On March 6, Rob Schnautz was announced as the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program community liaison. The following report is primarily based on an interview with Schnautz conducted in the subsequent week over IRC and email; for the transcript of the extended conversation, see the Signpost's Interviews desk archive.
On learning of Wikipedia's existence in 2004, Rob Schnautz was at first skeptical about contributing: "I heard there was an encyclopedia anyone could edit, and I vowed never to touch it". An initial flurry of "pretty unconstructive" edits in early 2006 were overcome after he acclimatised to the project, and under the alias Bob the Wikipedian he has since graduated to a fixture of the core community: "I've become one of the 3,000 top editors, an administrator (in 2009), a regional ambassador (in 2011), and now online communications contractor this month." In his capacity as a volunteer editor, he has focused on templates and stubs related to paleozoology. In spite of its tendency to attract drama (due to its scope and impact), Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life's {{automatic taxobox}} has been a landmark collaboration: "I decided to get involved with that, and I've been helping change the face of organic life on Wikipedia since then." We asked what motivated him to become involved in the education program initially, and later as a regional ambassador in the Great Lakes region:
Schnautz sees his brief as community liaison as "to bridge the communication gap between the community of Wikipedia and the Education Program", and explained what attracted him to the position:
The Education Program is two years old now, and there have been several pilot schemes affecting the English Wikipedia to varying success, notably the United States EP (which pioneered the program with its well-received Public Policy Initiative), the Canadian EP and the Indian EP (deemed a failure by the Foundation). The Foundation have also launched pilots in Brazil, India, and Egypt, and Schnautz revealed that chapters in Germany, the UK, and Italy have expressed interest in organising their own schemes, as have volunteers in Mexico, Macedonia, Russia, Israel, and the Czech Republic. We asked what organisers have learned from the experience thus far:
Organisers had "found that larger courses became more difficult for campus ambassadors and instructors to effectively manage", something for which "an interface that's hard to navigate and seems to require a lot more effort to maintain than it's worth" was partially responsible. In response to these findings and to prompting from the community, the Foundation has developed a dedicated MediaWiki extension and a set of requirements for courses participating in the program from 2012 on, including stipulations that each classroom be assigned experienced Wikipedians and that the number of ambassadors needed to scale up according to class sizes. The intended impact is that the organisers are "hoping that we see higher quality in student contributions".
Although Schnautz is set to work closely with online ambassadors as part of his new role, he had not been involved with the group when he spoke to The Signpost and so was not in a position to discuss the issues Wikipedians have been raising with their selection, monitoring and orientation processes (though he later contacted The Signpost to highlight a list of ambassador principles). He had much to say on the topic of campus ambassadors, however, outlining the ideal candidate for recruitment as "someone who has some sort of experience teaching others, knows how to edit Wikipedia (or is capable of learning in a short period of time), has good communication skills, and is comfortable working in the academic environment", with the caveat that "The folks we choose as campus ambassadors aren't your typical Wikipedia editor, though. We take care to make sure their social side is well-developed."
Students in the program have run into difficulty with Wikipedia's community of editors, falling afoul of the project's norms of original research, plagiarism and inclusion criteria and leaving editors with substantial clean-up efforts (see reports of problematic contributions to medical articles by Canadian students and The Signpost's special report on the Indian pilot). In the event of such issues arising, ambassadors are expected to act as "teachers and guides" rather than taking responsibility for the students' edits or intervening directly on their behalf:
Why is a community liaison required at this stage in the program's development?
The report by Tory Read on the India Education Program (IEP) found that "the majority of problems that emerged during implementation could have been largely avoided by engaging the Wikipedia community as a partner in the pilot project planning process". Asked how he planned to change the culture of communication surrounding the program, he laid out his plan for reform:
In response to the Read report's characterisation of announcement locations as ineffective and scattered, Schnautz declared that "I'm working on figuring out which platforms are effective for reaching the folks I need to reach out to. One of the goals in the next several months is to consolidate the program's pages so they're easier to navigate, with the hopes that this will also help centralize related discussions." He also highlighted those projects other than the English Wikipedia that needed to be catered to as one of the reasons why much of the communications effort, such as the program's newsletter, has been centralised at the outreach wiki rather than locally.
Schnautz acknowledged that the "need to refocus the IEP is perhaps the biggest reason the Education Program is being given so much attention this year", that "[w]e absolutely can't have the same problems happen again", and summarised the state of community relations with the programs in its wake as follows:
The purpose of the Education Program, as it is and as it should be, is something that has been the focus of much debate, with many Wikipedians interpreting Foundation executive director Sue Gardner's comments as prioritising the growth of editors and articles, others agitating to make the quality of the content the paramount concern and one editor, Mike Christie, authoring a Signpost opinion essay urging the initiative to refocus on recruiting the academics themselves. We asked Schnautz whether it is first and foremost concerned with editor recruitment, content creation, building relations with academia, or some other focus. Editor recruitment was "certainly one of the big goals", he confirmed, citing its impact on "both improving and maintaining the health" of the projects and the ultimate threat of Wikipedia's falling into obscurity and irrelevancy without it. He went on:
We asked what his message would be to those editors who feel frustrated at the impact of the programs to date, who resent being asked to deal with the influx of student edits, or who are skeptical as to whether the programs are worth continuing:
Whether such talk will win over a wary community remains to be seen, but with the Education Program on the cusp of dramatic expansion, its success or failure will likely have a significant impact on the encyclopaedia and the Wikimedia Foundation's relationship with the editors who maintain it. The Signpost will not be standing idly by; for an in-depth look at the activities of the program, interested readers can follow our nascent Education report in the weeks and months to come.
