Reactions to Chelsea Manning's Wikipedia bio being renamed, again
After media praise for Wikipedia's decision to move the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning (see last week's Signpost), the reversion of that page move on August 31, after a discussion in which several hundred Wikipedians participated, has so far triggered less favourable feedback, as well as a blog post from Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner expressing her disappointment with the decision.
The Daily Dotreported on the decision to move Chelsea Manning back to Bradley Manning on the same day, asking: "Can a website vote on a person's gender transition?" The article stated, "On Wikipedia, Chelsea has been sentenced to remain Bradley", and went on to quote Jimmy Wales, who responded to complaints from Josh Gorand on his user page by saying:
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I'd like to suggest that rhetoric that using the name 'Bradley' rather than 'Chelsea' is a 'form of violence' against that person is completely false, and it not something that is even remotely 'generally considered' to be violence.
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The Daily Dot article was picked up by Slate in France on September 2. Slate expressed the opinion that Wikipedia had "put its foot in it".
The admins are keen to stress that the reversion is not, technically, moving the page back to "Bradley Manning" so much as it is undoing the move from "Bradley Manning". The difference is ostensibly that the former would require consensus that Bradley Manning is a better title than Chelsea Manning, while the latter merely requires a lack of consensus that Chelsea Manning is a better title than Bradley Manning. In addition, the article itself still refers to Manning as "Chelsea" and uses the female pronoun.
That distinction hasn't gone down particularly well in the wider world, where [the] fact that a group of people held a vote on whether or not to call a trans woman by her preferred name, and then lost that vote, is seen as yet more evidence of a painful lack of diversity of experience amongst active Wikipedia editors.
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The New Statesman went on to quote excerpts from a blog post Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner had published earlier that day, in which she argued:
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Here's what's normal: When Pluto was declared to not be a planet, Wikipedia deferred to the experts, and reflected what they said in the article.
Here's what's not normal: When Dominique Strauss Kahn was accused of having raped a hotel cleaner, and when Todd Akin made pseudo-scientific claims about rape and pregnancy, many Wikipedians' discussions were (I thought) remarkably ill-informed. Some editors seemed to believe that false accusations of rape were common. Some didn't seem to realize that rape is seriously underreported. They didn't recognize that there's a body of knowledge on rape that's well-sourced and reliable.
It took me a while to connect this to systemic bias—to realize that rather than Wikipedians being unusually lacking in knowledge about what rape is and how it works, I might better understand it as me being more-knowledgeable-than-the-average-Wikipedian on the topic. Because I'm a woman, and also a journalist, I've followed rape issues pretty closely in the media, I've talked about it a fair bit with my female friends, and I've read a couple of dozen books and studies on it and related topics. It took me a while to realize that that level of interest, and therefore expertise, is unusual on Wikipedia, presumably at least partly because our editor community skews so heavily male.
The same is true for transgender issues. A number of editors have made truly ignorant comments over the past week or so, comparing Chelsea Manning to someone who woke up one morning believing herself to be a dog, a cat, a Vulcan, Jesus Christ, a golden retriever, a genius, a black person, a Martian, a dolphin, Minnie Mouse, a broomstick or a banana. In saying those things, they revealed themselves to be people who've never thought seriously about trans issues—who have never read a single first-person account of growing up transgendered, or a scholarly study or medical text, or maybe even the Wikipedia article itself. That in itself is perfectly okay: different things are interesting to different people, and I for one know nothing about trigonometry or antisemitism in the 19th century or how a planet is determined to actually be a planet. But I don't deny that there is stuff on those topics worth knowing, nor do I mock the knowledge of others, nor accuse them of bias and POV-pushing.
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Gardner and the New Statesman both noted that an arbitration request had been filed. Gardner commented on her blog,
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My hope is that ArbCom will clarify Wikipedia policy, and affirm that we have a responsibility to respect the basic human dignity of article subjects, to not mock or disparage them, and to attempt to avoid doing them harm. That we must not participate in or prolong their victimization.
I also hope ArbCom will weigh in on how Wikipedia handles trans issues in general. I'd be particularly interested in an examination of the role that subject-matter expertise is playing in our current discussions, and an exploration of how editors might choose to conduct themselves in disputes in which they have little expertise, and in which systemic bias risks skewing outcomes. In the Manning situation, for a variety of reasons that almost certainly include systemic bias, discussion didn't achieve a result consistent with our desire to protect the dignity of an article subject.
