to understand the NPOV policy through examining their posts. Editors' posts were differentiated into three types of questions (asking clarificatory questions, asking about behavior and the rules, and using questions as rhetorical devices) and answers (offering interpretation, explanation to others, and explanation to oneself).
Public Policy Initiative motivated students to become Wikipedians
Wikimedia Director Sue Gardner shows 11 packs of printer paper: the equivalent volume of content produced by students in the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative.
In a paper titled "Classroom Wikipedia participation effects on future intentions to contribute"[3] (presentation slides), five Michigan-based researchers looked at a sample of over 400 students who were involved in a pilot of the WMF education initiative (87% of whom were native speakers of English), and asked how likely the student-editors were to be become real editors after the end of their class projects, and what the relevant factors in such conversions are. They find that the student retention ratio is higher than the average editor retention ratio (while only 0.0002% of editors who make one edit become regulars, about 4% of students have made edits after their course ended). About 75% of the students preferred the Wikipedia assignment to a regular one, and major reasons for their enjoyment included the level of engagement in class, an appreciation of global visibility of the article, and the exposure to social media.
In related news, Erik Olin Wright, president of the American Sociological Association (ASA) who last year announced the organization's "Wikipedia Initiative", posted an overview[4] of a graduate seminar he conducted with a Wikipedia component. The students had to review a book, and use their newly gained knowledge to expand a relevant article on Wikipedia. In his assessment, Wright called the activity a "great success" and encouraged others to engage in similar activities.
High-tempo contributions: Who edits breaking news articles?
Editor-focused and article-focused interactions emerging from a study of high-tempo collaboration in the English Wikipedia, Keegan et al. (2012).[5] A team based at Northwestern University studied how topics of a specific nature find matching contributors in Wikipedia, or more precisely: "how editors with particular skills self-organize around articles requiring different forms of collaboration". The study[5] focused on the case of co-authorship in the context of breaking news articles. The authors note that such articles pose an interesting paradox: those that undergo a high-tempo editing cycle involving multiple contributors at once typically manifest quality issues, as the increased cost of interaction inhibits quality improvement work, yet in the unique case of breaking news articles, quality tends to remain very high despite multiple contributors attempting to make simultaneous edits with incomplete information or poor coordination. The study uses revision data describing 58,500 contributions from 14,292 editors to 249 English Wikipedia articles about commercial airline disasters and represents them as a bipartite network characterized as article and editor nodes. A statistical model (p*/ERGM) is applied to estimate the likelihood of the creation of a link between a pair of nodes as a function of specific network properties or node attributes. The analysis focuses both on attributes of each set of nodes (e.g. whether an article is "breaking news", or the number of editor contributions) as well as properties of article-editor pairs as illustrated in the figure (at right). Some of the main results of the study were:
Breaking news articles are more likely to attract editors.
Breaking news articles are not more likely to get experts to work together: experienced editors work together on high tempo collaborations significantly less often than would be expected by chance.
Experienced editors are unlikely to collaborate together on breaking news articles.
Experienced editors tend to contribute to similar types of articles more than dissimilar types of articles (suggesting the existence of classes of experienced editors who mostly focus on breaking news topics).
How different kinds of leadership messages increase or decrease participation
Centralized or shared leadership?
Three social computing researchers from Carnegie Mellon University measured the "Effectiveness of Shared Leadership"[6] on the English Wikipedia – a model where leadership is not restricted to a few community members in a specialized role, but rather distributed among many. In an earlier paper (reviewed in a previous report), they had found evidence for shared leadership from an analysis of four million user talk page messages from a January 2008 dump of the English Wikipedia, classifying them (using machine learning) into four kinds of behavior indicating different kinds of "leadership": "transactional leadership" (positive feedback), "aversive leadership" (negative feedback), "directive leadership" (providing instructions) and "person-focused leadership" (indicated by "greeting words and smiley emoticons"). Based on this data, the present paper examines whether these four forms of messages increase or decrease the edit frequency of the user who receives them, also taking into account whether the message comes from an administrator or a non-administrator. Their first conclusion is that messages sent by both kinds of editors "significantly influenced other members’ motivation", and secondly, they found that "transactional leaders and person-focused leaders were effective in motivating others, whereas aversive leaders' transactional and person-based leadership had the strongest effects, suggesting that interfaces and mechanisms that make it easier for editors to connect with, reward, and express their appreciation for each other may have the greatest benefits." (The sample predates the introduction of the "WikiLove" software extension which has exactly this goal.) Addressing a common objection by active Wikipedians in defense of warning messages, they acknowledge that "[p]eople may argue that reducing the activity of harmful editors is a positive impact of aversive leadership. However, considering the fact that there is much work to be accomplished in Wikipedia and the recent downward trend of active editors, pure aversive leadership should be avoided." The paper did not attempt to measure the quality of the work of the message recipients.
The researchers had to use a technique called propensity score matching to address the difficulty that true experimentation – for instance, separating users into control groups – was not possible in this purely observational approach. However, they separately examined the case of Betacommandbot, who had sent "more than half of the messages categorized as aversive leadership" in the sample, warning users who had uploaded a non-free image without a valid fair use rationale. Because these messages had been sent to editors regardless of whether their contributions were in violation of policy at the time they were made, "the Betacommandbot warning was a natural experiment, like a change in speeding laws, that was not induced by recipients’ behavior". The effect of this warning was to decrease the recipients' edits by more than 10%.