Full transcript of interview
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The following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Skomorokh for The Signpost with Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program community liaison Rob Schnautz over IRC on March 9, 2012. The transcript has been edited to remove parenthetical comments, with minor alterations to phrasing and sequencing for coherence. It is made available by the express consent of both parties. For the edited interview which ran in The Signpost's March 12, 2012 edition, see here. The Signpost: You've just been hired as the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program community liaison. Can you tell us a little about your background as an editor?
Templates, stubs and image creation sound like lonely areas to work in; what have been your most discussion-intensive activities besides the education programs?
What motivated you to become involved in the education program initially?
Volunteering for such a task requires a significant investment of time and effort; what was it about the idea that appealed to you?
Last year you took on the role of regional ambassador for the Great Lakes region of North America; what has that experience been like?
What is the extent of the programs that are engaged with the English Wikipedia in the current academic year? How many courses/professors/universities?
And beyond the region, what is the scope of the programs involving English Wikipedia?
The Wikimedia Foundation has made the education program one of its top priorities for 2011-2012 [cf. the mid-year report]; can you explain to our readers just what the primary goals are? Is it first and foremost concerned with editor recruitment, content creation, building relations with academia, or what?
So, to clarify, the Education Program sees editor recruitment as the primary vector for improving the health of the project, and through that, the content of the encyclopaedia?
The education program is two years old now, and there have been several pilot schemes of varying success. What have organisers learned from the experience thus far?
How are the issues of students' difficulties with Wikipedia's content policies such as no original research and plagiarism being addressed?
So you're relying on focused direction from campus ambassadors and instructors to ensure students do not submit unencyclopaedic material?
Are there any other procedures in place or planned to monitor or curate student edits?
Can you explain the criteria according to which campus and online ambassadors are selected, what training they receive, and what guidelines they operate under?
Specifically, what minimum standards of understanding Wikipedia's policies, guidelines and social norms are required of ambassadors?
Are there guidelines or codes of conduct for ambassadors in particular?
You mentioned requiring students to publicly list themselves and the articles they are working on for review. What role do ambassadors have in evaluating edits by students? Should they act as intermediaries between the students and regular editors, or allow the student submissions to be judged by the community directly?
So the ambassadors have a responsive role, coming to students' aid when needed but otherwise leaving them to navigate the project independently? The ambassadors' feedback is directed at the students, with the edits themselves to be handled by the editing community?
Ambassadors don't act as intermediaries between students and other Wikipedians, rather they are guides.
Aside from education on best editing practices, what is the procedure for addressing problematic student contributions?
Could you elaborate on the path of response on the encyclopaedia/community aspects of the problematic contributions?
Are regular editors expected to resolve the encyclopaedic impact of situations where students' contributions have been suboptimal? So, if a student adds originally-researched content to a medical article, for instance; who is tasked with addressing that?
'What procedures are in place to monitor ambassador performance, and how are issues with ambassadors' conduct addressed if they do arise?
So the best way to address such issues is through the chain-of-command, if direct engagement with the ambassador in question is unsuccessful?
What is your brief as Education Program community liaison?
The report by Tory Read on the India Education Program found that "the majority of problems that emerged during implementation could have been largely avoided by engaging the Wikipedia community as a partner in the pilot project planning process". How do you plan to change the culture of communication surrounding the eduction programs, to reach out to and encourage feedback from the community?
Sure, although there is a question hanging over the system of announcements from program organisers; to refer to the Read report again, the locations used for announcements were deemed ineffective and scattered. At the moment, announcements of initiatives relating to the English Wikipedia education programs are being posted separately at the different national project talkpages, as well as on various mailing lists, with much of the documentation and development taking place off-wiki (i.e. at outreach wiki/mediawiki). As these talkpages show, English Wikipedians have been largely unresponsive to these cross-postings lately. Is there any plan to consolidate these communications, for example using a newsletter or noticeboard, so as to facilitate focused discussion among English Wikipedians concerned with the education program? Read report: "Wikipedians recommend ... that each announcement include a link to planning documents and a central communications page on English Wikipedia". Is this being implemented?
What do you think the most pressing issues for the education programs are in the coming year, in terms of community engagement and otherwise?
What would your message be to those editors who feel frustrated at the impact of the programs to date, who resent being asked to deal with the influx of student edits, or who are skeptical as to whether the programs are worth continuing?
So one of the things both the program organisers and the community learned from the pilot program was that which courses are selected for inclusion in the programs, and especially how large and well-supported they are, is an important predictor of success. Can you outline the main learnings on this point?
What impact do program organisers hope the revised participation requirements to have?
The Wikimedia Foundation is also developing a software extension to facilitate the education program. What motivated this and how is the extension intended to help?
As we wrap up, do you have anything to say to readers interested in learning more about or engaging with the Education Program?
Rob Shnautz, thank you very much for speaking with The Signpost.
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Sarah Stierch holds a Wikimedia Foundation community fellowship for the encouragement of women's participation in Wikimedia projects. In this report she addresses – in conversation with four interested interlocutors – the topic of Women's History Month, why it should matter to Wikipedians, what the project loses in the gender gap, and what's to be done about it.
The views expressed are those of the author and interviewees only, and do not necessarily represent those of The Signpost or its staff.