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It remains to be seen whether Gardner's hope that ArbCom "clarify policy" is at odds with ArbCom's constitutional role, as defined in Arbitration Policy:
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The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated.
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The New Statesman meanwhile noted that any ArbCom decision would take at least a month. "But it's the best chance yet for Wikipedia's editing community to take some time for the introspection it apparently needs."
Gardner clarified in her blog post that she had written the post in her capacity as a volunteer editor. She added, "everything I say here, I say with lots of respect for the Wikipedia community. This is a rare misstep: an unusual and unfortunate blind spot."
HASTAC also had an analysis of the naming dispute, by Wikipedians Adrianne Wadewitz and Phoebe Ayers.
Azerbaijan government's involvement in its language's Wikipedia expansion
The Azerbaijani news portal abc.az reported on September 6 that the Azerbaijani Ministry of Communications and Information is creating a "social movement for expansion of the information about the country in online encyclopedia Wikipedia". The Ministry said it was collaborating with the Azerbaijan Association of Young Translators (AGTA) to create a wiki movement in the country.
The website of VikiHərəkat, the Azerbaijani wiki movement, is here. Jimmy Wales said on his talk page, "I know nothing about it."
According to Human Rights Watch, Azerbaijan has a deteriorating human rights record. Under the heading "Azerbaijan: Crackdown on Civil Society", Human Rights Watch summarises the most recent developments in the country as follows:
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The Azerbaijani government engaged in a deliberate, abusive strategy to limit dissent. The strategy is designed to curtail opposition political activity, limit public criticism of the government, and exercise greater control over nongovernmental organizations. The clampdown on freedom of expression, assembly, and association have accelerated in the months preceding the presidential elections, scheduled for October 9, 2013.
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This makes Azerbaijan, after Kazakhstan (see earlier Signpost report), the second state with a dismal record on human rights and free speech to take an active interest in the expansion of the local language version of Wikipedia.
The Wikipediafication of fine art: Glendon Mellow's blog on the Scientific American website had some nice things to say about Wikipedia on August 29, speaking of "the wonder that Wikipedia and its contributors and donors gives us: a richness of topic and visual cues to lead us down a myriad of paths instead of one-note shocker headline images."
Hive mind: On August 30, Science News featured a belated report on a study of cooperative behavior in Wikipedia published by Simon DeDeo in December 2012.
Interest in Syria: A report published in Der Spiegel on August 31 noted increased page views for Syrian topics in the German Wikipedia, triggered by Syria's ongoing troubles.
WikiTube: On September 1, ghacks.net covered WikiTube, a Chrome extension that adds videos to the top of Wikipedia articles.
Portrait of a Philadelphia Wikipedian: The philly.com website had a portrait of David Thomsen (Dthomsen8), one of the top 200 Wikipedians by edit count, on September 2. The story was picked up by the Philadelphia Business Journal, and Thomsen had a further mention in Swarthmore College's Daily Gazette, which featured a profile of Google employee and Wikipedian Will Hopkins on September 4.
Storming Wikipedia: bust.com and The Daily Dot joined the chorus of publications reporting on FemTechNet's initiative to counter gender bias in Wikipedia (see last week's Signpost).
Wikipedia lies: Musician Example and comedian Chris Ramseydiscussed Twitter and Wikipedia on the website of the Daily Express on September 3. Comparing notes about inaccuracies in their respective Wikipedia entries, Ramsey said, "There's something on Wikipedia that says I have this thing called the Geordie flick. And it says that I won a competition for the best haircut in Newcastle, but it's utter b*****t." The unsourced addition (removed after the article appeared) was made in December 2012.
On September 3, the Wikimedia Foundation launched the second stage of the process to improve the privacy policy implemented on most Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia, by publishing a policy draft.
The first round of deliberations started in mid-June with an open call for input, but was overshadowed by the PRISM debate. The overall aim is to replace the current, aging policy developed in 2008 by WMF's then-General Counsel Mike Godwin with one that accounts for changes in the legal and technological environment since then.
The second consultation broadly resembles the Terms of Use update in 2011–12, where more than 120 issues were examined over the course of several months. The legal department only released an English-language draft, while the new privacy policy draft was released in other languages as well: Arabic, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.