Other CSCW 2012 contributions
Which edits get reverted?: In "Learning from History: Predicting Reverted Work at the Word Level in Wikipedia"[7] researchers examined a sample of 150 articles from the English Wikipedia with over 1,000 revisions each. Every edit was classified according to whether it was a revert or not, and examined for these features: "the number of times each word is added or removed as two separate features, leading to feature spaces that are on average three to ten thousand words in size ... comment length, the anonymity of the editor, and his or her edit count and time registered on Wikipedia." The researchers then tried to construct a separate classifier for each article predicting whether a given edit would be reverted, with random decision tree forests turning out to be most accurate, such that "the model .. obtained high accuracy [even] when vandalistic edits and bots were filtered out". Even when only taking the added words into account (ignoring user-based data and removed words), it was "still obtaining reasonable results". For the article genetic engineering, added words that made a revert likely were those "that violated policy or article conventions, had spelling errors, or had Wiki syntax errors", whereas use of terms specific to the article's subject made reverts less likely. As a possible application of their model, they speculate that it "could inform [new] editors when their edit is likely to be reverted, enabling them to reflect on and revise their contribution to increase its perceived value".
WikiProject's "Collaborations of the Week" help increase participation: The authors of the above reviewed paper on shared leadership also presented a paper in the "Social Network Analysis" session, titled "Organizing without Formal Organization: Group Identification, Goal Setting and Social Modeling in Directing Online Production",[8] finding evidence for the effectiveness of "Collaboration of the Week (COTW)"-type article improvement drives on WikiProjects. (The Signpost's "WikiProject report" series is cited at one point in the paper.)
Should a new wiki be "seeded" to invite participation?: Apart from research specifically about Wikipedia, the conference featured many other results that are potentially of interest to Wikimedians and Wikipedia researchers. For example, a paper titled "Bootstrapping wikis: Developing critical mass in a fledgling community by seeding content" [9] reported on an experiment with 96 students who were asked to spend 20 minutes on contributing to a new MediaWiki-based course wiki, and "found that users tend to contribute more content, and more unstructured content, when they are given a blank slate. This suggests that bootstrapping is not always a positive. However, users tend to contribute content roughly similar to any seeded content. Bootstrapping can be used to direct user effort toward contributing specific types of content".
Two other papers presented at CSCW 2012 focused on the editing behavior of new Wikipedians[10] and on collaboration in breaking news articles.[11]
Wikipedia discourse on Europe analyzed
A master thesis by Dušan Miletić on Europe According to English Wikipedia: Open-sourcing the Discourse on Europe[12] looks at the nature of the discourse on Europe in the English Wikipedia, employing Foucauldian discourse analysis, which focuses on analyzing the power in relationships as expressed through language. The article notes that "changes to the statements defining what Europe is, which hold the cardinal role in the discourse, had much more significance than others." In other words, the editors who succeeded in changing the definition of Europe were subsequently able to have their points of view better represented in the remainder of the article. Another finding suggests that the definition of European culture was much more difficult to arrive at, and spawned many more revisions throughout the article, than the discussion of the geography of Europe. Another aspect discussed in the article is the blurry boundary between Europe and the European Union. The article concludes that the borders of European culture are not the same as the borders of geographical Europe, and hence, that the difficult task of defining Europe – and revising the Wikipedia article – is bound to continue.
The significance of the first edit
A paper titled "Enrolled Since the Beginning: Assessing Wikipedia Contributors' Behavior by Their First Contribution"[13] by researchers at Telecom Bretagne looks at an editor's first contribution as an indicator of her future level of involvement in the project. After having discovered Wikipedia, the sooner one makes their first edit, the higher the likelihood they will continue editing. Reasons for the first edit matter, as those who just want to see how a wiki works are less likely to keep editing than those who want to share (improve) something specific, content-wise. Making a minor edit is much less likely to result in a highly active editor; those who will become very active are often those whose very first edit required a large investment of time. As the authors note, "it seems that those who will become the core editors of the community have a clearly defined purpose since the beginning of their participation and don’t waste their time with minor improvements on existing articles". Finally, the authors find that having a real life contact who shows one how to edit Wikipedia is much more likely to result in that person becoming a regular Wikipedia contributor, compared to people who learn how to edit by themselves.
Given enough eyeballs, do articles become neutral?
Building on their previously reviewed research, Greenstein and Zhu ask[14] "will enough eyeballs eliminate or decrease the amount of bias when information is controversial, subjective, and unverifiable?" Their research calls this into question, by taking a statistical approach to measuring bias in Wikipedia articles about US political topics, which uses Linus’ Law ("Given enough
eyeballs, all bugs are shallow") as a null hypothesis.
They rely on a slant index previously developed for studying news media bias, which specifies certain code words as indicating Republican or Democratic bias. Within their sample of 28,382 articles relating to American politics, they find that the category and vintage of an article are most predictive of bias. "Topics of articles with the most Democrat words are civil rights, gun control, and homeland security. Those with the most Republican words are abortion, foreign policy, trade, tax reform, and taxation. ... [T]he slant and bias are most pronounced for articles born in 2002 and 2003". While they do not find a neutral point of view within each article or topic, across articles, Wikipedia balances Democratic and Republican points of view.
Yet answering "Why did Wikipedia become less biased over time?" is more challenging. They classify explanatory variables into three groups: attention and editing; dispersion of contributions; and article features. The narrow interpretation of Linus' Law would make attention and editing the only relevant feature (not supported by their data), while a broader interpretation would also take dispersion into account (weak support from their data). While both the number of revisions and the number of editor usernames are statistically significant, they work in opposite directions. Pageviews, while also statistically significant, are unavailable before February 2007. They also suggest questions for further work, including improvements to their revision sampling (they "divide [each article's] revisions into ten revisions of equal length") and overall sampling method (which uses the same techniques as their
earlier work).
Navigating conceptual maps of Wikipedia language editions
A paper from this year’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012) entitled "Omnipedia: Bridging the Wikipedia Language Gap"[15] presents the features of Omnipedia, a system that enables readers to analyse up to 25 language editions of Wikipedia simultaneously. The study also includes a review of the challenges that the architects faced in building the Omnipedia system, as well as the results of initial user testing. According to the authors, language barriers produce a silo effect across the encyclopedias, preventing users from being able to access content unique to different language editions. Omnipedia, they write, reduces the silo effect by enabling users to navigate different concepts (over 7.5 million of them) from up to 25 language editions of Wikipedia, highlighting similarities and differences in an interactive visualization that shows which concepts different editions mention and how each of those topics is discussed.
