Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/In the media
| “ | In March:
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—Adapted from Engineering metrics, Wikimedia blog | ||
The WMF's engineering report for February was published this week on the Wikimedia blog and on the MediaWiki wiki ("friendly" summary version), giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project and the now Wikimedia CH-led Kiwix offline reader project). Of the seven headlines picked out for the report, five had already received some sort of Signpost coverage. The other two highlight the achievement of the Wikipedia mobile site in now serving some 3 billion page views a month, as well as improvements to jQuery.IME, a JavaScript internationalisation plugin intended not only to be of use to Wikimedia wikis but also to the web more broadly.
Progress on the Foundation's larger projects was steady during February, the report noted, with the VisualEditor "on schedule" for a July rollout. It was a similar story for Parsoid, the new parser that underpins the VisualEditor, which received various performance improvements and version 5 of the Article Feedback tool (the debate over its future notwithstanding). The Echo (notifications) project also continued apace with incremental extensions throughout February. The mobile team worked on mobile image uploads (now available on all wikis) as well as a dedicated Wikimedia Commons app, currently in beta mode (Google Play; iOS version), while the continuing boom in page traffic was made clear by the installation of 120 new application servers, intended to give the WMF enough capacity for another year, the report said.
The monthly engineering reports also provide a useful roundup of personnel changes at the Foundation. As has been the general trend over many years, the number of new staff outnumbered the number leaving: joining in February were Ed Sanders (Software Engineer, Visual Editor); Christian Aistleitner (contractor, Gerrit); Marc-Andre Pelletier (contractor, Wikimedia Labs and tool migration; better know by his pseudonym User:Coren); Kirsten Menger-Anderson (part-time Technical Writer, focussing on thus-far internal documentation relating to Editor Engagement Experiments) and Greg Grossmeier (Release Manager). Leaving was senior developer Patrick Reilly, just one month after his promotion to the position of Site Performance Engineer and Senior Technical Advisor and two years after first joining the WMF. At least 14 positions were still unfilled at time of writing.
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/Opinion
I did not, could not guess how bad a turn it had taken. Despite the valiant efforts of some of its members, the institution is moribund, and cancerous.
Just two months into his second term as an arbitrator on the English Wikipedia, Coren resigned from the Committee with a blistering attack on his fellow arbitrators. In a strongly worded statement posted both on his talk page and the arbitration noticeboard, he claimed that ArbCom has become politicised to the extent that "it can no longer do the job it was ostensibly elected for". Coren accused arbitrators of "filibustering and tactical maneuvers to gain the upper hand" and of "bickering about the 'image' of the committee with little or no concern for the project's fate". "Trying our damn best to do the Right Thing", he charged, "has been obsoleted in favour of trying to get reelected."
Arbitrator Worm That Turned answered Coren's claims, writing on the ArbCom noticeboard: "Personally, I find the statement from Coren to be rather unfair, ... I do give a damn what the community thinks. I consider the repercussions carefully and try to minimise the controversy surrounding events. I also care about the image that the committee portrays, as without the community's respect, the committee is nothing. I'm sure it's not only me that Coren's statement is reflecting, if it was I would be roundly ignored, but I believe I'm the most vocal about it. The leap that I cannot accept is that I'm doing this to be re-elected. ... I see no reason why we cannot do the right thing AND keep the community on side. If that's playing politics, then so be it."
Coren (Marc André Pelletier) is no newcomer to either the English Wikipedia or the Wikimedia movement as a whole. He served on the Arbitration Committee from 2009 to 2011, and was elected to a second term starting January 2013. Had he stayed on, his total service would have amounted to five years. In 2011, he ran for election to the WMF's Board of Trustees. On 25 February 2013, Coren took up a 12-month contract with the Foundation, joining the Engineering and Product Development Team; his primary focus will be to assist community developers to leverage the new Wikimedia Labs infrastructure for their tools, especially applications that are migrating from the toolserver.
Asked about the future of the Arbitration Committee on his talk page, Coren stated, "there is nothing wrong with the basic operation of the Committee when its members actually work towards the right objective – this is what I saw in 2009–2010 for instance. Part of the difficulty stems from the fact that some of mechanisms in place that make it work right fail in catastrophic ways when things go wrong." He then delivered a harsh accusation against the current Committee: "What I mean by 'politicized' was that decisions are not being argued around 'what is best for the project' but 'what will make [the committee] look good'. Add to that stonewalling, filibustering, and downright 'bullying' from those who aren't getting their way – to the point of having arbitrators being ... creative ... with ethics in order to get the upper hand".
The Signpost asked Coren to explain where he saw a conflict between caring about the image of the Committee and doing the best for the project.
| “ | If you attempt to decide according to whether people will whine and yell, all you are doing is giving the loudest voices the power to veto what the committee does "to preserve the image of the committee". The good of the project, on the other hand, doesn't rely on what is currently said about the committee. Things like applying the rules fairly, or fixing a long term problem, should not be affected by "who will complain", and "but that would cause drama". When you start having arbitrators start breaking rules (internal and otherwise) in order to find something, /anything/ to use as a pretext to avoid acting because it will make people dislike them, then the problem becomes serious. | ” |
Coren did not respond to the Signpost's subsequent request to clarify what he meant by "breaking rules", or which cases involved whining and yelling.