An early controversy was sparked by the attempt—novel in Wikimedia contexts—to use illustrations and jokes as part of the draft in an effort to expand the audience able and willing to read through the legal documents. Geoff Brigham, the foundation's current General Counsel, said in the related Meta debate that early A/B tests displaying the department's mascot, Rory, on banners calling for input indicate a higher click-through rate than for the conventional Foundation logo—including a 9:1 increase on Japanese Wikimedia sites.
The privacy policy draft is the most important part of a series of ongoing and upcoming legal documents to be scrutinized by the community. Alongside the main draft, the WMF has published a proposal for the access to non-public information policy, governing rights and duties of CheckUsers, support team members, and others in handling a wide range of issues. Future plans include data retention guidelines; a spelling out of the Foundation's data collection and retention practices under the new privacy policy; and a transparency report disclosing, among other things, how often the Foundation is approached by third parties to hand over user information, the sources of these demands, and how often the foundation complies.
In brief
Article creation bot finishes first run: The Swedish Wikipedia's article-creating program, Lsjbot, has finished creating articles on the world's known animals and insects, and is nearly finished with the approximately 50,000 lakes in Sweden (see previous Signpostcoverage). The bot's efforts have pushed the Swedes into fourth place when the various Wikipedias are compared by their total number of articles. The bot's operator is now planning to create articles on a large number of plants before adding the accumulated information to Wikidata. In unrelated but similar news, the Polish Wikipedia will soon pass one million total articles.
WP:WMF: A new English Wikipedia page, Wikipedia:Wikimedia Foundation, has been launched with the aim of educating the English-language community about the Foundation and increasing the potential avenues of communication between the two.
Good Article main page RFC closes: As the Signpost goes to press, a request for comment on whether to include recently-promoted good articles in the "Did you know?" section on the main page has closed, with broad consensus to include them. The change is expected to take place in two weeks.
Wikipedia Weekly: A new edition of the Wikipedia Weekly podcast has been published.
Israeli image donation: The National Library of Israel has donated one hundred images related to Operation Horev, a military attack carried out during the country's 1948 war.
Wikimedian-in-Residence needed: In a partnership with Wikimedia UK, the York Museums Trust is looking for a Wikimedian-in-Residence who can "help improve online access to our extensive collections and disseminate information about our collections, buildings and gardens to the widest possible audience." In particular, the museum appears to want to focus on its Tempest Andersoncollection, who according to his Wikipedia stub was a British surgeon who traveled around the world to investigate the aftermaths of a pair of volcano explosions on different Caribbean islands. The position will run for six months and requires a commitment of two days per week.
Foundation positions: The Wikimedia Foundation is currently looking for software engineers for languages, fundraising, multimedia, and editor-engagement (either in San Francisco or remote worldwide), plus a handful of other development/ops/fundraising posts and a legal intern for next spring, a possible opportunity for a young Wikipedian looking for practical experience.
Open Knowledge Foundation and GLAMs: The Open Knowledge Foundation is seeking an OpenGLAM Community Manager. GLAMs, a frequently used term on Wikipedia, refer to galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. This position would be a part-time (20 hours per week) paid position that would help the organization "build our growing network of cultural heritage professionals, researchers and hackers working to open up data and content" from GLAMs around the world and place it on the Internet, where a significantly greater amount of people can view, learn, and benefit from it.
Help the Signpost: As a general reminder, the Signpost greatly welcomes tips for news, whether they are from outside press sources, within the Wikimedia movement, or tangentially related, on our public suggestions page or privately through emailing the editor-in-chief. While not all suggestions will make it into each week's edition, we do our best to include all that we possibly can.
Summary: A news-heavy week offers some insight, perhaps, into humanity's priorities: Barack Obama's contemplating entering the Syrian Civil War and the anniversary of the March on Washington share space with Miley Cyrus's public pushing of her posterior and Robin Thicke's apparent extramarital groping, with the highest interest directed towards the offending bottom.
For a list of the top 25 articles of the week, plus exclusions, see: WP:TOP25
For the week of August 25–31, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
Apparently, girls waggling their bottoms onstage now has a word. Or at least one fit for the Oxford Dictionary Online. And a Wikipedia article. You'd think we'd have had one a while ago, given what a common phenomenon it is, but I suppose words are as they are needed, and boy, Miley, did you make this one needed.
The last time the Blue-eyed soul singer and son of Alan Thicke was on this list, it was because he'd just released his latest album; now he's back, with triple the views, both for his role in Miley's routine, and for his hand straying too far over the anatomy of a pretty clubgoer.