The authors provide the example of the English Wikipedia article on conspiracy theory, showing how it discusses many topics – from “Moon landing” to “Kennedy assassination”. Other language editions contain articles on the same concept, including Verschwörungstheorie in the German Wikipedia and teoria conspirativa in the Spanish Wikipedia. Omnipedia consolidates these articles into a single "multilingual article" on conspiracy theories, showing which language editions have topics discussed in only one language edition and which have those discussed in multiple language editions.
The paper concludes with the results of user testing, showing how the volume of single-language topics was "a revelation to the majority of users" but also how users targeting concepts they thought might reveal differences in perspective (for example on "Climate scepticism" or the "War on the Terror") actually had fewer differences than anticipated. The authors conclude by highlighting their contributions to this area of study, including a system that for the first time allows simultaneous access to large numbers of Wikipedia language editions – powered by several new algorithms that they assert “preserve diversity while solving large-scale data processing issues” – and a demonstration of the value of Omnipedia to user analysis of concepts explored in different language editions.
Briefly
Taxonomy extraction in Wikipedia. Mike Chen recently defended an MSc thesis at Ohio University focused on extracting a taxonomy from Wikipedia articles.[16] A similar problem is discussed in a paper by a team based at Technische Universität Darmstadt[17] which presents a solution tackling two of the main challenges for building a robust category system for Wikipedia: multilingualism and the sparse connectivity of the semantic network (i.e. the fact that users do not identify resources on the same topic with identical tags). A third paper by researchers at Telecom Bretagne[18] develops a method to extract a tree from the Wikipedia category graph and tests its classification precision against a corpus from Wikinews.
Dynamics of Wikipedia conflicts. A team of researchers from Hungary studied the dynamics of controversies in Wikipedia and analyzed their temporal characteristics.[19] They find a correspondence between conflict and burstiness of activity patterns and identify patterns that match cases eventually leading to consensus as opposed to articles where a compromise is far from achievable.
Do social norms influence participation in Wikipedia?. A paper titled "Factors influencing intention to upload content on Wikipedia in South Korea: The effects of social norms and individual differences"[20] reported on the results of a survey, analyzing responses by 343 South Korean students ("uploading" meaning any form of contributing to Wikipedia). Among the findings was that "users of Wikipedia presented higher perceived injunctive norm and greater self-efficacy [roughly: confidence in their ability] toward the intention to upload content on Wikipedia than non-users. These findings can be understood as follows: uploading content on Wikipedia is a socially desirable act given that it contributes to knowledge sharing, and thus, for the people who already use Wikipedia, they might feel that they are urged by their social groups to upload content on the site as a way of participating in the making of collective intelligence."
Link disambiguation and article recommendations. An MSc thesis in computer science defended by Alan B Skaggs from the University of Maryland proposes a statistical topic model to suggest new link targets for ambiguous links in Wikipedia articles.[21] Three Stanford University students in computer science proposed a recommendation engine for Wikipedia articles using only a small set of articles liked by a population of users as training data.[22]
References
^Collier, B., & Bear, J. (2012). Conflict, criticism, or confidence. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW ’12 (p. 383). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. PDF • DOI
^Nagar, Y. (2012) What do you think?: the structuring of an online community as a collective-sensemaking process. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW ’12. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. PDFDOI
^Zube, P., Velasquez, A., Ozkaya, E., Lampe, C., & Obar, J. (2012). Classroom Wikipedia participation effects on future intentions to contribute. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW ’12 (p. 403). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. PDFDOI
^Erik Olin Wright (2012) Writing Wikipedia Articles as a Classroom Assignment, ASA Newsletter (Teaching Sociology), February 2012 PDF
^ abKeegan, Brian, Darren Gergle, and Noshir Contractor (2012). Do Editors or Articles Drive Collaboration? Multilevel Statistical Network Analysis of Wikipedia Coauthorship. In 2012 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW '12). PDF
^Zhu, H., Kraut, R., & Kittur, A. (2012). Effectiveness of shared leadership in online communities. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW ’12 (p. 407). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. PDF • DOI
^Rzeszotarski, J., & Kittur, A. (2012). Learning from history. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work – CSCW ’12 (p. 437). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. DOI
^Zhu, H., Kraut, R., & Kittur, A. (2012). Organizing without Formal Organization: Group Identification, Goal Setting and Social Modeling in Directing Online Production. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work – CSCW ’12 (p. 935). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. PDF • DOI
^Solomon, J., & Wash, R. (2012). Bootstrapping wikis. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW ’12 (p. 261). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. PDF • DOI
^Antin, J., Cheshire, C., & Nov, O. (2012). Technology-mediated contributions. Editing Behaviors Among New Wikipedians. Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work - CSCW ’12 (p. 373). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. PDF • DOI
^Keegan, Brian C (2012). Breaking news on Wikipedia: Dynamics, structures, and roles in high-tempo collaboration. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work Companion – CSCW '12, New York, New York, USA: ACM Press, 2012. PDF
^Miletic, Dušan (2012). Europe According to English Wikipedia. Open-sourcing the Discourse on Europe, Masters Thesis, Jagiellonian University PDF
^Dejean, Sylvain, and Nicolas Jullien (2012). Enrolled Since the Beginning: Assessing Wikipedia Contributors' Behavior by Their First Contribution. SSRN Electronic JournalPDF
^Zhu, Feng, and Shane Greenstein (2012). Collective Intelligence and Neutral Point of View: The Case of Wikipedia PDF
^Bao, Patti, Brent Hecht, Samuel Carton, Mahmood Quaderi, Michael Horn, and Darren Gergle (2012) Omnipedia: Bridging the Wikipedia Language Gap. In: Proc. CHI 2012. PDF
^Chen, Mike (2011). Taxonomy Extraction from Wikipedia, Masters Thesis, Ohio University. PDF
^Garcìa, Renato Dominguez, Philipp Scholl, and Christoph Rensing (2011). Supporting Resource-based Learning on the Web using automatically extracted Large-scale Taxonomies from multiple Wikipedia versions. Advances in Web-based learning - ICWL 2011, LNCS 7048. PDF
^Haralambous, Yannis, and Vitaly Klyuev (2012). Wikipedia Arborification and Stratified Explicit Semantic Analysis, Computation and Language (January 30, 2012): 13. PDF
^Yasseri, Taha;Sumi, Robert;Rung, András;Kornai, András;Kertész, János (2012) Dynamics of conflicts in Wikipedia. Physics and Society; Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability. ArXiV (February 16, 2012). PDF
^Park, Namkee, Hyun Sook Oh, and Naewon Kang (2012). Factors influencing intention to upload content on Wikipedia in South Korea: The effects of social norms and individual differences. Computers in Human Behavior 28(3), May 2012: 898-905. DOI
^Skaggs, Bradley Alan (2011). Topic Modeling for Wikipedia Link Disambiguation, Masters Thesis, University of Maryland HTML
^Rothfels, John, Brennan Saeta, and Emin Topalovic (2011). A recommendation engine for Wikipedia articles based on constrained training data. PDF
RfC on the proposed cessation of selective delete (other than history merge fixes) and resulting changes to deletion policies, including the removal of a Revision Deletion criterion
RfC on how files from non-copyright states should be treated and used on Wikipedia
RfC about allowing watchlisting of user contributions
Discussions covered in the main body of the discussion report are not listed here.
