Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/In the media
| “ | We’ve never had so much activity in our technical community ... It's a great time to be a Wikimedian. | ” |
| — WMF Deputy Director Erik Möller | ||
Over 100 Wikimedians from more than 30 countries made the trip to Berlin this week to attend the 2012 Berlin Hackathon. A joint enterprise of the German chapter (Wikimedia Deutschland) and the Wikimedia Foundation, the event was held over three days from June 1 to 3 for those interested in all things MediaWiki.
Though most of the conference hours were set aside for working on specific coding projects ("hacking"), there were a number of presentations during the three days on topics such as Wikidata; scripting in the new prototype template programming language Lua; and the ResourceLoader 2.0 project, which will see per-wiki gadgets standardised and in many cases centralised. There were talks on optimising SQL queries and writing code with security in mind, a nod to recent concerns that pre-deployment security assessments have become something of a bottleneck in the deployment process. An additional general session targeted the many users who are unfamiliar with the new Git-Gerrit review system. The combined significance of these projects led WMF Deputy Director Möller to give an upbeat introductory speech.
Outside the tutorials, attendees worked on a broad range of their personal projects, including improvements to the influential pywikipedia bot framework, user scripts and gadgets, server-side performance improvements (for example, with regard to IPv6 testing), toolserver-based web tools, Wiki Loves Monuments support, and a diverse array of other initiatives. The international feel to the event meant that cross-wiki and smaller-wiki issues gained attention over the course of the three days; for example, Siebrand Mazeland, a WMF internationalisation specialist, noted that he had personally discussed such issues with more than 50 attendees during the hackathon.
Overall, attendance figures were boosted by a strong promotional effort for the event, backed by some $40,000 in WMF scholarships for those who wished to go but required financial assistance to do so. Seasoned hackers, including many of the "big names" of WMF engineering, worked alongside coders for whom the hackathon was their first Wikimedia tech event. The mood at the end of the three days was buoyant, with many developers seemingly more optimistic about future development potential than they were before the event. It is hoped that the event will encourage greater levels of volunteer development; it may also serve to ease previously aired concerns among volunteer developers that their projects were not being as well-resourced by the WMF as those of their staff developer counterparts.
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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.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/Opinion
The fifth release of finding from last December's editor survey (see previous Signpost coverage) sheds light on the communities' level of interest and participation in Wikimedia entities, and on how editors feel donated funds should be allocated.
The sample of nearly 7,000 editors believed that 60.5% of Wikimedia Foundation expenditures should go into technical areas, comprising operations (26.7%, blue), stakeholder-specific software improvements targeting new editors (13.6%, red), seasoned contributors (10.4%, green), and Wikipedia's readers (9.8%, violet).
Issues which are widely debated in the ongoing Wikimedia finance reform process, such as investing in community work in the Global South (5.3%) and grants to Wikimedians and other non-profit groups (5.4%), are well behind in participants' priorities.
Comparing the findings on Wikimedia entities as such with the finding of the earlier survey from April 2011 points to a persistent lack of interest in getting involved in entity affairs. The number of survey participants who have never voted for the WMF's board of trustees remains close to 90%, and 47% (45% in April 2010) have never heard of the process in which the community picks three of the ten board members. Performance ratings for entities suffered a slight downturn (the foundation received 6.95 out of 10, down from 7.33 in 2010; and the chapters 6.04, down from 6.15), as well as the self-rating of the community (6.75, down from 7.4).
Awareness of chapters' very existence remains low: 45% of the responding users couldn't say if there was a Wikimedia chapter in their country, although the Signpost notes that the proportion of "don't knows" may have been much lower if editors in countries without a national chapter had been excluded.
Editors are voting on the Commons:Picture of the Year 2011 to choose the best featured photos over the past year in a two-round contest. The annual contest, run by a volunteer committee, is now in its sixth year. Last year's first round covered some 800 files in 17 categories from 2010.
