Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/In the media
As previewed last week, support for version six of the Internet Protocol (normally known by its initialism "IPv6") was enabled on Wikimedia wikis on June 6, hyped as World IPv6 Launch Day. IPv6 succeeds the widely-used IPv4 form that most people are familiar with, replacing the common IPv4 address (like 93.72.7.12) which can only provide 232 = 4,294,967,296 unique addresses with a longer 128-bit hexadecimal string (such as 2001:0:4137:9E76:247C:A71:833A:FA41).
The change, which is slowly being made by website providers around the world, will eventually allow for far more than 4.3 billion devices without introducing the potential for collateral damage occurring when an IPv4 address comes to represent many users (using NAT). By comparison, the Internet is projected to grow to 15 billion active devices by 2015; whereas this would have posed a problem under IPv4, IPv6 has been deemed sufficiently broad to offer the Internet almost unlimited room to grow.
While only a very small fraction of anonymous edits now come from IPv6 addresses, the June 6 deployment has caused significant disruption. Various scripts that are now being fed IPv6 addresses as input are either fully or partially broken due to the new format of the addresses. For example, Huggle was reported to choke on IPv6 address edits, and popups does not yet recognise IPv6 addresses as valid anonymous users. Various Toolserver scripts need updating as well, especially WHOIS and other IP address lookup tools regularly used by Wikimedians to counter disruption. Fixes to the German Wikipedia's vandal fighter community tool infrastructure, built and run by a small group of volunteer coders on behalf of the whole community, are expected to take weeks.
| “ | I get that this was an exciting step for the engineers who got it done, and I tip my hat to all of them for pulling it off; from that sense it's been a successful implementation [but] I also get that at least 30% of WMF users on hundreds of projects – that's roughly how many use one or more gadgets, scripts or tools that didn't work after this switch – have now had their "editing experience" negatively affected, and that almost all of it could have been avoided with a month or two of notice. | ” |
—English Wikipedian User:Risker. Responding, system administrator Ryan Lane asked whether that many tools had in fact been as badly affected as she had implied. | ||
Even so, the disruption was considerably less than would have been experienced last year, when the Wikimedia Foundation had to drop out of World IPv6 Day because some parts of its database were not ready to accommodate IPv6 addresses. Indeed, this time around the issues seemed to have been successfully resolved by the World IPv6 Launch on June 6, if only just.
Despite the successful switch-on itself, the deployment has been far from uncontroversial: since June 6, there has been substantial criticism of how late in the day the Wikimedia Foundation seemed to resolve to take part in the launch event: right up until an announcement several days before, there had been numerous conflicting rumours about the WMF's participation, based on a few vague words by system administrators here and there. The lack of a Wikimedia Foundation listing at the World IPv6 Launch website further clouded the picture.
Unless extremely serious issues arise, it is planned that IPv6 will be enabled indefinitely. The new protocol poses a learning curve for administrators; at least three administrators on the English Wikipedia, for example confused IPv6 addresses with accounts on World IPv6 Launch day itself. It also poses a complication to CheckUser functionality. Fortunately, there is still time to learn, because IPv6 users present an extremely small minority (less than 0.7%) of editors on Wikipedia; the vast majority of IP and account blocks are still for IPv4 and will be for some time.
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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.
lists.wikimedia.org.Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/Opinion
Ground shifts while chapters dither over new Association
18 June 2012
Foundation finance reformers wrestle with CoI
11 June 2012
Finance debate drags on as editor survey finds Wikipedia too bureaucratic
14 May 2012
Projects launched in Brazil and the Middle East as advisors sought for funds committee
9 April 2012
Funds, fiduciaries, and the Foundation: the complex dynamics of scaling
9 April 2012
Berlin reforms to movement structures, Wikidata launches with fanfare, and Wikipedia's day of mischief
2 April 2012
An introduction to movement roles
2 April 2012
Chapters Council proposals take form as research applications invited for Wikipedia Academy and HighBeam accounts
19 March 2012
Sue Gardner tackles the funds, and the terms of use update nears implementation
12 March 2012
Chapter-selected Board seats, an invite to the Teahouse, patrol becomes triage, and this week in history
5 March 2012
Finance meeting fallout, Gardner recommendations forthcoming
27 February 2012
Fundraiser row continues, new director of engineering
20 February 2012
Fundraising proposals spark a furore among the chapters
13 February 2012
Wikimania a success; board letter controversial; and evidence showing bitten newbies don't stay
8 August 2011
On June 10–11, the working group advising on the design of the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) met in San Francisco to tackle several basic issues like who should be able or required to apply for FDC funds and how multilingual application processes will look. The FDC will be tasked with evaluating applications for funding, mainly by chapters, and on this basis will make recommendations to the WMF board of trustees on how funds should ultimately be allocated.
An "in-depth" point for discussion was whether staff and board members of organizations applying for FDC funding can serve on the FDC at the same time. While chapter functionaries had lobbied for chapter-selected FDC members, thereby being able to choose some of the people to be in charge of evaluating their own chapter applications, in the run-up to the meeting the working group stuck to the existing arrangement: five community-elected and four WMF-board-appointed voting members. On the wider COI question, the following clause remains in the draft:
"Staff / board members of entities requesting funds from the FDC may serve on the FDC; however, they must recuse themselves from deliberations pertaining to their entity's application."