March is Women's History Month, a time for people around the world to celebrate women's history. While I believe every day should be women's history day, I also feel we should take advantage of the month of March to bring awareness to the lack of coverage about women's history on Wikipedia, and concerns about the gender gap in Wikipedia: only 9% of our active contributors are women. To mark Women's History Month, WikiWomen's History Month has been planned and events are taking place around the world in the Wikimedia movement to promote improving women's history on Wikipedia and inspire women to get involved in our projects.
As a Wikimedia Foundation community fellow, who is focusing on the gender gap, I wanted to learn more about what Wikipedians and Wikimedia supporters thought about the importance of women's voices being represented in the encyclopaedia. I spoke with three Wikipedians:
I also spoke with Valerie Aurora, co-founder of The Ada Initiative, a non-profit organization that supports women in open technology and culture.
Why is it important to improve Wikipedia's coverage of women's history? Why do you feel it's important for more women to contribute to Wikipedia?
Is anything missing from Wikipedia due to the lack of female participation? If so, what do you think is missing and how can that void be filled?
What type of subject matter would you like to see covered better on Wikipedia in relation to women's history?
Will you be doing anything special related to women's history month and Wikipedia?
I believe these responses provide unique insight into the need for better women's coverage and women's participation in Wikipedia. I hope through this brief sharing of thoughts, you will have gained a deeper understanding of where women's history lies in Wikipedia, and the need for improvement about all areas related to women's history.
Want to be involved in WikiWomen's History Month? Learn more about an event in your city, or an online event through WikiProjects at the WikiWomen's History Month page. And be bold—think of the representation in the subjects that you contribute to on Wikipedia and related projects: how can you make Wikipedia a place to celebrate your heritage, the heritage of the women in your lives, and the heritage of all the world's knowledge.
The Arbitration Committee is not a monolithic entity, but functions as a collective of individual editors serving as arbitrators. For the community to understand the important work the committee performs, it's important to understand the motivations and ideals of each individual arbitrator. Evaluating our newest arbitrators is the first step in such a process; each election brings new editors with different philosophies and ideas on how to make the work of the committee more efficient and effective.
On 1 January 2012, the English Wikipedia community elected four new arbitrators to serve on the committee. Our new Signpost series analyzing the work of arbitrators begins with a review of what each new member brings to our encyclopedia's most well-known body.
| Arbitration Committee hearing fewer cases; longer decision times February 28, 2011 |
AGK has had a long tenure in Wikipedia Dispute Resolution. He was appointed to the Mediation Committee in May 2007, and continued to serve into 2010 when he was elected its chair by his fellow mediators. In addition to that experience in directly handling disputes between editors, he held a community seat on the Audit Subcommittee before his election to the full committee. With this background, it's interesting to see how he has reacted to the pressure-cooker environment that is ArbCom.
AGK was tasked with drafting a proposed decision in the contentious Muhammad images case. In that proposal, he introduced several new ideas for principles, as he indicated he would in his election statement. He proposed everything from the fetishisation of policy to specific principles regarding the uncensored nature of Wikipedia. AGK says that he "takes a harder line on principles than my colleagues do". He notes his disapproval of "banal restatements of simple policy", instead preferring principles that "demonstrate the committee's thinking in relation to the dispute [at hand]".
The proposed decision process in Muhammad images is unique in another regard – the posting of a summary of the dispute as a means to initiate new discussion on the workshop page itself. This move was "unprecedented", but received "a good response, especially to the mere fact [it] was posted". In AGK's mind, this avoided the sense that the committee's decision "appeared out of thin air [to] 'show our working'".
In light of the fact that AGK drafted the proposed decision by himself, it's interesting to see how he evaluates cases: "I use the evidence page to evaluate conduct issues with specific editors, and to get a feel for what the disputants view as the issues in a case ... we try to look beyond the question of 'who has thrown the most tantrums' to 'why is this dispute not resolved, and what can be done to bring it to a close'." He stresses that this deeper-looking inquiry is sometimes difficult on more technical cases, but that it held true for the decision he had to draft.
| “ | We can do more [than] slap wrists ... we can give useful advice for resolving disagreements about content. | ” |
—AGK | ||
It's clear from an analysis of the cases that AGK has worked on, and his method of voting on cases, that he takes a view of cases as important for the long-term guidance for the community. His proposition of asking the community to handle content disputes, as a direct request from the committee, supports the idea that he will continue to use a bottom-up approach in future cases. This indicates that AGK may be likely to focus on how to help a conflict rather than trying to craft a decision around the sanction of specific editors: "we can do more [than] slap wrists ... we can give useful advice for resolving disagreements about content."
Courcelles opened his candidacy statement in the December election with the proclamation "editors that care about this project deserve an ArbCom that is available, active, and experienced". To that end, he submitted his name for consideration. Before his election to ArbCom, Courcelles served on the Audit Subcommittee and was confirmed as a permanent checkuser and oversighter. He has listed as his most important focus the content of Wikipedia, citing his contributions to 23 featured lists and assistance in the improvement of two featured articles. Thus, Courcelles' take on work on the Arbitration Committee is unique.
Within three months, Courcelles has already made a mark on committee decisions. In TimidGuy, his analysis of whether to ban an editor or merely to remove administrative privileges was found sufficiently compelling for his colleagues to approve his proposal to ban then-admin Will Beback. As Courcelles explained, "A mere desysop here exemplifies the 'Super Mario Problem' where editors with no advanced permissions get banned, and those with such permissions merely get them taken away. This is unacceptable, and the conduct here is so bad that it, in my mind, calls for this."