This year, 599 photographs are in the running. All have been selected as featured pictures and have remained on Commons during 2011. While there are still 17 categories, their structure has been slightly modified. Several category descriptions have been expanded, and panoramic nature views is now a category in its own right.
The first round of voting – to determine the 32 candidates with most votes across the categories for the final competition later this year – runs until June 7; every user who has established their account before 1 April 2012 and made more than 75 contributions on a Wikimedia wiki with SUL is eligible to take part.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/In focus
The committee opened one new case, bringing the total to three. Two motions for procedural change are also being voted upon.
Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin launched a motion to ensure the community "is given adequate notice of and opportunity to comment on proposed changes to the committee's processes and procedures." The motion required the committee to notify the community of all proposals for significant changes at the committee's formal motions page, and that they be advertised on the committee's noticeboard, administrators' noticeboard and the village pump on policy. It also required motions be subjected to standard voting procedure and remain open for a week before enactment. The motion was defeated 8–2.
An amended motion proposed by arbitrator Roger Davies removed the provision for notices on the administrators' noticeboard and village pump and included a stipulation that clerks make the announcement, it attracted more support but was defeated 7–6. A second compromise amendment, proposed by arbitrator Courcelles, restored the provision for notices on the administrators' noticeboard, maintained the stipulation that clerks announce the initial proposal, and shortened the period for which a motion must remain open post-announcement to 24 hours. This motion has so far garnered unanimous support, with seven votes.
Lokshin also moved a motion to standardise the enforcement of "editing restrictions imposed by the committee, and to reduce the amount of boilerplate text in decisions." The motion has attracted 13 unanimous votes for its enactment; it proposes that the following standard enforcement provision be incorporated into all cases with an enforceable remedy that lack case-specific enforcement provisions:
| “ | Should any user subject to a restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year. Appeals of blocks may be made to the imposing administrator, and thereafter to arbitration enforcement, or to the Arbitration Committee. All blocks shall be logged in the appropriate section of the main case page. | ” |
The committee has moved five alternative motions calling for the banning or blocking of Rich Farmbrough following his use of automated tools in contravention of his sanctions. This came after arbitrator AGK confirmed via CheckUser that Farmbrough had continued to make automated edits by using a hacked version of AutoWikiBrowser. The ban/block period for each individual motion varies as does the period of time before which Farmbrough may make an appeal.
The newly opened case concerns alleged misconduct by Fæ. This follows a submission for a case by MBisanz three weeks ago that was rejected on the basis that other dispute-resolution forums had not been explored. In his statement, MBisanz claims that "Fæ has rendered himself unquestionable and unaccountable regarding his conduct because he responds in an extremely rude manner that personally attacks those who question him." He alleges that Fæ mischaracterises commentary about his on-wiki conduct as harassment, further stating that while "Fæ has been treated poorly by some users off-wiki (and possibly on)", his violent responses to commentary about him on-wiki "has become the issue itself."
The case concerns disruptive editing by GoodDay pertaining to the use of diacritics; GoodDay, who is topic-banned from articles pertaining to the UK and Ireland, broadly construed, and who is is under the mentorship of Steven Zhang, the filing party of this request for arbitration, believes that diacritics should not be used in articles as they are not part of the English language. In his statement, Zhang notes that GoodDay can be uncivil when discussing his qualms with other editors, and that whenever questioned on the nature his edits, "he will often remove the comments from his talk page, citing harassment." In response, GoodDay remarks that "there's nothing for me to add here, except that folks should take a look at the English alphabet."
This case was referred to the committee by Timotheus Canens, after TheSoundAndTheFury filed a "voluminous AE request" concerning behavioural issues in relation to Ohconfucius, Colipon, and Shrigley. The accused editors have denied his claims and decried TheSoundAndTheFury for his alleged "POV-pushing". According to TheSoundAndTheFury, the problem lies not with "these editors' points of view per se "; rather, it is "fundamentally about behavior".
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-04/Humour
