Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/In the media
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Few people think of performance charts when asked what they consider the most exciting element of developing and maintaining MediaWiki wikis, but it was the area chosen by Performance Engineer Asher Feldman to be the subject of his latest post on the Wikimedia blog.
"To make targeted improvements and to identify both success and regression, we need data. Lots of data", Feldman wrote. And it certainly seems that the amount of performance-related data being collected is on the rise. Whereas previous systems "tended to mask performance issues that only surface on certain pages, or are periodic", a new system based on real-time graphing system Graphite allows thousands of data points to be tracked over time. Feldman continued, "We know we have major work ahead of us to improve performance pain points experienced by our community of editors, and [this kind of] data will guide the way".
Although not all the data collected is available to the public due to potential security concerns, a smaller set of public dashboards is now available from gdash.wikimedia.org, though certain reports will show an artificial daily drop until several imminent fixes go live. The new site complements existing pages available from high-level site status.wikimedia.org and the more detailed ganglia.wikimedia.org; those with appropriate privileges can take advantage of a detailed GUI to manipulate charts and create arbitrary new visualisations from the available data points.
Mark Hershberger will be leaving his job as Bugmeister at the Wikimedia Foundation at the end of May (wikitech-l mailing list). Hershberger had originally taken on the role as a temporary one (see Signpost coverage), but has now held it for over a year, investigating, commenting on and resolving dozens of bugs in that time. He was also influential in handling the development cycle, particularly dealing with the particularly intractable problem of slow code review.
The role gave Hershberger (and will give his successor) the opportunity to interact with dozens of different developers and Wikimedians in general, a role he appears to have mastered but which could prove the downfall of potential successors. Accordingly, public comments have been full of praise for the soon-to-be-outgoing Bugmeister, a "friendly, approachable, ... enthusiastic and cheerful" member of the Wikimedia staff, according to Director of Platform Engineering Rob Lanphier, who announced the departure. "We will miss you," wrote one developer, whilst another noted how Hershberger had turned his "uninteresting job into something actually motivating. No bug was too stupid to take care of and research". Asked for his own comment, the WMF's first Bugmeister said that of everything he had directed his energies towards during his time in the role, he was "very happy" with his work establishing full pre-deployment testing on a Wikimedia Labs-based imitation wiki—testing which resulted in several bugs in MediaWiki 1.19 being caught far earlier than they might otherwise have been.
The WMF plans to "start recruiting for a new Bugmeister soon". With such a broad area of responsibility, it could well be a tricky post to fill on a permanent basis by the time of Hershberger's actual departure at the end of May. Indeed, the hiring process will be set against an already difficult backdrop of a Git migration and wholesale changes to the Wikimedia deployment process.
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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.
/* Working again */ after bug fix: A whole subset of section titles will once again appear in edit summaries following the resolution of bug #35051. The regression-causing bug (itself introduced as part of a fix for bug #32617), which related to section titles with trailing spaces, prevented their display in edit summaries in the familiar /* Section heading */ summary format, which provides helpful section links from history pages. A fix for trailing HTML comments may also be in the pipeline.Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/Opinion
Following the Wikimedia finance meeting in Paris in February 2012 (Signpost coverage), a number of chapters started to formally debate the idea of creating a Chapters Council to improve cooperation among themselves and to advance their common positions in relation to the Wikimedia Foundation. The deadline to draft a founding charter of the body to be established was March 18, and two designs have been discussed.
On March 7, Tango – the former treasurer of Wikimedia UK – submitted one draft and Ziko – the president of Wikimedia Nederland – another one, trying to outline a compromise between the older models KISS (Metternich), he authored himself, and B (Bismarck) by Sebmol. Both older models command some support among chapters who have indicated interest in joining a council. While KISS was distinguished by a short sleeves-approach with a paid director, B emphasized the need for a more robust institutional structure with a paid executive board.
Tango's draft includes an assembly as main body, composed of two representatives for each chapter – one orderly member and their deputy – selected by that chapter according to a manner of its choosing. Each representative would have one vote. To ensure implementation and facilitation of the assembly, it is proposed to establish a staffed (paid) Secretariat, and to provide the main body with the option to delegate issues to special committees. The financial resources would be provided by the members.
Tango decided to incorporate optional clauses to be looked at in Berlin via WP:BRD to reflect different possibilities.
Ziko's draft tries to combine the older models B and KISS, thereby creating some sort of chapter parliament – called Council, a kind of paid government – called Secretariat, and a roughly defined Judicial Board to handle conflicts occurring under the charter.
The council would be filled with people picked by the chapters, one per entity with one vote each and two year terms. Chapters joining could elect one representative and would be required to pay an as-yet-undefined amount of money to support the association.