A proposal was made on February 9 by Timeshifter to create a new noticeboard to report and sanction rude and abusive administrators. The noticeboard would differ from current noticeboards, such as the administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI), where administrators are alleged to defend each other when claims of misconduct arise. Prior discussions which identified abusive admins as a contributing factor in the declining number of active editors on Wikipedia were cited in support of the proposal.
The proposal began with much interaction between the proposer and another editor, after which other members of the community joined the discussion. At the time of writing there was no apparent consensus on setting up the proposed noticeboard. Supporters of the new noticeboard argued that ANI is ineffective and cannot deal with complaints about actions by admins, but their arguments were half-hearted, with doubts expressed as to whether the new noticeboard would ever be implemented. Those opposing the noticeboard argued that ANI, Wikiquette assistance, and the Arbitration Committee are sufficient to deal with admin-related complaints.
It is interesting to note that on February 7, a separate, unconnected discussion regarding deletions done by one administrator was opened by TonyTheTiger (as covered briefly in the last edition). The deletions of the administrator under scrutiny, Fastily, have been discussed at length by members of the community, although the result of said discussions has yet to be determined.
A discussion on whether or not secondary schools meet notability guidelines was opened on February 2, and continued at some length. On February 24, a second straw poll for the discussion was begun.
A large discussion was started on February 24 regarding the article deletion process. The discussion was begun by an editor discouraged by what they considered insensitive comments arising from that process, comments that discourage new contributors. It expanded to cover the issue of whether new articles by inexperienced editors should go into an "incubator" first, and whether Wikipedia's goal should be to encourage more new editors to contribute more articles, or should focus on improving the quality of existing articles and rely on more experienced editors to create new articles as needed.
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
A lavishly decorated volume written by Jules VerneH. G. Wells is considered one of the Fathers of Science Fiction, alongside Jules Verne and Hugo GernsbackModern day Tokyo has served as inspiration for settings in the cyberpunk sub-genre
This week, we explored the great unknown with WikiProject Science Fiction. The project was started in December 2006 by former Signpost editor-in-chief Ragesoss "so there would be something broader to tie together editors and articles interested in science fiction, rather than specific franchises or media, and especially sf literature." WikiProject Science Fiction is home to 59 Featured Articles, 3 A-Class Articles, and 219 Good Articles. The project is the parent of a variety of franchise-specific WikiProjects ranging from Star Wars to Heroes to Transformers. We interviewed long-time members Orangemike and Nihonjoe along with new member Someone another.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Science Fiction? What is your favorite science fiction novel/comic/film/series?
Orangemike: I'm a fairly hardcore SF fan and semi-pro writer, with multiple published reviews and articles to my credit; I've attended over a hundred conventions, been Fan Guest of Honor at two, got married to a fellow fan at one (31 years and still together); still read and collect the stuff.
Nihonjoe: I've been a fan for many years, and I also help in various fandom-related endeavors (running conventions, etc.), so I enjoy helping improve and add information to Wikipedia to help in the coverage.
Someone another: I joined the SF project literally days ago. Rather than having any real knowledge of SF, my interest is in the horror video games and films which happen to be in a science fiction setting: films like Event Horizon, The Thing and the Aliens/Predator series; and games like Dino Crisis 3, Dead Space, and Space Gun. I almost exclusively edit video game topics and hope to contribute to the SF project that way.
Are some science fiction authors, eras, or sub-genres better covered than others on Wikipedia? What can be done to improve the breadth of Wikipedia's coverage of science fiction?
Orangemike: Wikipedia's recentist bias is actually somewhat reversed in the area of written SF, with careful detail being maintained on the classics of the field. However, the reverse is true with regard to film and television, with the most recent crap being obsessed upon, regardless of importance to the genre. Our coverage of the underlying culture of science fiction fandom, which not only shaped the genre professionally but gave birth to all the myriad spinoff fandoms, could be improved: there is a tendency among those unfamiliar with the field to challenge the reality that (as with other minority cultures) SF fandom's history is embodied in our own publications, which means mimeographed fanzines and the like. We do have several Hugo-winning SF editors who are also Wikipedia editors.
