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Volume 4, Issue 3 14 January 2008 About the Signpost
(← Prev) 2008 archives (Next →)
From the editor: A new weekly feature
Special: 2007 in Review Wikimania 2009 bidding ends, jury named
Controversial non-administrator rollback process added Supposed advance draft of Jobs keynote surfaces on talk page
WikiWorld comic: "The Nocebo Effect" News and notes: Fundraiser ends, $500,000 donation, milestones
Wikipedia in the News Tutorial: Fundamentals of editing
Features and admins Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
Home  |  Archives  |  Newsroom  |  Tip Line Shortcut : WP:POST/A
SPV

From the editor

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By Ral315

This week, we add a new feature: A tutorial series, intended to help new and established editors with various editing, policy, and community tips. Below is Enochlau's introduction to the series:

This week marks the first part of the Signpost tutorial series. The aim of this series is to help you use Wikipedia better: by introducing you to the features of the wiki software, the Wikipedia community and its policies and other helpful tips from experienced editors. As the name suggests, each week, we aim to provide you with a short article in a practical, tutorial format. This week, we begin with the fundamentals of editing: things that every editor should know. Please enjoy it, and let us know if you have any comments or suggestions here.

This feature was requested by multiple users over the last few months; my thanks to Enochlau and The Placebo Effect for handling the series.

Thanks for reading the Signpost.

— Ral315


SPV

Special: 2007 in Review

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By Ral315 and Staff

Last month marked the end of 2007, and the end of the biggest year (and perhaps the most controversial year) that Wikipedia has seen. Over the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation's reach and influence grew, both within the Board and the office. Along the way, quality improvements were overshadowed by corporate and government editing, and vandalism, with one case resulting in the temporary detainment of a Turkish academic. This week, the Wikipedia Signpost begins to take a look back at the year that was 2007 in Wikipedia.

Growth

Wikipedias experienced marked growth in 2007. Of the top 15 Wikipedias, the English Wikipedia ranked 12th in article growth (37.58%) and 8th in edit growth (86.97%). The top Wikipedia by far was the Volapük Wikipedia, which grew nearly 100-fold (9,282.48%) in articles, and 14,189.77% in edits, due mostly to bot edits that raised the number of articles from just over 1,200 at the beginning of 2007 to 114,091 at the end of 2007.

Overall, the number of articles across all Wikipedias grew 52.76%, to over 9.25 million articles. The number of articles is expected to break 10,000,000 around March. Meanwhile, the total number of edits grew 88.63%, to 411,875,822 at the end of 2007 (this number is expected to break 500,000,000 in April or May). As Wikimedia Commons grew more popular, the number of images on individual Wikipedias rose by only 20.28%, while Commons media files grew by more than 110%, from about 1.06 million to about 2.25 million.

Notably, the French Wiktionary overtook the English Wiktionary on November 26; at the end of 2007, the French Wiktionary contained about 45,000 more entries than the English Wiktionary (about 7.3% more). This is the first non-English Wikimedia project to overtake its English counterpart, though this is not the first time it has done so.

Legal issues related to Wikimedia projects continued to be a problem this year. In February, professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller sued a Miami-based educational consulting firm after an IP address reportedly belonging to the company posted defamatory statements to his biography.[1] The edits, which were deleted in December 2006, were made by Damien Lynch and 208.204.187.19 (an IP that appeared to be related to Lynch). The civil suit was filed in Miami-Dade County, Florida on 13 February. The Miami Herald reported last December that Zoeller dropped the suit after failing to identify the perpetrator.

In late October, a French case against the Wikimedia Foundation, alleging defamation and invasion of privacy, was dismissed.[2] The three plaintiffs sued over a page that identified them as "gay activists"; these claims were introduced by an anonymous editor and were later removed. The judge did not rule on whether the statements were defamatory, but instead ruled that any damage was mitigated by the removal of the material from Wikipedia. He concluded that Wikimedia "acted promptly to cease giving access to the content once it became aware of its character."