According to the chapter support count, B is named as the preferred version in the resolutions of the chapters of Germany, South Africa, and with some exceptions Israel, while KISS is backed by Austria, France, Serbia (which would like to integrate some elements of B), and Switzerland.
However, most of the resolutions of these chapters, as well as the others from interested chapters which have not formally expressed a preference for one of the underlying models in their resolutions (Chile, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Netherlands, UK, and Venezuela), provide considerable maneuvering space to agree on compromises. The chapters in the Netherlands and the UK, whose members were the primary drafters of the two final designs, have not formally committed themselves to either of the models originally discussed.
Additionally, several chapters vowed to provide resources – in the form of funds (from €10,000 from the Netherlands to €375 from Indonesia), manpower (Israel, Germany, Venezuela), and (in the case of the Swiss chapter) support in negotiations for offices in Zürich or Geneva.
The issue of resources was targeted by Nathan and Tom Morton on foundation-l as well as on Meta. The critics argued that the proposal to create a council was among other things too heavy-handed, while Jan Ainali – the chairman of Wikimedia Sverige – raised the point of how binding council decisions should be.
The process also sparked some discussions on the German Wikipedia, since Ziko published an article in the Signpost's tabloid-leaning sister publication, the Kurier, on March 10. Several Wikipedians, notably Hubertl (a member of the Austrian chapter) emphasized in the discussion that the purpose behind the concept and several aspects of the Ziko draft were insufficiently clear to them. The Tango draft played no role in the local German debate.
According to the timeline, the interested chapters need one additional entity to formally support by mandate the general concept before March 25 to proceed in Berlin by signing a charter and handling details.
Wikipedia Academy 2012 issued a call for submissions this week. Sponsored by Wikimedia Deutschland along with the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society and Freie Universität Berlin, the Academy is set to take place from June 29 to July 1 in Berlin this year as "a platform for the research community and the Wikipedia community to connect, present, discuss and advance research on Wikipedia in particular and on free knowledge in general."
The event is very academic in nature, and submissions are particularly encouraged from doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, to discuss "issues in the overall nexus of Wikipedia and free knowledge". Nonetheless it will be open to all, and feature a variety of sessions ranging from open panel discussions to workshops to lightning talks. As of now "topics of interest" are Wikipedia users and contributors, global differences, cultures and practices, economics and regulation, and statistics. Extended abstracts are due on 31 March 2012, and papers that are accepted are due in full on 1 June 2012.
On March 13, the first GLAM partnership in Bulgaria was officially announced by the Bulgarian Archives State Agency (BASA) and Wikipedia volunteers. In the beginning of November 2011, BASA initiated a dialogue with interested members of the local community for establishing a partnership that benefits both the Agency and the free encyclopedia. The idea that undergirds the talks is that BASA is to grant access – to those Wikipedian volunteers with whom official agreements have been made – to archival records not subject to copyright. The volunteers will digitize the records of interest to them, will upload them to Wikimedia Commons (commons:COM:BASA) and will use them to illustrate and enhance the articles published in the encyclopedia. In this way, BASA will attempt to popularize its activities and to enlarge the use of its records by the general public. The press conference on March 13 was well covered in the national media.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/In focus
The Arbitration Committee chose to review one case this week, bringing the number of open cases to two.
For the first time in nearly five years, the Arbitration Committee voted to open a 'review' of a previous case. The review in question will cover conduct relating to the Race and intelligence arbitration case from 2010. Nine arbitrators voted in favor of opening the review, over the sole objection of arbitrator Kirill Lokshin, who argued that there was no reason to revive the scarcely used mechanism. A review was proposed as "a simplified form of a full case" after arbitrators had considered the alternative possibilities of opening a second case, ruling on the issue by summary motion, or leaving it to be resolved at Arbitration Enforcement. Roger Davies, the committee member who proposed the measure, described it as "the best compromise between a sprawling amendment/motion and a full case".
Pursuant to the review motion, the Committee will accept evidence on specific points concerning conduct of three specific editors. The timeframe for the evidence phase will be a shortened ten days and is to be directly followed by arbitrator discussion over a decision. This means there will be no workshop phase, where parties would typically present suggestions for their own principles or findings of fact.
This case was opened to review alleged disruptive editing on the Manual of Style (MoS) and other pages pertaining to article naming. Arbitrator David Fuchs posted a proposed decision last week. The proposals include a statement concerning the status of the MoS as well as a request for more structured discussion and consensus-building regarding the disputed pages in question. Specific findings of fact are also suggested concerning the conduct of a few disruptive editors. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-03-19/Humour
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