Along with Courcelles' discussions of remedies, a visible trend in his participation in decision debates has been an attempt to clarify principles and findings of fact when voting on them. For instance, in the Civility enforcement case, Courcelles told fellow arbitrators that "the expectation isn't, in my mind, so much that every editor has to raise the level from the comment before theirs, but that behaviour that actively lowers the discussion towards mud-slinging is not acceptable". This may be a sign that Courcelles will strive to find balanced and equitable principles when evaluating disputes and deciding cases.
Hersfold is the only newly elected arbitrator who can't be considered entirely new: he served on the committee for the first five months of 2010, before his real-life workload forced him to give up those responsibilities. However, he promised during the December election to "fully dedicate [his] time to ArbCom" – a promise that has been fulfilled with his active participation on all recent cases.
His most recent activity was on the Civility enforcement case. During the debate on the proposed decision, Hersfold held to a steadfast view that a harsh remedy was required, declaring that "an editor who thinks such behavior is acceptable is incompatible with this project". While this position was bounded to the case at hand, this may suggest a trend in the way Hersfold approaches cases. Hersfold himself says "usually [I'll] stand my ground on an issue until it's clearly demonstrated I'm in the wrong". But of course, he recognizes that with the diversity of the arbitrators, "there's always some disagreement".
As to the way he thinks through a case, Hersfold explains that "it helps to build a bit of a timeline from the evidence; ... to find a truly effective solution, we have to consider the full background of the dispute and involved editors". In a slightly contrasting view from that of new arbitrator AGK, Hersfold says that principles "really just fall into place on their own ... [they] echo the expected conduct that wasn't followed, and findings summarize the time timeline built from the evidence". His goal is always to work through that timeline of the conflict as a means of seeing which editors have been acting inappropriately. In this way, a future analysis of cases could suggest that Hersfold uses cases as a means to sanction unruly editors rather than as a basis for broad principle-building.
SilkTork announced in his statement for candidacy in the December elections that he would view ArbCom cases "holistically", to "see the relationship between the parts that make up the whole, which sometimes gives a new perspective". While SilkTork did not serve on any special committee or hold any functionary position before his election, he had been an active Wikipedian administrator with work on two featured articles and a collection of nearly 20 good articles.
In one of the year's new cases, Betacommand 3, SilkTork was very active in trying to craft a remedy that was explicit in its terms and balanced in its nature. On the proposed decision page, a great effort was made to keep Betacommand on the project with the imposition of strong restrictions, rather than a ban. When the committee moved to ban the editor, SilkTork joined five other arbitrators to oppose. He noted that "if one doesn't agree [with a proposal], that can be awkward. I hadn't expected that". Despite this occasional element of disagreement, SilkTork emphasized that "the cases we accept are complex ... if one does disagree with the decision the drafter has taken, then we have the option of further discussion".
For SilkTork, the distinction in remedies relies a great deal on sifting through the evidence. As an example, he notes that in the TimidGuy case "my initial impression was that Will Beback had been over-enthusiastic but well meaning...[but] reading the evidence...a ban was a reasonable outcome, and that's what I agreed with." This emphasis on the evidence phase creates a need for SilkTork to investigate the patterns of conflict in a case: "I will read something in the workshop, and this may lead me to investigate a particular bit of edit history...what is common is to have several Firefox tabs open at the same time, and this may be 20 or 30 tabs".
| “ | This will last, and these early days will be remembered. | ” |
—SilkTork | ||
Analysis of SilkTork's activity reveals not only a fact-driven case-handling method, but also sheds light on his feelings on the role of the Arbitration Committee in the context of the broader community. He was hesitant to support a principle that "In certain circumstances, the Committee may overturn or reduce a sanction imposed by the community." However, as the arbitrator himself explained, "I feel that the current Committee is very aware of ArbCom's relationship with the community and that we act within policy and not above it".
Despite holding the very focused role of arbitrator (which he notes is a very tiring job), SilkTork remains very passionate about the project for the value it has in and of itself. "This will last", he says, "and these early days will be remembered."
The Arbitration Committee conducts its work with an eye towards the sustainability of the project as a whole. The decisions it crafts are reviewed in meticulous detail to ensure that the standards announced by that small group of editors will be an effective guide for the rest of the encyclopedia. Yet in crafting a decision, each individual arbitrator has their own ideals, principles, and even methods of analyzing a case. These are distinctions with a difference, and fully understanding that fact will serve to foster greater understanding of the committee as a whole.
The Signpost would like to thank all the arbitrators who responded to the interview questions; full responses can be found here. If you have a suggestion for a future 'Arbitration analysis' article, feel free to drop a note on the writer's talk page.
Reader comments
The far-reaching controversial content debate of 2010–2011 was resumed on March 1, 2012, when MZMcBride asked about the current state of the image filter software on foundation-l. Two Foundation trustees, Phoebe Ayers and Kat Walsh, declared during the subsequent discussion that in retrospect they felt it was wrong to adopt the controversial content resolution approved in May 2011 (Signpost coverage) and that the board was still split over the issue.
It was confirmed that the development of the tool called the personal image filter and subject to a global survey in August 2011 (Signpost coverage) has not yet started, and Walsh explicitly supported "rescinding" at least parts of the underlying board decision.
