I am excited to announce that a Portuguese-language journal, Correio da Wikipédia has been launched by Vitorvicentevalente. It has just published its third edition, and I encourage readers who speak the language to read and contribute to its already expansive coverage of the Portuguese Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement.
As for the Signpost, many of our dedicated readers have no doubt noticed that we have published at irregular times over the last several months, a situation that has not improved with our most recent issues. Publishing on Wednesdays and Thursdays—and occasionally later—is not compatible with a listed publishing date of the preceding Monday. As such, we have moved the official publishing date to each Wednesday, and our readers should expect to see the Signpost on their talk page, RSS feed, mobile devices, Facebook, and Twitter every Wednesday or Thursday from now on.
In closing, reader comments on the Signpost's performance are always welcome. I find it hard to stress that enough—we cannot do our job effectively without feedback from you. You can contribute comment sections at the bottom of each article (including this one!), the main talk page for wide issues, or privately via my email.
— The ed17, Signpost editor-in-chief
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Six featured articles were promoted this week.
Four featured lists were promoted this week.
Thirteen featured pictures were promoted this week.
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This is mostly a list of Non-article page requests for comment believed to be active on 4 June 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC or watchlist notices. The latter and CentralNotices are in bold. If an RfC can be listed under more than one category it is usually listed once only on this page. Clarifications and corrections are appreciated; please leave them in this article's comment box at the bottom of the page.
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On 31 May, the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal and Community Advocacy team announced that the Wikivoyage logo would have to be replaced, because it has become the subject of a cease-and-desist letter from the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The logo dispute comes as another entry in Wikivoyage's colorful history. Wikitravel, as it was then known, was created in 2003. When it was acquired by Internet Brands in 2006, the German-language contributors decided to fork, creating the original Wikivoyage. Wikitravel continued unabated until 2012, when frustrated editors decided to fork the site again, rejoining Wikivoyage and moving under the WMF's umbrella. These maneuvers set the stage for a dramatic scene when Internet Brands sued two prominent volunteers who were in favor of the move. When those matters were settled and the initial technical infrastructure was set in place, Wikivoyage was formally relaunched, with its sites covering nine languages, on 15 January.
The current Wikivoyage logo was decided on in a two-round community vote in November and December last year. 41 options were put forward in round one. The winner was then subjected to 24 variations for the second round before being chosen.
While Wikivoyage's logo is derived from the logo for the Italian Wikipedia's Transportation WikiProject, perceived similarities to other logos were brought up during the selection process, albeit jokingly; these suggestions ranged from the original Wikitravel logo to the logos for the WTO and for BBC World News.
The WMF promptly reviewed the community's selection and decided that while there were some shared traits, there were "significant enough differences between the designs and the markets the two organizations occupied for both logos to co-exist" (in the words of Legal Counsel Michelle Paulson). Unfortunately for all involved, this did not occur, and the WTO gave the WMF a deadline of 31 July to change Wikivoyage's logo. This was later extended to 31 August as a result of Paulson's discussions with the WTO's representatives.
A related Wikimedia-l mailing list discussion revolved around whether to legally fight the WTO's move. The WMF said in its original statement that while they see "significant differences" in the two logos, "such arguments are not guaranteed to win if we were to legally oppose this request because there are also some substantial similarities." The WMF's legal team calculated that such a risky fight, coupled with the current logo's age (less than six months) and brand recognition (low), would not be worth the potential gains. Nearly all of the community members there agreed with the WMF's view. English Wikipedia editor Craig Franklin stated in two emails that "Asking the Foundation to play chicken with the lawyers of a major international organisation over a trademark claim on a relatively new and easily replaced logo of ours does not offer a very good risk/reward ratio... / ... [While] the WMF [could be] victorious in court on this sort of issue, the expense would be enormous and the legal team's time is much better spent on things other than fighting battles over non-core principles with international organisations."
Some on-wiki discussion concerning the logo change is taking place on Meta, the global coordinating website for the Wikimedia movement, and a proposed timeline for selecting a new logo has been published.