Nihonjoe: There's certainly better coverage on more recent best-selling authors, but I think the coverage on older authors and editors who had an impact is improving, too. It's sometimes very difficult to find information on older topics, especially online topics, so without access to older magazines and other older sources it can be very hard to find enough to make sure an article is able to meet the inclusion standard (as they tend to be very recentism-oriented).
Have you worked with any of WikiProject Science Fiction's franchise-specific child projects? How successful have these child projects been in comparison to WikiProject Science Fiction? How do talk page discussions at WikiProject Science Fiction differ from the child projects?
Orangemike: They tend to draw the Aspergerish stereotype obsessive specialists, although it's unfair to underestimate the research into detail which such people can achieve.
Nihonjoe: I haven't done much with specific franchise work, though I wander in and out of them on a regular basis. It really depends on my mood and interests at the time as I have very broad interests. This can be seen in the Speculative fiction portal which I designed, built, and maintain. I try to have it include as broad a range of information as possible.
Has WikiProject Science Fiction had to deal with reining in fancruft for large franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars? Who determines when there is too much trivial information included in a science fiction article? What other avenues are open for editors who want to share their overly-detailed knowledge of a franchise?
Orangemike: Certainly. There can be a WP:OWN problem, since an article on, say, Farscape, will be most closely watched by those with the deepest interest in Farscape. A great number of these franchises have their own wikis, in some cases multiple wikis.
Nihonjoe: Absolutely, just like any other project dealing with popular culture. I think we've done a good job with it in general, though. As with everything else, I think we try to get consensus any time there is a dispute over something, though sometimes the information is removed as just too trivial (meaning the link to the article topic is extremely tenuous, at best). As Orange Mike mentioned, a large number of franchise-specific wikis have been established where more fannish information can be included if it can't be included here for whatever reason.
How often do you encounter articles written from an in-universe perspective? Are these in-universe articles salvageable or is it typically easier to start from scratch?
Orangemike: This is more of a problem in the [broadcast] media (TV and film) than the actual print SF. It can be dealt with, but we have to keep re-educating new editors as to what's appropriate.
Nihonjoe: It can require a lot of work to rewrite, but I rarely find an article so far gone that nothing in it can be used. And I agree that it's more often a problem in TV and film articles than in articles about print science fiction topics.
The project shares the Speculative fiction Portal with three other projects. What benefits have come from sharing this responsibility? Are there any other ways WikiProject Science Fiction has collaborated with other WikiProjects?
Nihonjoe: As there is a lot of cross-over between the topics, I think it's good to have one place someone can go for information on all of it, so they can then pursue whichever avenue they wish. Also, the portal has "tabs" for each of the three major topics for those who wish to find information on only that topic.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new member help today?
Someone another: Without having any in-depth knowledge of the project, the most visible issues to me are the backlogs in articles needing rating by the project and the list of assessments which are long overdue.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Orangemike: Just don't call it "sci-fi", okay? Aside from the non-encyclopedic tone, the term itself is regarded as childish and pejorative by a significant element of those who have shaped the field over the past 75 years.
Nihonjoe: There's a lot to do here, and more hands certainly make the work lighter. I'd love to have help at the portal to keep up the "In the news", "Upcoming releases", and "Bestsellers" sections. Those are the only sections which require regular maintenance, but it is sometimes hard to keep up with all of that and do all the other things I like to help with, so things occasionally get behind. Volunteers are welcome, and I'm happy to train you on what to do.
Someone another: Even if your interests are narrow within this field you can still help out with what does interest you.
Next week, we'll check out a cold-blooded project with a warm heart. Until then, brush up on biology in the archive.
Sinking of the RMS Titanic (nom) by Prioryman. On the evening of 14 April 1912, the RMS Titanic—the largest ship in the world at the time—struck an iceberg and sank in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Over a period of nearly three hours, spanning into the morning of 15 April, the ship slowly sank and eventually split in half. Despite measures taken to abandon ship, due to a lack of lifeboats over a thousand of her 2,223 passengers and crew remained on board when the Titanic finally slipped into the water. The sinking caused the deaths of 1,517 people, many from hypothermia; other passengers were rescued from the lifeboats by the RMS Carpathia. The sinking led to the establishment of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea in 1914, which continues to govern sea safety.
James Tod (nom) by Sitush. Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod (1782–1835) was an English officer of the British East India Company and an Oriental scholar. He combined his official role and his amateur interests to create a series of works about the history and geography of India, in particular the area then known as Rajputana (the present day state of Rajasthan). He joined the East India Company as a military officer and travelled to India in 1799 as a cadet in the Bengal Army. After the Third Anglo-Maratha War, he was appointed Political Agent for some areas of Rajputana. After returning to England, Tod published a number of academic works about Indian history and geography. His major works have been criticised as containing significant inaccuracies and bias, but he is highly regarded in some areas of India, particularly among those communities whose ancestors he praised. His accounts of India in general, especially of the Rajputs, had a significant impact on British views of the area for many years.
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (nom) by Richwales. United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that virtually everyone born in the United States is a US citizen. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Wong Kim Ark, who was born in the United States to Chinese parents around 1871, had been denied re-entry to the US after a trip abroad, under a law restricting Chinese immigration and prohibiting immigrants from China from becoming naturalized US citizens. He challenged the government's refusal to recognize his citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, holding that the citizenship language in the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed essentially everyone born in the US—even the US-born children of foreigners—and could not be limited in its effect by an act of Congress.