The clause would come into effect if either the community elects or the WMF board appoints such members. However, the Signpost notes that a broad "recusal" requirement failed in the only comparable Wikimedia committee that has come under wider community scrutiny: the first German Community Project Budget Committee (CPB), established in 2011 to evaluate and recommend applications on how to use €200,000 of German chapter funds to the WMDE board of trustees. The CPB ran into trouble over CoI allegations against its own members and WMDE trustees who applied for CPB funds while in charge of its oversight and final approval. The unfolding debate triggered several resignations from both bodies. The chapter's general assembly responded by amending the CPB’s framework to exclude all sitting CPB and WMDE board members from applying for CPB funds.
Another point at issue in San Francisco was the management of FDC volunteers who become inactive. While the English Wikipedia’s ArbCom, one model looked at for best practices, has a larger pool of arbitrators to cope with members who become inactive, and the foundation's Grant Advisory Committee resolved to abandon fixed membership numbers altogether, it may still be decided that FDC members, who will number up to nine, might be replaced by alternate members if inactive for periods long enough to affect the workability of the body.
Topics like the concrete role of a community-elected ombudsperson to handle dispute resolution over the FDC’s work and details of the application papers will be discussed up until the final recommendations deadline to the WMF board on June 30.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/In focus
The committee neither opened nor closed any cases, leaving the total at three. Two motions for procedural change are also being voted upon.
ArbCom resolved by motion to standardise the enforcement of "editing restrictions imposed by the committee, and to reduce the amount of boilerplate text in decisions." The following standard enforcement provision will be incorporated into all cases with an enforceable remedy that avoids 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. | ” |
ArbCom resolved to ensure that the community has adequate notice of proposed changes to the committee's processes and procedures, and opportunity to comment on proposed changes. The motion requires clerks to notify the community of all proposals for significant changes on the committee's formal motions page, and that they be advertised on the committee's noticeboard and administrators' noticeboard. Motions will be subject to standard voting procedure and will remain open for 24 hours before enactment.
Following his use of automated programs in contravention of sanctions, Rich Farmbrough has been blocked for 30 days from 6 June. The committee has resolved that to avoid future violations of any nature, Farmbrough is to:
The prohibition on his use of automation will remain unchanged until it is modified or removed by the Committee. The earliest date which he may appeal the automation prohibition is 15 January 2013. Checkuser will be used to verify his compliance with the prohibition, and if future breaches of the automation prohibition occur, "notwithstanding the standard enforcement provisions, he will likely be site-banned indefinitely with at least twelve months elapsing from the date of the site-ban before he may request the Committee reconsider."
The committee has lifted the indefinite ban of Lyncs from the Scientology topic. The ban was imposed after his successful siteban appeal last year. His appeal to have his interaction ban from Cirt and single-account restriction removed was unsuccessful in view of the limited number of edits the committee could review.
The case concerns alleged misconduct by Fæ. 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." MBisanz alleges that Fæ mischaracterises commentary about his on-wiki conduct as harassment and while Fæ has been mistreated off-wiki and possibly on, his violent responses to on-wiki commentary "has become the issue itself."
Evidence submissions close tomorrow, with proposed decisions due by 26 June. Due to the contentious nature of the case, arbitrator SirFozzie added a notice on the evidence subpage reminding users that he and other arbitrators and clerks will monitor the case. Clerks have been authorised to remove uncivil comments and accusations where there are no diffs to support them; the users responsible will receive a single warning. If further incidents occur, clerks may block the user for a period of time at their discretion. Users are reminded that no speculation is allowed, and submissions must be factual and to the point; where submissions contradict those of other editors, sufficient diffs must be provided.
The case concerns disruptive editing by GoodDay pertaining to the use of diacritics. GoodDay is topic banned from articles pertaining to the UK and Ireland, broadly construed, and is under the mentorship of Steven Zhang, the filing party. GoodDay believes that diacritics should not be used in articles as they are not part of English. Zhang notes that GoodDay can be uncivil and often removes comments by other editors from his talk page, citing harassment.
Evidence submissions closed on 5 June; most submissions concerned GoodDay's battleground behaviour and disruptive editing. proposed principles, findings of fact and remedies are currently being voted on. A statement about the scope and timetable of the case was made by drafting arbitrators Kirill Lokshin and AGK, reminding users seeking to make submissions that the purpose of the case is to examine GoodDay's conduct. Submissions must relate to whether or not his behaviour is contentious. AGK reminded users that "no examination will be made of the wider topic areas to which GoodDay makes contributions, except where necessary to establish if GoodDay's behaviour has been disruptive." The proposed decision of the case "will take into account GoodDay's treatment of his mentors' advice" and evidence unrelated to GoodDay's conduct will not be accepted.
The 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".
Evidence submissions for the case will be accepted until 16 June, with a proposed decision to be made on 30 June. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-11/Humour