In February, in a chilling case of the consequences of Wikipedia's prominence, an historian was detained by Canadian and later by American authorities after his Wikipedia article was vandalized, claiming that he was a terrorist.[3] The story first gained attention in April: On the way to a Montreal university lecture, Turkish historian, sociologist, and author Taner Akçam was detained for nearly four hours at Trudeau International Airport.

The Canadian immigration officer, Akcam says, was "courteous" - but promptly detained him at Montreal's Trudeau airport. Even odder, the Canadian immigration officer asked him why he needed to be detained. ... the Canadian officer showed him - at Akcam's insistence - a piece of paper which was the obvious reason for his temporary detention. "I recognised the page at once," Akcam says. "The still photo and the text beneath it comprised my biography in the English language edition of Wikipedia. For the last year ... my Wikipedia biography has been persistently vandalised by anonymous 'contributors' intent on labelling me as a terrorist. The same allegations has been repeatedly scrawled, like gangland graffiti, as 'customer reviews' of my books at Amazon."[4]

As the vandalism was two months old, and had been reverted quickly, Akçam suspected that a political enemy may have forwarded a copy of the vandalized article to the Canada Border Services Agency prior to his travel. Akçam was again detained for about an hour when returning to the University of Minnesota two days later; he was allowed to leave, but cautioned not to travel until the situation was sorted out with customs.

Desysoppings

This year, twelve administrators were desysopped, and seven administrators resigned under what the Arbitration Committee or bureaucrats deemed "controversial circumstances". In February, a wheel war [1] over the article on Daniel Brandt (since redirected) led to the temporary desysopping of Yanksox, Geni, and Freakofnurture by Jimbo Wales.[5] Wales said:

I am referring this case directly to the ArbCom to look at possible remedies for all parties involved up to and including desysopping, blocking, etc. I have absolutely no opinion on the actual content question (Should we have an article about him? I don't care) but [its deletion log] is a disgrace.

Different people played different roles. I do not have time to sort it all out today, so I am referring most of it to the ArbCom. I have instantly desysopped Yanksox, though, because he's basically begging for it. I have temporarily desysopped Geni and Freakofnurture pending the ArbCom thinking it through.

I know how these things go. Some of the people involved were trying to calm things down. Others were merely trying to cause more disruption and fighting by engaging in inflammatory actions designed to outrage the other side. It is hard to sort it all out. This is why wheel warring is so bad.[6]

Freakofnurture's sysop privileges were restored before the case was finished, but Yanksox and Geni were formally desysopped by the Committee; Gaillimh was also banned for ten days.[7]

Also in late February and into early March, the "Essjay controversy" broke, leading to the departure of bureaucrat and newly-appointed arbitrator Essjay. Essjay, who had described himself as a "tenured professor of theology at a private university in the eastern United States", was revealed to be 24 years old, and living in Louisville, Kentucky. He had attended several colleges in the area, but did not possess the degrees he had claimed or teach at a university.[8] His identity was revealed upon being hired by Wikia; Essjay, who served as a community manager there, revealed himself to be "Ryan Jordan". When asked about his fake persona, Essjay said that he had "[utilized] disinformation with regard to what I consider unimportant details: age, location, occupation, etc." While keeping this persona, Essjay provided inaccurate details of his persona to The New Yorker for a July 2006 article.

Jimbo Wales initially supported Essjay's actions, telling The New Yorker, "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don't really have a problem with it." However, upon learning that Essjay had used the persona in content disputes, Wales called for Essjay to resign his community positions, saying,

I only learned this morning that EssJay used his false credentials in content disputes. I understood this to be primarily the matter of a pseudonymous identity (something very mild and completely understandable given the personal dangers possible on the Internet) and not a matter of violation of people's trust. I want to make it perfectly clear that my past support of EssJay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on.