Birth control movement in the United States (nom) by Noleander. The birth control movement in the United States was a social reform campaign from 1914 to around 1945 that aimed to increase the availability of contraception through education and legalization. In 1914 a group of political radicals in New York City, led by Emma Goldman, Mary Dennett, and Margaret Sanger, focused on the hardships that childbirth and self-induced abortions brought to low-income women. Information about contraception was considered obscene at the time, so activists targeted the Comstock laws, which prohibited distribution of any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail. Hoping to provoke a favorable legal decision, Sanger deliberately broke the law by distributing The Woman Rebel, a newsletter containing a discussion of contraception. In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, but the clinic was immediately shut down by police, and Sanger was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
Elizabeth II (nom) by Rockhead126 and DrKiernan. Elizabeth II (born 1926) is the Queen of the United Kingdom, its territories and dependencies, and 15 other Commonwealth realms. She succeeded her father, George VI, as monarch and as Head of the Commonwealth 60 years ago in 1952; her Diamond Jubilee is being celebrated during 2012. In 1947 she married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, with whom she has four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward. In 1992, Charles and Andrew separated from their wives, and Anne divorced. Charles and his wife, Diana, Princess of Wales, divorced in 1996. The following year, Diana died in a Paris car crash, and the media criticised the royal family for remaining in seclusion in the days before her funeral. Elizabeth's personal popularity rebounded after she appeared in public and has subsequently remained high.
1907 Tiflis bank robbery (nom) by Remember. The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery was a robbery of a bank stagecoach on 26 June 1907 in the city of Tiflis (now Tbilisi). The robbers attacked the stagecoach and surrounding security using bombs and guns killing forty people and injuring fifty others. The robbers escaped with 341,000 rubles (equivalent to around US $3.4 million in 2008) but were unable to use most of the large bank notes obtained because their serial numbers were known to the police. The robbery was organized by a number of high-level Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leonid Krasin, and executed by a gang of Georgian revolutionaries led by Stalin's early associate Kamo. Kamo, the only conspirator charged for the robbery, was caught shortly after the robbery in Germany, but he avoided his first prison sentence by feigning insanity for three years and had a later death sentence commuted.
John Balmer (nom) by Ian Rose. John Raeburn Balmer, OBE, DFC (1910 – 1944) was a senior officer and bomber pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Born in Bendigo, Victoria, he studied law before joining the RAAF as an air cadet in 1932. An instructor from 1935 to 1937, he achieved renown in Air Force circles when he reportedly parachuted from a training aircraft to motivate his pupil to land single-handedly. Posted to England in June 1943, Balmer took command of No. 467 Squadron RAAF, flying Avro Lancasters in the air war over Europe. He led his unit through the Battle of Berlin from November 1943 to March 1944. In April he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the following month promoted to temporary group captain. On the night of 11/12 May, the last scheduled operation of his tour as No. 467 Squadron's commanding officer, Balmer failed to return from a mission over Belgium. Initially posted as missing, his plane was later confirmed to have been shot down, and all of the crew killed.
Featured lists
Eleven featured lists were promoted this week:
List of India Twenty20 International cricketers (nom) by Vensatry. The Indian Twenty20 national cricket team—which plays a form of cricket which is played over 20 overs per side—is the fifth most successful such team since the variant was started in 2005. Having played since 2006, the team has seen 41 players, including three captains. Gautam Gambhir has scored the most runs, with 697.
List of LSU Tigers head football coaches (nom) by Patriarca12. The Louisiana State University American football team has had 32 coaches since being established in 1893, ten of whom have led the Tigers to postseason bowl games. Allen Jeardeau has the highest winning percentage of coaches who have coached more than one game, winning 87% of games coached. The longest serving was Charles McClendon, who coached for eighteen years from 1962 to 1979.
2000 Summer Paralympics medal table (nom) by 99of9. The 2000 summer Paralympics, held in Sydney, Australia, was the second largest sporting event in Australian history and set several new Paralympic records, including for attendance. Sixty-eight countries won 1,657 medals; 122 countries (or 123 delegations including independent athletes from Timor-Leste) participated. The strongest showing was by Australia, which won 149 medals (including 63 gold).
Mr. Basketball USA (nom) by TonyTheTiger. Mr. Basketball USA, formerly known as the EA SPORTS National Player of the Year, is an award established in 1996 that gives recognition to the United States boys' high school basketball national player of the year. Awarded by ESPN HS, the award has been retroactively given to former high school stars dating back to Wilt Chamberlain in 1955. The selection is made by a 10-member panel.
List of colleges and universities in North Dakota (nom) by Ruby 2010. Twenty one colleges and universities in the US state of North Dakota are listed under the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, of which North Dakota State University is the largest. The oldest is Jamestown College, while the most recently founded is Rasmussen College. Three institutions of post-secondary education have been closed.
Jennifer Lopez filmography (nom) by Status. Jennifer Lopez (born 1969)—also known as J.Lo—is an American actress, businesswoman, dancer and recording artist who has appeared in many motion pictures, television shows and music videos. She is one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood and is the highest paid actor of Latin descent. She received her first leading role in Selena in 1997, a critical and commercial success. The simultaneous release of The Wedding Planner and her second album J.Lo in 2001 made Lopez the first person in history to have a number one album and film in the same week. In 2011 she became a judge on the reality television singing competition American Idol.
List of Israel State Cup winners (nom) by Cliftonian and HonorTheKing. Since the Eretz Israel Football Association was founded in 1928, it has organised a nationwide knockout cup competition almost every football season. This cup was originally held in the British Mandate for Palestine and named the People's Cup, but when Israel became independent in 1948, the tournament was renamed the Israel State Cup. "Eretz" was dropped from the association's name at the same time. The present cup holders are the Israeli Premier League club Hapoel Tel Aviv, who beat Maccabi Haifa 1–0 in the 2011 final.
Eric B. & Rakim discography (nom) by Michael Jester. The discography of Eric B. & Rakim, an American hip hop duo, consists of four studio albums, five compilation albums, fifteen singles, and nine music videos. Their debut album Paid in Full was released in 1987 and charted in several countries. Subsequently they released Follow the Leader in 1988 and Let the Rhythm Hit in 1990, both of which RIAA certified gold. In 1992, after their fourth studio album Don't Sweat the Technique was released to less acclaim, Eric B. & Rakim disbanded. None of their compilation albums have charted.