A proposal on Meta aims to help combat this loss of rich human cultural identity. The idea is to form a new sister project, called WikiLang. Given a tagline of "the free language resources project" by User:Zylbath—the designer and principal advocate of the proposal, WikiLang's objective is to document, record, share, and teach as many languages as possible. It would also strongly support language revitalization.
WikiLang differs from Wiktionaries in its main goal: Wiktionaries attempt to document lexical items—word definitions—while the WikiLang would aim to move beyond this, to document and become a rich resource for both languages that have already become extinct, and those that are under threat. WikiLang aims to be a multilingual, interwiki bridge between the development processes of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiversity and Wikibooks, by providing a centralized source of documentation about all languages—both lexical and grammatical—that could be expanded on in many useful ways.
On the other side, User:Amqui defended WikiLang against OmegaWiki, stating that "one point of Wikilang is to make it easy for all languages (even dead ones) to have a place to develop a project", though he admitted his support to add the latter as a WMF wiki. There have also been proposals to merge the two ideas: Kipmaster, the current maintainer of OmegaWiki, underlined the differences in scope (which are, as Ypnypn put it, "OmegaWiki is about words, while WikiLang ... is more about languages"), but believes that there may be enough shared qualities for a merger if they cannot join as separate projects. However, users have come out against his base assumption.
The ultimate destination of both proposals is still unknown. WikiLang has not been put to a community-wide vote yet, and while the OmegaWiki request for comment enjoys strong support, there has been no official word from the Foundation.
An article on TheNextWeb.com says that the Chinese Government has "effectively blocked" Wikipedia by cutting off access to the HTTP Secure (https) "workaround", almost completely cutting off uncensored access to those in China. Though Wikipedia has previously been blocked, people could still circumvent it using https instead of HTTP. The Great Firewall of China was not able to selectively block sensitive content, according to the initial report from Greatfire.org, a prominent censorship watch organization which the New York Times has previously featured. Greatfire.org accused Wikipedia of not caring about Chinese Wikipedia readers, using as evidence Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' threat to make https the default in the UK if its parliament passed a "snooping bill"—and the lack of similar support for those in China.
Greatfire is calling for the WMF to switch the default protocol for Chinese Wikipedia readers from http to https, which would make the Chinese government choose between lifting the blackout or keeping what would quickly become a highly publicized block.
When asked to respond, the Wikimedia Foundation's Head of Communications Jay Walsh soundly disputed the blog's assertions:
| “ | Clearly we don't hold any readers of our projects in any less regard. Our mission is to bring the knowledge contained in the Wikimedia projects to everyone on the planet. There is no strategic consideration around how we can make one or another language project more accessible or readable in one part of the world or another, and as the blog post does correctly state, we do not have control over how a national government operates its censorship system. We also do not work with any national censorship system to limit access to or project knowledge in any way. | ” |
Walsh also took issue with the blog post's factual assumptions, such as Jimmy's role within the WMF, which he says was mischaracterized by Greatfire. While Jimmy has indirect impact through his position on the board of trustees, he does not have direct, day-to-day impact on its staff. In addition, Walsh told the Signpost that while moving to an https default is a goal the WMF is actively working on, doing so is not "trivial"—it is a delicate process that the WMF plans to enable in graduated steps, from logged-in users to testing on smaller wikis before making it the default for anonymous users and readers on all projects.
Articles currently censored by the Chinese government primarily center around the Tiananmen Square Massacre which occurred on 3 and 4 June (the dates on which Wikipedia was censored) of 1989, and about which the Chinese government forbids discussion. Related discussion is currently occurring on the Wikimedia-l mailing list, and a technical description of the https "challenges" can be read here.