Hersfold, who resigned from ArbCom the week before, echoed Coren's criticisms in general terms: "Unfortunately, I was hoping [that Coren would] be one of the ones to lead the charge against such politicization ... I noticed a steadily increasing emphasis from several arbitrators on avoiding actions that would look bad for the Committee's image or otherwise cause undue amounts of drama". When we invited him to be more specific, Hersfold told the Signpost, "I have no further comment."
Arbitrator AGK took strong exception to Coren's statements: "I consider Coren's resignation to be the rankest drama-mongering. ... throwing the toys from the pram because the community has moved on and the arbitrators who now staff the committee were not quite willing to go along with his extreme views on running ArbCom."
Invited to explain his views further, AGK told the Signpost:
| “ | ... the notion that one or more arbitrators is consistently pushing the committee to do the most popular—rather than the most beneficial—thing in high-profile cases is utter nonsense. As for arbitrators breaking rules to push for popular opinion to be reflected in committee decisions: this is, again, unsupported by fact. In the situation Marc is speaking about, the committee maintained Marc was required to recuse from the discussion. Marc himself agreed, and he was not asked to recuse so that a suboptimal decision could be "forced through". Marc has misappropriated his recusal to give the impression that some arbitrators are using underhand tactics to sideline people that are not "toeing" the line. This is wrong. When Marc was asked to recuse, it was because he had a plain conflict of interest. When Marc was out-voted, it was because his opinions were the wrong thing for the project, and had no support in the committee. Marc is obliged, in my opinion, to withdraw (or substantiate) his accusations of impropriety, and I would also suggest he make it clear to the community that the real reason he resigned was that he could not get his way. |
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Markus Glaser has been elected as the new chair of the chapters association. He replaces Ashley Van Haeften (Fæ), who had faced controversy after his unopposed election as chair with little substantive discussion during Wikimania 2012. Van Haeften attempted to address these concerns before the election:
| “ | I was never completely convinced with being elected to this position uncontested through a simple vote at our first meeting, as a demonstration of our democratic strength, and last year I committed to holding a more public, thorough, and hopefully contested election, ... Over the last few months, more than half of the current WMF board of trustees have approached myself or other members of the Council, raising their concerns about my ban from the English Wikipedia placed shortly after my election as Chair. Throughout I reassured them that this had been discussed on the Chapters list, that there was no appetite from the Council for me to stand down, and I would be calling an election before the Milan conference. However, after increased pressure, I have moved this forward from my original plan of March. | ” |
In the election, Glaser beat the English Wikipedia's Kirill Lokshin and Lorenzo Losa, who started as an editor on the Italian Wikipedia, although that "now takes only a small part of [his] Wikimedia-related time." Glaser, who began as a developer and came to the association as the representative of Wikimedia Germany, downplayed the powers he would have as chair, stating that he would favor forming an executive committee to make major decisions. He believes that the committee should:
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The troubled history of the chapters association was covered by the Signpost in June 2012 and in brief updates since then, such as February 2013. More information is available on Meta—the coordinating website for the Wikimedia movement—under the proposed name of the organization – "Wikimedia Chapters Association"; however, the Foundation has declined to recognize that name on the basis that the inclusion of Wikimedia is inconsistent with its trademark policy. The next meeting of the association will be in April, at the annual Wikimedia Conference in Milan, Italy.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/In focus
On Thursday, arbitrator Coren resigned, following closely on the heels of arbitrator Hersfold's resignation on Wednesday. There are two open cases. A final decision has been given in the Norton case.
Arbitrator Coren resigned, effective immediately, charging that the committee has become politicized. The matter is covered in this week's "News and notes."
This case, brought by Fram, involved allegations of an ongoing pattern of copyright violations in uploaded files, and in links to copyright-violating off-wiki pages. To address the issue of a portion of the evidence having been deleted and only viewable by administrators, a select number of deleted files were restored, with the contents visible via a template, for the duration of the case.
The committee passed the following findings of fact: that Norton had made more than 100,000 edits since 2004, that he had a history of adding text and images that were in violation of copyright, that he had done little to resolve copyright concerns, that he had violated a topic ban on article creation, and that he was willing to accept restrictions on his editing to prevent further incidents.
The committee passed the following remedies: that Norton is “strongly admonished" for copyright violations, that his topic ban on article creation remain in place, that he is restricted from uploading images for use on English Wikipedia, and that any links to external sites he has contributed to are to be vetted on the talk page before being added to article space by another editor.
This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute over transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 21.
This case was brought to the Committee by KillerChihuahua, who alleges the discussion over this American political group has degenerated into incivility. The evidence phase of the case was due to close by March 20, 2013, and a decision is scheduled for April 3, 2013.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-03-18/Humour