List of members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1960s (nom) by Trust Is All You Need. Members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union came from the nomenklatura, the country's de facto ruling class. Nikita Khrushchev chaired the Politburo from 1955 to 1964. When a Western journalist asked Khrushchev in 1963 who would succeed him, Khrushchev responded bluntly "Brezhnev". After a prolonged power struggle, Khrushchev was ousted from power in 1964, and Leonid Brezhnev succeeded him, chairing the Politburo until 1982.
1992 Major League Baseball expansion draft (nom) by Muboshgu. On November 17, 1992, Major League Baseball (MLB) held an expansion draft in New York City to allow the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies to build their rosters before debuting in the National League (NL) East and the NL West divisions, respectively, in the 1993 MLB season. The Marlins and Rockies employed different strategies to build their teams. The Rockies, with a smaller operating budget than the Marlins, targeted prospects with low salaries; the Marlins selected older players hoping for more immediate impact.
List of culinary nuts (nom) by Waitak. Culinary nuts are dry, edible fruits or seeds, usually but not always, with a high fat content. Nuts have a variety of uses in food, including in baking, as snacks (either roasted or raw), and as flavoring. In addition to botanical nuts, fruits and seeds having a similar appearance and culinary role are also considered to be culinary nuts.
Featured pictures
Ten featured pictures were promoted this week:
Floury Baker cicada (nom; related article) by 99of9. Abricta curvicosta, better known as the floury baker, is a type of cicada that is common in Australia. Measuring 9–10 cm (4 in) in length, the species is named for its appearance which makes it look like it has been covered in flour.
Bananagrams game bag and tiles (nom; related article), created by Evan-Amos and nominated by Crisco 1492. Bananagrams, an American board game which is said to resemble a mix of Boggle and Scrabble, was introduced in 2006. The new featured picture shows the banana-shaped fabric game bag and several cream-coloured tiles.
Hadji Ali (nom; related article), created by unknown photographer and restored by Crisco 1492. The photograph is of famed vaudeville performer Hadji Ali demonstrating his skills of controlled regurgitation in public at the Egyptian Legation, March 27, 1926. White and black spots, dust, scratches, and other imperfections on the original picture have been cleaned up.
Franz Josef Glacier (nom; related article) Created by Jörg Hempel and nominated by Elekhh. The Franz Josef Glacier in the Southern Alps of New Zealand is part of the Westland Tai Poutini National Park. The glacier exhibits a cyclic pattern of advance and retreat. By mid-2010 its latest cycle of advance had ended and is currently in a state of retreat.
G.D. Kennedy (nom; related article), created by Allan C. Green (1878-1954) and nominated by Mmxx. The ship shown in the featured picture, known as the G.D. Kennedy at the time the photograph was taken, changed its name to the af Chapman in 1923. The full-rigged steel ship, once used to circumnavigate the globe, is currently used as a youth hostel in central Stockholm, Sweden.
Australian House of Representatives (nom; related article) by JJ Harrison. The Australian House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the Australian parliament. The meeting chamber, depicted in the new featured picture, contains seating for the 150 members of the house and more seating for visitors. Photography while meetings are in session is prohibited.
Australian Senate (nom; related article) by JJ Harrison. The Australian Senate is the upper chamber of the Australian parliament. The meeting chamber, depicted in the new featured picture, contains seating for the 76 members of the senate and more seating for visitors. Both this picture and the one of the house of representatives were taken from the lower level, which is generally off-limits.
Washington Dulles International Airport at Dusk (nom; related article), created by Jovianeye and nominated by Ottojula. This new featured picture depicts the main terminal of the Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, designed in 1958 by Finnish American Eero Saarinen and recognized by the American Institute of Architects in 1966 for its design concept, including a hanging catenary roof. A discussion over an edited version that corrected for a perceived "tilt in the tower" ended with support for the original version, with the tilt deemed to be an optical illusion.
Jan Jacob Rochussen (nom; related article), created by Nicolaas Pieneman and nominated by Crisco 1492. Jan Jacob Rochussen (1797–1871) served several positions in the Dutch government, including as prime minister from 18 March 1858 to 23 February 1860. The new featured painting depicts him in 1845, soon after being chosen as governor general of the Dutch East Indies.
Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci (nom; related article), created by Leonardo da Vinci and nominated with some restoration by Brandmeister. Lady with an Ermine, a c. 1489 oil on wood panel painting by Leonardo da Vinci, depicts Cecilia Gallerani holding an ermine, a symbol of purity. At the time of the portrait Gallerani was aged 16 and is thought to have been the mistress of the Duke of Milan, da Vinci's benefactor. The painting has undergone several conservation efforts and now includes elements which were not there originally, including a signature reading "LEONARDO DAWINCI".
Featured portal
One featured portal was promoted:
Animation (nom) by Northamerica1000 and Jj98. Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D artwork or model positions to create an illusion of movement. The portal contains an extensive presentation of content, including articles, biographies, pictures, lists, topics and other material relating to animation.
Will Beback is desysopped for conduct unbecoming an administrator.
Will Beback is indefinitely topic banned from pages related to new religious movements.
Will Beback is indefinitely banned from the English Wikipedia
This case was brought to the Committee by TimidGuy to appeal a ban that was imposed on him by Jimbo Wales. The case was closed today after a week of voting by arbitrators. Passing principles include a statement of the jurisdiction of the Arbitration Committee, which includes a broad ability to hear the "appeals [of] blocked, banned, or otherwise restricted users". Additionally, the decision states that there is no opportunity for a further appeal to Jimbo Wales if the Committee is reviewing a ban originally imposed by Jimbo Wales.
Along with the principles discussed in the case, a long series of findings of fact are listed regarding the circumstances of the ban of TimidGuy, and the nature of his appeal. After finding that the basis for the original ban was likely invalid, the decision vacated Jimbo Wales' ban of TimidGuy. The administrator who originally sought the ban for TimidGuy, Will Beback, was desysopped and indefinitely banned as a result of his "disruptive conduct". This site ban proposal divided the Committee, passing by a vote of 8–4.