The former teenybopper graduated into adulthood in the manner customary to her profession: doing something in public to offend. The heightened publicity has secured her career for the immediate future at least.
The 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's rhetorical masterpiece at the March on Washington on August 28 stimulated much public discussion about its legacy and effects.
As mentioned in "In the news" on Wikipedia's main page, the Library of Birmingham in the United Kingdom has opened. This interior photo was taken a week before opening. The article reports that the library "has been described as the largest public library in the United Kingdom, the largest public cultural space in Europe, and the largest regional library in Europe."
This is mostly a list of Non-article page requests for comment believed to be active on 5 September 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC, recent watchlist notices and SiteNotices. The latter two are in bold. Items that are new to this report are in italics even if they are not new discussions. If an item can be listed under more than one category it is usually listed once only in this report. Clarifications and corrections are appreciated; please leave them in this article's comment box at the bottom of the page.
The present building of the Supreme Court of the United States. An RfC regarding election procedures for the English Wikipedia Arbitration committee has started, and Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 is underway.
Tosa-class battleship (nom) by Sturmvogel 66, Parsecboy and The ed17. The Tosa class were two dreadnought battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, ordered during the early 1920s. The first ship, Tosa, was canceled before completion as a result of an international naval-limiting treaty, being used then in experiments to assess the effectiveness of its armor. The results of these tests were used years later to design the heaviest battleships ever built, the Yamato class. The hull of the second ship, Kaga, was converted into an aircraft carrier and was sunk in the Second World War.
Peasants' Revolt (nom) by Hchc2009. Also known as the Great Rising, the Peasants' Revolt was a major uprising that took place in 1381, across large parts of England. Economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death were among the causes of the revolt, as well as the high taxes caused by the conflict with France during the Hundred Years War.
No. 2 Operational Conversion Unit RAAF (nom) by Ian Rose. The No. 2 OCU is a fighter training unit of the Royal Australian Air Force, located in New South Wales. The unit trains pilots to operate the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet, conducts refresher courses for pilots returning to the jet, and trains future Hornet instructors. The unit was established in April 1942; it provided training on a wide range of aircraft during World War II.
Lanny McDonald (nom) by Resolute. McDonald (born 1953) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player of the National Hockey League. He played over 1,100 games during a 16-year career in which he scored 500 goals and over 1,000 points. He is among the most popular players in Calgary Flames history, and holds the Flames's record for highest goals scored during a single season with 66, while playing for the team in 1982–83.
Featured lists
Four featured lists were promoted this week.
A photograph of the 2013 Moore tornado which destroyed much of the town, taken by the very brave Wikipedian Ks0stm.
Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (nom) by SoapFan12. This Emmy award is presented anually at the Emmy Awards ceremony to honor actors for their supporting roles in the daytime drama industry. It was first given in 1979 to Peter Hansen for his performance as Lee Baldwin in the ABC Network's series General Hospital.
76th Academy Awards (nom) by Birdienest81. The 76th edition of the Academy Awards was held in Los Angeles on February 29, 2004. It was the eighth time Billy Crystal had hosted the awards. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King became the most awarded film of the event, receiving eleven Oscars and matching Ben-Hur and Titanic on most wins by a single film.
List of Pirates of the Caribbean video games (nom) by Hahc21 with Status. The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, apart from attraction rides and four commercially successful feature films, has spawned a wide amount of video game adaptations and tie-in installments including several cross-franchise releases since the release of the first film in 2003.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Psychology? Do you have an educational or professional background in psychology? Have you contributed to any of the project's Good or Featured Articles?
MartinPoulter: Psychology deals with questions of human bias and error, of happiness, of social interaction, and other things that are extremely useful or important to understand. So a central way a free encyclopedia can benefit the world is to raise awareness of what reliable, scientific knowledge there is about these topics. Writing about psychology is also an opportunity to write about the scientific method. Although my PhD is in philosophy, my academic interests have always straddled psychology and philosophy. Improving Wikipedia articles has been a great opportunity to develop my expertise, get feedback from other people and to make my writing more accessible. A weak article straddling psychology and philosophy was Confirmation bias, which I rewrote and took up to FA. Psychology still has the feel of a "frontier": it's rewarding to find a core concept of psychology which lacks an article, and start one.