The controversial debate on the Foundation mailing list was wide-ranging, encompassing the re-iteration of well-known positions on the socio-cultural aspects of how the issue relates to the current chapter-selection process of two WMF board members as well as a new proposal on Commons aiming to improve image searching.
The debate arose in response to a FoxNews.com story at the end of February 2012, and quickly spread beyond Wikimedia. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, joined in on March 7 on his blog, saying that the problems he reported in a letter to the FBI in 2010 (Signpost coverage) were still unresolved and urging the WMF to ignore community opposition and institute editorial controls. Discussion on the matter also took place at Wikipedia Review.
There is currently an open proposal before the board to vote on whether to uphold the original request for an image-hiding feature. The executive director, Sue Gardner, will take direction from the board on the matter. However, Ayers stated that the issue is off the table for now, "due to the more time-sensitive and generally all-consuming financial discussions of the past couple of months."
A steady stream of finance-related position papers and posts from Wikimedia entities on Meta peaked on Sunday with Sue Gardner's release of her final recommendations on how to reform major fundraising and fund distribution activities, which were presented to the board on March 9.
With regard to fund distribution, the recommendations are that the decision-making process concerning how to arrange WMF non-core activities, as well as funds to be received by other Wikimedia entities (such as chapters) and individual volunteers, should be opened up to community participation.
According to the office hours conducted on March 12, it's not yet clear what "core" means in concrete terms. Gardner provided a general definition, stating that "Core does not mean 'the rock-bottom costs of operating the sites if we were in serious financial difficulties.' Core means the costs of operating the sites."
To better facilitate a community involvement, the Foundation would establish a new body, run by volunteers and called the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), to advise the board on how to distribute funds raised via projects such as the English Wikipedia. The committee would be supported by Foundation staff, and a body of funds would be excluded from the FDC as an "operating reserve" to ensure smooth sailing for the Foundation in case of future financial difficulties.
On fundraising, Gardner recommends that the WMF process all funds received through its project sites according to nine guiding principles, including transparency, efficiency, and accordance with the movement mission. These principles—taken from a 2011 board resolution—would be applied to all fundraising activities regardless of area of activity. Fundraising recommendation 3 represents a shift from the draft version, allowing for the continuation of chapter activities during the annual fundraiser on a case by case basis.
Gardner's text follows other Wikimedia entity position papers and posts on Meta over the last weeks. All four chapters that currently process payments, (France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK), posted their positions on the issues over the last week, reaffirming their preference for processing funds as national entities.
This was the second round of chapter position papers this year, following a January–February rush where the German chapter published a paper, which was reviewed by an association of editors of the Catalan Wikipedia and its sister project (Amical Viquipèdia), arguing in favor of national chapter-driven processing. The Italy and UK chapters followed shortly after with statements of their own, as did the Regional Cooperation Initiative for Ibero-America (Iberocoop).
The next stage will consist of deliberations within the board, which is expected to make a decision at the Berlin conference at the end of March. Everyone interested in contributing at this point can post notes and positions at the related discussion page.
A board resolution formally approving the forthcoming update of the terms of use was published on March 6. The vote wraps up a deliberation process under way since September 2011, when the Foundation legal team presented an initial draft for community deliberation. Subsequent community debate made this the most heavily collaborated terms of use of any major website. The move aims to make roles and rules more transparent to new editors, as well as bringing the terms in line with those of other websites, such as Mozilla and Creative Commons, in increasing legal protections for the Foundation.
The text was modified more than 200 times during the community review proceedings, which ended in December 2011, and embodies a major shift in the nature of the terms of use. The current version is essentially an agreement on licensing, while its replacement is designed to be more comprehensive and transparent on several issues.
While licensing provisions have been preserved, the updated version includes new aspects like a community-formulated global ban for cross-wiki violations on the project sites, as well as clarifications on topics like legal protection, community responsibilities, and roles. The update summary in the communication sent to the Board of Trustees by general counsel Geoff Brigham has been posted on Meta.
The updated terms of use will not officially go into effect until after a formal notice period, to be decided upon by the Foundation's legal department, but expected to last at least 30 days.
In an announcement fittingly made through a blog post on its website, the management of the Encyclopaedia Britannica revealed that the longest-published English language encyclopedia in the history of the world would cease its print edition after 244 years. The encyclopaedia is far from over, with approximately half a million household subscribers to its $70 per annum digital edition, which surpassed print as the company's primary revenue source in 2006 (and will be free to access from Britannica.com for a week-long trial to mark the occasion), but the announcement marks the end of an era in knowledge curation and dissemination.
In The New York Times, Julie Bosman waxed lyrical about the totemic power the books once possessed: "In the 1950s, having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class." She highlighted that "only 8,000 sets of the 2010 edition have been sold", a paltry amount in comparison to the 120,000 sets sold in the United States in one year two decades before. The Daily Telegraph lamented "The sad death of the Encyclopaedia Britannica", the Vancouver Sun gave a nostalgic retrospective – as did The Independent – CNN made the case for "Why Encyclopaedia Britannica mattered" (citing concerns that the Internet could be disabled by Chinese hackers) and Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Guardian and the Wall Street Journal also contributed their post-mortems.
The comprehensiveness, diversity and timeliness of web content, particularly that of Wikipedia, was widely cited as the nail in the coffin. Poynter highlighted the speed and intensity with which Wikipedia editors had responded to the development in the crowdsourced encyclopaedia's own article on the subject, with TIME asking "is Wikipedia our new lord and master?", a prospect at which the Daily Mail fretted, declaring that Britannica's heir "encourages only the most blinkered voyage of discovery".