This case was opened to review alleged disruptive editing on the Manual of Style and other pages pertaining to article naming. The workshop phase was extended by arbitrator AGK to 26 February. AGK stated on the workshop talk page that an outline of the proposed decision would be posted early this week with the final draft of the proposals to be posted by 4 March.
Other requests and committee action
A Request for Arbitration concerning a dispute over Croatia-related articles has been declined.
Though the deployment of MediaWiki 1.19 was problematic, it is now running on all Wikimedia wikis except Wikipedias.
After a long and difficult week for developers, all Wikimedia wikis except Wikipedias are now running MediaWiki 1.19. Unfortunately, every deployment uncovered new problems that required fixing. Some deployments had to be reversed just minutes after they went live.
Wikimedia Commons was the highest-profile wiki to switch over in the past seven days, but required three deployment attempts (wikitech-l mailing list). The first two attempts, both on February 21, encountered such severe problems in performance, thumbnailing and JavaScript that developers reverted to the prior version. On February 22, the third deployment attempt was successful, despite several reported problems reported on the Commons village pump. Fortunately, these did not require a third reversion to 1.18; instead, developers pushed through a series of bug fixes that allowed the wiki function well enough, although not perfectly.
The hustle and bustle of the 1.19 deployment did not end at Commons. Spanning February 23–24, the Wikinews wikis were switched over to the new version, then switched back, then switched over again. Wikisources suffered a similar fate. Finally, all other non-Wikipedia wikis (Wikiquotes, Wiktionaries, Wikiversities, and the others) installed the version new later on February 24.
The deployment of 1.19 is likely to yield many useful lessons. Given the proximity of the deployment to fundamental changes in the MediaWiki release cycle, these lessons are likely to have an immediate impact. Most strikingly, several new and important bugs came to light at every turn over the past week, a stress no one will want to repeat during the more rapid future deployments planned for later in the year. Nor is the stressful period over yet: at the time of writing, 14 bug reports and one tracking bug are set to require fixing before the final deployment to the English Wikipedia, currently scheduled to finish in the early hours of March 1[nb 1]The list includes problems with the Wikimedia Commons Upload Wizard, Oversight-related issues, and a serious bug in the ProofreadPage functionality upon which a number of Wikisources depend. Given the importance of the March 1[nb 1] date, it will be another intense week for developers.
Corrections
^ abAn earlier version of this article incorrectly carried the date of March 2, repeating an error made on the MediaWiki roadmap article for the deployments.
SUL convergence: yea or nay?
SUL, also known by its extension name of "CentralAuth", permits users to "call dibs" on their chosen username on all wikis simultaneously.
A discussion was started this week on Meta regarding the current implementation of the SUL ("single user login") system used to prevent cross-wiki confusion or imitation. The system, in use across Wikimedia wikis and also known by its extension name of "CentralAuth", permits users to "call dibs" on their chosen username on all wikis simultaneously rather than just the wiki(s) where they officially register. The duplicate accounts themselves are only registered if and when the user visits the foreign wiki whilst logged in.
SUL itself has been around since late 2006 but despite this, username "conflicts" – where different users have registered the same username on different projects – still persist. To ease the problem, in 2009 the SUL configuration was changed so that any username registration automatically detected as conflict-free was automatically made a globally unified login. However, usernames that had been registered already were not retrospectively made global even if they were conflict-free at the time—a decision the proposal on Meta seeks to overturn.
One potential problem in the pipeline is that no system for global renames has yet been devised, making it tricky for users who do visit numerous other wikis to change their username whilst preserving their contribution history. Proposers say that despite the downsides, the move is justified because of its potential to spur the development of global watchlists and other much-requested technical improvements of a global nature. The proposal, which had garnered a small but significant amount of support as the Signpost went to print, has not received much comment on technical feasibility thus far.
In brief
A mockup from the Wikimedia Android App project, showing the Save Article facility; version 1.1, of which a second beta was release this week, includes a "Clear saved articles" button among its new features
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.
Short URLs demystified: A new tool has been created by web development company Redwerks, aimed at helping system administrators navigate the complex world of setting up short URLs. The feature, which ensures that URLs of the form /wiki/Foo can be used interchangeably with URLs of the default format (/w/index.php?title=Foo), is one of the features most demanded by technicians installing MediaWiki for the first time and yet defies a single general solution, a problem the new tool is aimed at resolving (wikitech-l mailing list). In unrelated news, Wikimedia India announced this week the creation of http://live.wikimedia.in, an "instant search" provider for Wikimedia wikis (also wikitech-l).
Chinese and Japanese PDF generator: There was a discussion on the wikitech-l mailing list this week regarding the limits to the "Download as PDF" functionality developed by external company PediaPress and deployed on a variety of wikis, including the English Wikipedia. According to Chinese Wikimedian Ziyuan Yao, the software will need additional development to handle Chinese and Japanese characters properly.
"Git"? "Gerrit"?: WMF Volunteer Development Coordinator Sumana Harihareswara will be giving two talks this week for developers wanting to get up to speed with the new Git-based development workflow, which is due to be implemented next weekend. The interactive training sessions, scheduled for February 27, 22:00 UTC and February 28, 21:00 UTC, are open to any and all MediaWiki developers wishing to "feel [more] comfortable with Git, git-review, and Gerrit" (wikitech-l mailing list).
Android app v1.1 beta 2 released: WMF mobile team member Yuvi Panda used a mailing list post to announce the release of a second beta of version 1.1 of the Wikimedia Android app. Version 1.0 saw a rapid climb to prominence when it was released last month; developers have since added numerous new features (including full text search and "Did you mean...?" functionality) and fixed a number of bugs. The team is also on the lookout for users willing to test the beta release and report bugs that they find.
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