WeijiBaikeBianji: I have had a personal research interest in the psychology of education and the theory and practice behind IQ testing for more than twenty years as a lawyer, a homeschooling parent, and a consultant on gifted education. My higher education degrees were in other subjects, but through my alma mater university I have access to a university library with very good holdings about psychological research, and I have been a participant in a graduate seminar ("journal club") on behavior genetics and individual differences psychology at that university for the last four school years. I have not contributed (yet) to any of the good articles or featured articles followed by WikiProject Psychology, but I take Confirmation bias, a featured article contributed to by other project editors, as a model article and an example I strive to emulate in editing other articles. The articles I work on most pertain to IQ testing, and some of those have been subject to very extensive edit-warring over the last few years.
Looie496: I don't think of myself as a member of this project, but I watch it because of its overlap with neuroscience. I'm writing here because it would be wrong to discuss this project without mentioning Lova Falk, who has been doing much of the maintenance for some time, and has been tremendously helpful to new contributors, even to the point of burnout. She is apparently on vacation and might not be able to respond before this interview appears, but it would be a shame not to mention her role.
MartinPoulter: Absolutely. Lova Falk is an incredibly hard working and exemplary Wikipedian, and does a lot of necessary maintenance and article development. We're all greatly in her debt. Only speaking up for her because she's on a wikibreak and not likely to answer herself.
WeijiBaikeBianji: I too agree that Lova Falk has been a consistent contributor of good content to many of the articles watched by project participants, and furthermore has been very encouraging to new editors, as I recall from when I began editing in 2010.
How detailed are Wikipedia's articles about psychological concepts? Has it been challenging to write articles that are substantive yet accessible to the layperson?
WeijiBaikeBianji: Most of the articles about human intelligence and IQ testing are an embarrassment. The articles are challenging to write or edit, yes, because almost everyone thinks they know something about those topics, but in fact many popular views on those issues are not supported by reliable sources from any author. I knew these topics would be controversial to work on, as I began as a Wikipedian in 2010, from reading the article talk pages and from my own experience in online discussion of these issues that goes back to 1992. So my first approach for a few years was mostly to compile a growing source list on those topics, sharing what I found in the university library with other Wikipedians, and linking to that list from the talk pages of many of the articles that badly needed revision. Sure enough, as I began more actively updating articles this year, I found that the IQ classification article started out with another editor's expert-attention-needed tag from October 2012, but once I did a massive expansion of that article, another editor tagged it as too technical. It's an art to write about a topic for which there is much detailed expert analysis and still communicate with members of the general public who have never checked what the experts say on the topic. I will be practicing this art for years, I think.
MartinPoulter: I agree with WBB above: a large proportion of psychology articles are an embarrassment. Psychology itself makes things hard because there is often a lack of expert consensus on terminology and theory: too many researchers come up with their own "laws" or "effects". It's hard to explain how these effects relate to each other when the academic sources themselves often don't say. There is also a lot of folk misconception and "pop" psychology about. There are some tremendously informed Wikipedia editors, but there are also contributors who push decisions about psychology articles based on other Wikipedia articles (which are just as bad) or on a Google search (when the best research is paywalled).
Are some branches of the discipline better covered by Wikipedia than others? Is applied psychology treated the same way as theoretical aspects?
WeijiBaikeBianji: I don't have a general impression of which subdisciplines are best served at present by Wikipedia. I have heard from friends who are clinical psychologists that they are angry that the Rorschach test editing dispute was resolved in a way that displays all the test items, along with interpretive information. (The test is no longer under copyright, but some psychologists don't appreciate the item content being shared with the general public if they still use the test clinically.) That's not my beef, but I get the impression that some psychologists self-select to not improve Wikipedia articles, not trusting the Wikipedia editorial policies as actually implemented.
MartinPoulter: My impression is that, while psychology is a huge and diverse subject, the number of very active editors is small, and our interests are also diverse, so there's not much overlap. This is worrying. As my interest is bias and error, I'm really glad the Rorschach test article is as comprehensive as it is. It's amazing that, not long ago, adults showed other adults inkblots to identify if they were homosexual (among other things). The story of how a profession fell into this error, and how the scientific approach exposed it, belongs in a free encyclopedia.
Have you found any resources that are particularly useful in sourcing articles about psychology? Are there any resources that would be helpful if an editor could make them available?