Jimmy Wales, who remarked of the reference work in a 2004 interview that "I would view them as a competitor, except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within 5 years", highlighted the dissent of Dan Lewis from the consensus pointing the finger of blame for Britannica's demise at Wikipedia, arguing that it was Microsoft Encarta, a CD-based competitor that rose to prominence in the 1990s, that first heralded its change in fortunes.
Although he had warm words for his erstwhile colleagues, former Britannica.com editor Charlie Madigan blasted the corporate management of the venerable institution for what he saw as their questionable ethics and narrow, profit-driven focus in recent years. Calling the abandonment of its print edition "inevitable", he expressed his disenchantment with the enterprise and his involvement with it: "I had high hopes for the idea of giving away knowledge. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what it was about. It was all about monetizing information and selling the Britannica brand." As part of a roundup at The New York Times – another print institution struggling to come to terms with the digital era – Wikimedia Foundation trustee and Signpost alumna Phoebe Ayers had this to say:
| “ | We need encyclopedias. The need has never been greater for accurate, accessible summaries of complex topics. But it makes sense for this essentially innovative format to keep up with available technology. When I read the news about Britannica, I went to the shelf and pulled down a volume: 23, from “Light” to “Metabolism.” It was heavy and awkward and beautiful, a masterpiece. But what matters is the promise of knowledge that it represents.
I asked other Wikipedia editors about Britannica’s ceasing print; were print encyclopedias as meaningful to them as they were to me growing up? Almost everyone replied they too had loved encyclopedias. One wrote: “I got the same feeling from them I now recognize from Wikipedia — the tingly and powerful sense that I could look up almost anything and find out all kinds of cool details, vast amounts of information just waiting to be absorbed.” Curiosity, and the possibility of intimately knowing a vast world: that is why we read encyclopedias, and why we write them, too. |
” |
The Daily Telegraph revealed this week that Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales was to advise the British government in an unpaid advisory capacity on improving innovation and transparency. The announcement came (appropriately) via tweet from the South by Southwest festival, and was quickly picked up in the national and Internet tech press, with stories in Financial Times The Daily Mail, Computer World UK, TechWeekEurope, Information Age, Public Service, and Business Insider.
The announcement came a week after Wales had given the opening presentation at the Financial Times digital media conference in London. His activities at the conference included disavowing that the Wikimedia Foundation would be adopting a more overtly political footing following the SOPA wars (as Betabeat asked "Why Isn’t Wikipedia Blacking Out Over ACTA?"), advising journalists to avoid citing Wikipedia, warning that for the encyclopaedia to collaborate with Facebook would compromise the essentially private nature of its consultation, and cautioning that the secret of socially mediated content dissemination remained elusive.
The remit of Wales' new advisory role includes all government departments, though his audience will be bureaucrats rather than their political masters. Despite this, the International Business Times interpreted the move as Wales' grand entrance into politics (perhaps forgivably overlooking the burgeoning Draft Jimmy Wales for Senate movement). Andrew Orlowski of The Register speculated that the appointment "may prove to be a political gift" to the opposition Labour Party, describing it as "rather like putting foxes in charge of hen security" in light of the opacity of Wikipedia's internal bureaucracy, which Orlowski characterised as dominated by ideologically motivated pseudonymous apparatchiks. Techeye meanwhile wondered whether Wales would take to doling out "Malcolm Tucker-style grillings" to the civil servants.
WebProNews contributor Shawn Hess, having sifted through Twitter reactions to the announcement, remarked "Sounds to me like Wales is a welcome addition. It definately [sic] helps to have an experienced entreprenuar [sic] of his caliber onboard. I can’t wait to see what change he can bring about. When the public can be heard before legislation is passed, things are bound to change for the better." His colleague Jonathan Fisher couldn't resist the opportunity to snark that Wales was planning to "present all advice in the form of "Personal Appeal" banner ads":
| “ | While nothing’s been formally announced, it’s not hard to divine Wales’s first round of suggestions. He’ll probably lead off with the the idea of a legislative “sandbox,” where government officials can try out new policies and have them reviewed by anonymous peers before implementing them in the wider political arena. Then he’ll likely suggest abolishing the entire UK tax code, replacing the outdated funding platform with a series of annoying banner ads featuring financial pleas from Commonwealth subjects, Members of Parliament, and even the Queen herself. If the government is unable to reach its fundraising goal of some £560 billion by next March, the solution will be simple: the UK will just have to start charging for some of its services. Parking violations will also soon read: “[ citation needed ].” | ” |
It was a bumper week for Wales, after VentureBeat had reported that his for-profit wiki-empire Wikia had overtaken competitor IGN in the Comscore rankings to become the largest network of gaming sites in the world, accruing 26 million pageviews per month.
An analysis conducted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found evidence of thousands of edits to Wikipedia originating from within the British Houses of Parliament. The edits were found through tracking the contributions of two IP addresses, 194.60.38.198 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) and 194.60.38.10 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), which route the traffic from users of the Parliamentary network. Among the findings were that the articles on almost one out of every six Members of Parliament (MPs) had been edited by users of the network, and that in many cases, these changes were attempts at ameliorating negative biographical content concerning the 2009 United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal. The Bureau singled out the entry on Joan Ryan (a parliamentarian who resigned in the wake of the affair) as having been successfully scrubbed of any mention of expenses-related wrongdoing; Wikipedians have since updated it with details of both the scandal and the attempted cover-up. The Bureau also found plenty of innocuous edits, including the listing of a sitting MP as a notable DJ, finessing of a passage discussing the relative merits of characterising Pringles as crisps or cakes, and the correction of a misstatement of the full name of a former Mayor of London as "Kenneth Robert Livingstone Twatface".