This week, we reflect on the anniversary of D-Day by storming the shores of Operation Normandy, a special initiative of WikiProject Military History started in May 2008 that has been subjected to surging and ebbing in activity. The mission of Operation Normandy involves improving the "dilapidated state of all articles relating to the Battle of Normandy" and creating a Featured Topic for the subject by the 70th Anniversary of D-Day on 6 June 2014. With one year left to go, Operation Normandy has already brought half of their core articles up to Good Article status, although the number of Featured Articles needs significant attention. The project's page includes a chart with the status of each article, brief notes for how each article can be improved to reach the next higher rating, a listing of 20 contributors, and a variety of print and online resources in the possession of specific editors. We interviewed Nick-D, EnigmaMcmxc, Ranger Steve, and Keith-264.
Next week, we'll replace our old Z3 with a state of the art ENIAC. Until then, pop in twelve floppies and perform a search of our archives.
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Last week, the Signpost reported on a feeling at the Amsterdam hackathon that Toolserver developers were coming round to the idea of migrating to Wikimedia Labs (for full context on the migration and why it's happening, see previous Signpost coverage). This week, the theme was picked up by Toolserver volunteer admin and advocate DaB. in a dramatic email to the toolserver-l mailing list where he outlined his reasons for his losing hope in the continuity of the Toolserver as an independent project beyond the Labs switchover date:
| “ | Reason 4 are you, the tool-authors. The participation in [a recent survey of tool developers] was pitiful low and the majority of these few who voted, voted to leave the Toolserver as soon as possible or this year – a trend that was already visible on the mailing-list before. So I conclude that the most of you don’t care and those who care will leave this year. ... With very few exceptions none of you helped to protect the Toolserver against ToolLabs; all you were interested in was that ToolLabs provides the same environment so your tools can continue to run there. And it is really a joke to compare the empty new database-servers of ToolLabs with our old and heavily-loaded servers for performance. Let’s see how fast they are [when they have many tools running in parallel]. ... Let’s hope that the WMF does not decide to "re-focus" again too soon. Let’s hope that the WMF does not disable tools just because there are a little slow. Let’s hope that the WMF does not restrict the database-tables even more. | ” |
DaB. also cited the introduction of a second paid root who could take over his duties, as well as the lack of commitment to the Toolserver (both spiritual and financial) German chapter Wikimedia Deutschland had demonstrated over the last six months. In short, he said he was upset that tool developers cared about the Toolserver-Labs debate only in terms of functionality and not of ideology, that they "think that the Toolserver is dead, that it is not worth the fight, that WMF has already won. You were the last group I had that supported me with the Toolserver. I had already lost the WMDE’s CEO, the general member meeting and also WMDE’s board. Losing you made it pointless to continue the struggle [but] I can not resent you [for wanting] to move to a place that has a future, may be faster and maybe better administrated".
DaB.'s instinct is probably not far from the truth. Giving a flavour of moderate opinion, Carl (CBM) suggested why he did not share DaB.'s inclination to defend the Toolserver's integrity:
| “ | As one person wrote on the survey, "I didn't want to [move to Wikimedia Labs] but, from what I gathered, the Toolserver was going to die no matter what." That sums up my feelings relatively well. | ” |
At the more extreme end of the spectrum, while most thanked DaB. for his work as a volunteer, tool developer Tim Landscheidt was more critical:
| “ | JFC, what a bunch of self-pitying bullshit. ... You have been gone as a system administrator for a long time. On April 30, you said on IRC: "I have a working cluster with commons+wikipedia here :-)", while actual Toolserver users had been complaining about replication
lag and almost daily LDAP outages for months. ... You neither fixed the simple issues nor planned ahead .. [and you] actively blocked any offer of help. ... Everybody has the right to leave, but don't try to put the blame on others. |
” |
The only WMF response so far comes from Marc-Andre Pelletier (User:Coren) who is contracting with the WMF to assist with Tool Labs and the Toolserver migration:
| “ | I am saddened that you felt that the Foundation was an enemy to protect against when we are plainly working towards the same ends. That we are in a position to support the developer community with more resources should be cause to celebrate, not bemoan. The Toolserver deserves a retirement with honors, not a bitter parting. | ” |
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. This week's In brief includes material that originally appeared in Tech News, a Foundation-assisted attempt to create weekly tech briefings.
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