MartinPoulter: The most helpful sources have been actual physical textbooks. Whenever I feel that distilling the topic down into an article is impossible, I remind myself that if there can be an academic textbook on a topic, there can be an encyclopaedia article. I have a huge advantage working in a university and having access to paywalled research, but that shouldn't be restricted to people like me, and I advocate open access whenever I can.
Did the recent publication of the DSM-5 result in any changes that the project had to cope with?
WeijiBaikeBianji: The project has looming before it a messy process of renaming Mental retardation to Intellectual disability without resulting in a redirect clash. Many wikilinks, a few templates, and much article text will have to be updated just to take into account that change in DSM-5 terminology. I made sure to check DSM-5 before writing about low-IQ persons in my expansion of IQ classification. I suppose there are many more articles that are affected by changing views of psychiatrists and psychologists as reflected in the DSM revision.
Does WikiProject Psychology collaborate with any other WikiProjects? What could be done to improve communication between the projects that cover the various social sciences and medical professions?
WeijiBaikeBianji: I think there is informal cooperation through overlapping memberships of editors. I will have to look for more opportunities to collaborate. One thing I do now is remind editors working on articles on topics for which there is medical literature to refer to the Wikipedia guideline on reliable sources for medical-related articles. Whenever I look at an article, I look at the article's talk page (perhaps that is one defining characteristic of a Wikipedian), and when I do that, I note which WikiProjects follow the articles I watch.
MartinPoulter: I sense a bit of friction, or maybe friendly rivalry, with the philosophy wikiproject. They claim many psychological articles in a way that seems a bit imperialist. Psychology hasn't been a subdiscipline of philosophy for a long time- let it go! I'm more keen on external collaboration. I've been building a relationship with the British Psychological Society and contacting individual psychologists for pointers. Educational projects are the only real grounds for optimism about psychology on Wikipedia: if you find a psychology article which cites decent scientific sources, then it's probably been written by a student assignment. Though a minority of educational activities have had a bad press, I don't think Wikipedia can fulfil its mission without them.
Looie496: There is cooperation with WikiProject Medicine and WikiProject Neuroscience, largely through shared membership. There has also been cooperation with the Education project. The Association for Psychological Science recently sponsored a Wikipedia initiative that resulted in a number of university classes doing Wikipedia-writing assignments. Some of the results were painful, but some were good.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?
WeijiBaikeBianji: I would love to see more editors who are well informed about psychology take looks at any and every article that pertains to human intelligence. Most of those are badly in need of revision, and I've already done the spadework of finding a lot of good current secondary sources.
MartinPoulter: It's true for any subject, but more watchlisting by more editors would be good, since too many articles are the work of just one person or aren't being worked on at all. Keep an eye on us and keep us honest!
Looie496: As with all academic topics, the most urgent need is for more people to write good articles.
Next week, we'll head to the stomping ground of the Java Man. Until then, find unity in the diversity of our archive.
The dispute over the title for the Manning article escalated quickly to arbitration levels, as the Bradley/Chelsea Manning naming dispute case was accepted for arbitration. The Tea Party movement case has closed, with topic bans and interaction bans passed for several users. The Infoboxes case nears completion, as the committee continues to fine-tune topic ban proposals.
The Manning naming dispute case, brought by TParis has been accepted for arbitration. The case involves the move of the Bradley Manning article to Chelsea Manning, after Manning’s attorney announced Manning’s wish to be known as Chelsea. The case is to focus on conduct and WP:BLP issues. The evidence phase closes 19 September 2013, the workshop phase closes 26 September 2013, and a proposed decision is scheduled to be posted 3 October 2013.
The Infoboxes case nears completion as several findings of fact and topic ban proposals have garnered enough votes for passage, and discussion continues on a final topic ban proposal.
Findings of fact related to conduct were passed for Goethean, North8000, Malke 2010, Arthur Rubin, Phoenix and Winslow, Xenophrenic, Collect, Ubikwit, and Snowded, and associated topic bans were passed for Goethean, North8000, Malke 2010, Arthur Rubin, Phoenix and Winslow, Xenophrenic, Collect, and Ubikwit, as well as interaction bans between Xenophrenic/Collect and Snowded/Phoenix and Winslow. Community sanctions on the case were lifted, and superseded by discretionary sanctions.