The news caught the attention of the mainstream media, with reports in The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, and The Daily Mail. Contacted for comment, chief executive of Wikimedia UK Jon Davies drily remarked that "We would welcome any MPs who want to become editors".
Meanwhile, the BBC recounted new political forecasting techniques developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Peter Gloor using analyses of social media including Wikipedia edits. Gloor and his team followed the activities of the small group of highly active Wikipedians, their levels of respect and areas of focus. The methodology was used to successfully predict the outcome of Republican Party presidential primaries in the United States, and has been incorporated by The Huffington Post's election tracker. British parliamentarians may want to take note.
Editor's note: As I've been away most of the week, we will present a different take on the discussion report this edition. Below is an analysis of the dispute resolution and discussion system that we have, looking at the advantages and the disadvantages.
| Conduct |
| Content |
| General |
The English Wikipedia is in some ways becoming better at dealing with issues, with the creation of more and more specialized dispute resolution forums and centralized discussion areas. Areas where topics are being discussed include the village pump, centralized discussion, and the community portal; a watchlist notice is also being used to draw editors' notice. Without a doubt, there are plenty of ways to get the attention of editors who may be interested in discussion.
On the other hand, with the proliferation of these specialized forums and areas, it becomes increasingly difficult for editors to find discussions that may be relevant to them, and to ensure their opinion is heard, because of the large number of pages that need to be checked.
It also seems that it's taking longer for disputes to be resolved and discussions to be closed. Perhaps, because of the double-sided process that we have, the discussions drag out because there are so many options to consider.
This week, we interviewed WikiProject Women's History, which celebrated its first birthday last month. Despite the project's youth, it has assembled a collection of 82 pieces of Featured content, over 100 Good Articles, and two task forces dealing with women in World War I and women and technology. In honor of Women's History Month, the project has started a month-long drive involving collaborations between several WikiProjects, with real-life meetups scheduled in cities around the globe. We interviewed Penny Richards, OttawaAC, SarahStierch, and Ipigott.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Women's History? Have you been involved in any other projects related to history or gender studies?
WikiProject Women's History is home to 79 pieces of Featured material and over 100 Good Articles. Have you contributed to any of these articles? What are some challenges editors face when improving articles about women's history to FA or GA status?
The majority of the project's Featured Articles are biographies. Why has the promotion of non-biographical articles lagged behind biographical articles? What can be done to increase the project's Featured Articles about movements, organizations, artwork, culture, and other historical topics?
The project includes some fictional and mythological characters within its scope. How do these articles relate to the larger goals of WikiProject Women's History? What criteria are used to determine inclusion of an article about a fictional or mythological character into the project?
Since March is Women's History Month, does the project have any special plans? Is WikiProject Women's History collaborating with any other projects to improve articles in March? How can editors who are not currently affiliated with one of these projects get in on the festivities?
Anything else you'd like to add?
Next week, we'll check out another Wikipedia. Until then, Czech out the archive.
Reader comments
Six featured articles were promoted this week:
Five featured lists were promoted this week:
Six featured pictures were promoted this week:
One featured topic was promoted this week:
The Arbitration Committee neither opened nor closed any cases this week, leaving one open.
This case was opened to review alleged disruptive editing on the Manual of Style (MoS) and other pages pertaining to article naming. The workshop phase had been extended by arbitrator AGK two weeks ago. Drafter David Fuchs posted a series of draft principles on 6 March, with the intention of spurring more focused discussion by parties. The proposed decision posted subsequently includes a statement concerning the status of the MoS as well as a request for more structured discussion and consensus-building on the disputed pages in question.
Good morning students, please open your textbooks to Chapter 1 and follow along as best you can. "Our great forebear the Public Policy Initiative came to light in the 2010–2011 academic year as a tiny sapling, knowing little of the forest that would sprout after it. The Wikipedia Education Program, supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program, is becoming increasingly global and increasingly volunteer-run. The Education desk should be your first point of contact for participation as the Signpost becomes the program's primary chronicler. Class is in session – it has been for 2 years now.
Most Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects tied to education have been linked to the writing of articles, especially as an alternative to writing research papers, which are traditional in universities in the United States, Canada and some other countries. However, doing research and writing original (i.e. not plagiarized) texts is unknown in more than a few educational systems in the world. In these cases, it is probably not the best idea to have prospective Wikipedians start with writing articles from scratch.
Fortunately, participating in the "wiki-world" is not limited to writing new articles or expanding them, where skills such as research, assessing sources, synthesis and paraphrasing must all be used to avoid plagiarism. There are other ways to get students involved. The first is the translation of articles and other documents "in-wiki", which is acceptable as long as the text in the original language is credited. This is a good first introduction for many students, especially those for whom bilingualism is a very necessary component for their future careers. At my school, ITESM-Ciudad de México, all students are required to obtain a certain score on a standardized test (TOEFL) in English to graduate. No exceptions. For students capable in foreign languages, translation provides a near-immediate way to begin contributing significant content in their own language, and a way to teach how Wikipedia articles should be structured for those who do go on to write new articles. It also gives language teachers a handy way to teach rhetoric – especially comparative rhetoric – as students make decisions as to how to appropriately express ideas from one language in another.