Other requests and committee action
Amendment request: Scientology: An request made by The Devil's Advocate requests the lifting of a restriction imposed after the mention of an editor's previous username, an adjustment to the log of warnings about discretionary sanctions stating that the claims of misconduct underlying the warnings were invalid, and restoration of an oversighted edit to avoid the appearance of misconduct implied by a suppressed edit.
Amendment request: Locke Cole arbitration case: A request was made by Locke Cole for the lifting of a 7-year-old interaction ban.
In this week's "Technology report", we explore ways of making Wikipedia more accessible to users of screen readers. Graham87 is a highly active contributor who is blind and accesses the site through a screen reader. We asked him to suggest ways in which editors could help make Wikipedia more accessible:
Compared with many websites, Wikipedia generally works very well with screen readers. It was the third-most popular site in a 2008–09 survey involving over 1,100 screen reader users. It has a consistent "look and feel", and guidelines encouraging the judicious use of headings and links make it more accessible. However, there are a few important things that editors can do to make Wikipedia articles easier to read for users of screen readers:
Avoid separating list items by blank lines, especially in bulleted lists, as it makes lists harder to read with screen readers. For example, this list of tips to make articles accessible contains three items, and would be read by a screen reader like this: "list of 3 items, <text of the list> ... list end". If there were a blank line between each list item (i.e. if I had pressed the enter key twice between each point), it would be read out like this: "list of 1 items, <text>, list end; list of 1 items ..." and so on.
Keep everything in its expected location in terms of wiki markup (the text in the edit window). Most modern screen readers will read text in Wikipedia in the order it's presented in the wiki markup rather than its physical position on the screen; therefore a screen reader user's experience is disrupted if items are not in their usual place. For example, if a template that changes the position of the table of contents like {{TOC right}} is placed above the lead section of an article (in terms of the wiki markup), a screen reader user who is used to going straight from the table of contents to the first heading with a single keystroke will miss the text of the lead section.
Use alt text to complement image captions. Alt text, which is produced using the "alt=" parameter in the image markup, is read out by screen readers but is not usually visible to sighted users. It is especially handy for images that contain useful features that are readily apparent to those who can see the image (e.g. a cartoon caption, a sign, a graph with an easily identifiable pattern). There is no need to note these features in the image caption because most people will be able to see the image, but screen reader users should also have access to them where possible.
For more information on accessibility in Wikipedia, both for screen reader users and people with other usability issues, see the accessibility guideline. Signpost readers may also be interested in WikiProject Accessibility, which always welcomes new members. Questions or concerns about accessibility may be raised at the project's talk page.
VisualEditor enhancements
Copy-paste improvements continue: The VisualEditor team continued to make improvements to the tool's copy-paste functions, aiming to support copying of any richly-formatted text into VisualEditor, with appropriate markup being applied automatically. The team hopes to eventually allow direct copying from Wikipedia pages not currently open for editing.
Rapid typing bug fixed: A bug where very quick typing or input editor use could cause VisualEditor's text to become corrupted has been fixed.
Wikidata news
How do we measure the quality of Wikidata?: A blog post by Denny Vrandečić asks this question and proposes several possible metrics.
Using Wikidata to support Wiktionary: An analysis of how Wikidata might support the Wiktionary model has been presented. Since a dictionary is essentially a structured set of data about words, Wikidata could be an excellent fit; however, significant effort is still required to define a specific data structure to be used.
URL datatype: Wikidata defines numerous data types for the various kinds of data entered into it. For example, the page on Brassica oleracea includes categories of information such as "genus", which is of the type "item", meaning that the genus also has a Wikidata page; and "image", which is of the type "Commons data file", meaning that it links to a file on Wikimedia Commons. A new "url" data type is currently being tested; once complete, it will allow Wikidata to provide ready-made links to external reference materials.
VIAF: Gerard Meijssen has written a series of posts on VIAF, an inter-library system for matching different methods of organising library records on individual people, and how Wikidata uses it for information. Topics covered by the series include a general overview of VIAF and how the system deals with deletions from the database.
In brief
Wikipedia Signpost Android application:Yuvipanda has created an Android application to notify users of Signpost updates and allow reading of Signpost articles from mobile phones. The application is available through Google Play.
New HTML tag support: The <wbr> tag, which inserts an optional mid-word linebreak, is now supported.
Random page tool for categories: The new Special:RandomInCategory tool allows users to visit a random page in a category. The tool currently includes subcategories—but not their contents—as "pages in a category".
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