Wikimedia projects do not need to be confined to classroom activities. For the Spring 2012 semester, the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at ITESM-CCM in Mexico City began a pilot program to have selected students work with Wikipedia as part of the "CAS" requirement. IB requires all of its students to fulfill a number of hours of activities outside of the classroom related to community service, creativity, and physical activity. The many opportunities that Wikipedia and its sister projects offer can be applied to all three of these criteria, which are broadly defined. The seven students who were selected for the pilot are Laloreed22, Jeanny Mos, LeValedush, CarlaFlores25, K.fontecha, Rob dvr and Carlosharo17. For training and initial introduction into the wider Wikipedia community, we decided to take advantage of the Teylers Museum Multilingual Challenge, running concurrently with the semester, working on translating articles related to the challenge into Spanish. While we are working in translation as an introduction, the students are not limited to this activity to fulfill their CAS requirement. Other activities such as photography, working with galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), and just about anything else that any Wikipedian can do, these students can do as well—it all depends on their interests and abilities.
With a bit of creativity, we can work with teachers to provide a wide variety of options: GLAM activities for those in fields such as library science and archeology; law and political science students can delve into questions about copyright, open culture and how these apply in their countries; and we should not forget those in the information technology and communications fields. For many of these students, these activities open doors and help them stand apart from their peers, perhaps the greatest gift working with Wikimedia can give.
Another alternative educational approach has been a focus on work with university libraries (the "L" in GLAM) outside of the context of a specific class.
On Saturday, 18 February 2012, a group of sixteen enthusiastic volunteers—including Princeton University undergraduates, Wikipedians from the Wikimedia New York City chapter, Princeton community members, and Mudd Library staff—gathered for an edit-a-thon at Princeton University’s Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. The event was organized by Princeton senior and technical services student worker Q Miceli, with the goal of introducing students and community members to the Wikipedia editing process through writing and updating Wikipedia articles about the university. Miceli subsequently wrote an entry on the Mudd Manuscript Library blog as well as an edit-a-thon how-to, which serves as a guide to those interested in emulating the event.
By the numbers, there were 16 attendees, six user accounts registered, four articles created, and nine articles expanded. Mudd Library is considering hosting another edit-a-thon around Princeton’s Reunions in late May. Feedback from University Library staff has been favorable, and participants and Princeton alumni who could not attend were eager to be notified if another edit-a-thon was scheduled.
| “ | There are alternative solutions, but none of them are viable without development work. Gerrit is viable right now, in its current state. Its downside is that its interface is slightly painful.
Every tool we use is going to have something we dislike about it interface-wise. |
” |
—Operations Engineer Ryan Lane describing new code review tool Gerrit | ||
Discussion of the move to Git took on a more serious tone this week, focusing on ways in which the (particularly volunteer) developer community might be unprepared for the sheer scale of the change that lies ahead (wikitech-l mailing list). The long and detailed thread provided developers with a useful opportunity to ask detailed questions about the system coming into operation later in the month.
The difficulty, it seems, is that there is no easy option for developers: even casual contributors will have to get used to a completely different development workflow (incorporating a new process for committing and a new process for reviewing and commenting on other developers' code), not to mention a whole new vocabulary. Unpicking that steep learning curve and presenting it in "bitesize chunks" has proved tricky for the WMF team overseeing the move, given the amount of interdependence between a developer's command-line Git instance and the Wikimedia-side Gerrit review system with its much-critiqued user interface. On the plus side, numerous websites exist to help users unfamiliar with Git pick up not just the basics but also the more tricky syntax that developers will need to master if they are to contribute fully to MediaWiki after the March 28 transition.
Ultimately, few seem worried that developers will not be able to master the new system in good time, although, in the words of Diederik van Liere (currently a consultant at the WMF), "a new workflow requires new habits and that might take more time to develop". Among those effects with the potential to linger, the front-runner seems to be the (not yet fully understood) implications of the move on the historically pertinent volunteer-staff divide. Only time, it seems, will tell.
The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for February 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month. Ultimately, it was a month dominated by a handful of big projects, each of which have already been covered in the Signpost: the problematic Swift deployment, preparations for the move to Git, the 1.19 deployments (see release notes) and, to a lesser extent, progress with the Wikimedia Android app, which is now providing the foundation for a new Wikimedia iPhone app. As ever, however, the report provided details of many smaller projects that had received less of a spotlight.
One such project is the creation of a Wiktionary app by a team of Canadian students under the guidance of WMF staff developers. According to the report, the team is currently focusing on "targeting bugs, cleaning things up and improving usability in the v0.1 Alpha release". In similar news, there was also an update on efforts to make the MobileFrontend extension (which powers m.en.wikipedia.org and family) less WMF-centric, following a sharp critique of its shortcomings in January, as well as news that good progress is being made on a project to provide Wikipedia content via SMS/USSD, a major boost for mobile-only visitors on 2G connections (such as those found in parts of the developing world).
Elsewhere, the report noted the steps being taken to improve the number and depth of full site backups; two WMF locations now host copies of all Wikimedia dumps and two external mirrors are currently in the final stages of preparation. Finally, there was confirmation that a short period of slowness experienced on February 27 was in fact the result of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack of unknown origin and motivation. The attack, which lasted only ten minutes, was brought to an end by the quick work of system administrators.
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.