I have asked EssJay to resign his positions of trust within the community. In terms of the full parameters of what happens next, I advise (as usual) that we take a calm, loving, and reasonable approach. ... On a personal level, EssJay has apologized to me, and I have accepted his apology on a personal level, and I think this is the right thing to do. If anyone else feels that they need or want a personal apology, please ask him for it. And if you find it to be sincere, then I hope you will accept it too, but each person must make their own judgments. Despite my personal forgiveness, I hope that he will accept my resignation request, because forgiveness or not, these positions are not appropriate for him now.

Wikipedia is built on (among other things) twin pillars of trust and tolerance. The integrity of the project depends on the core community being passionate about quality and integrity, so that we can trust each other. The harmony of our work depends on human understanding and forgiveness of errors.[9]

Essjay resigned his positions shortly after this message and left Wikipedia altogether, and later resigned from Wikia.

In April, Robdurbar was desysopped after deleting and vandalizing the Main Page and blocking established users; it was later revealed that he was a sockpuppet of Wiktionary vandal/former administrator Wonderfool, a banned user on multiple projects.[10] Meanwhile, in August, Shreshth91 was desysopped for an unexplained June block of El C; because Shreshth91 had left Wikipedia, a full arbitration case was eschewed in favor of an immediate desysopping.

In June, Runcorn was desysopped after it was revealed that the account was one of many used by a puppetmaster, including RachelBrown, Newport, and at least six other accounts, some of which were used for vote-stacking in adminship requests.[11] Other administrators accused of sockpuppeting in 2007 included:

  • Husnock, desysopped in February after an arbitration case involving his use of sockpuppets to support himself in a dispute.
  • ChrisGriswold, voluntarily desysopped in May in the wake of an arbitration request regarding his use of sockpuppets.
  • Henrygb, desysopped by the Arbitration Committee in May after a case ruled that Henrygb had used sockpuppets to double-vote on adminship and deletion discussions. Henrygb was also banned indefinitely, until the user confirmed that no additional sockpuppetry was taking place.
  • Oldwindybear, voluntarily desysopped in July in the wake of allegations of abusive sock puppetry. Oldwindybear denied the allegations, but chose to resign "to avoid further abuse".
  • Eyrian, desysopped in November after an arbitration case found that he had used sockpuppets to "game the system". Eyrian was also banned from Wikipedia "until he provides the Committee with a satisfactory explanation regarding this matter."

Next week

Next week, the Signpost's 2007 in review continues, with Foundation decisions, numerous elections, technical features, interviews, organizations for deletion, bureaucracy, private correspondence, corporate editing, and a chilling coincidence yet to come.

Links/references

  1. ^ Jared. "Pro golfer sues over libelous statements", 26 February, 2007.
  2. ^ Michael Snow. "Wikimedia avoids liability in French lawsuit", 5 November, 2007.
  3. ^ Ral315. "Historian detained after his Wikipedia article is vandalized", 23 April, 2007.
  4. ^ Fisk, Robert. Robert Fisk: Caught in the deadly web of the internet, The Independent, 21 April, 2007.
  5. ^ Ral315. "Three users temporarily desysopped after wheel war", 26 February, 2007.
  6. ^ Jimbo Wales. "Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war", 23 February, 2007.
  7. ^ David Mestel. "The Report on Lengthy Litigation", 12 March, 2007.
  8. ^ Michael Snow and Andrew Lih. New Yorker correction dogs arbitrator into departure, 5 March, 2007.
  9. ^ Jimbo Wales. "Statement on EssJay situation", 3 March, 2007
  10. ^ Sam Blacketer. "Administrator goes rogue, is blocked", 23 April, 2007.
  11. ^ Ral315. "Sockpuppeting administrator desysopped, banned", 4 June, 2007.


SPV

Wikimania 2009 bidding ends, jury named

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By Ral315

After a four-week period where individuals were invited to submit bids for Wikimania 2009, bidding ended this week. Six official bids were submitted:

  • Bogotá, Colombia: Carlos Thompson (Chlewey) is the contact for this bid. The Bogotá bid would run from July 17 to 20, 2009, at a venue yet to be named. Wikimedia Colombia, currently in the discussion phase and headed by Thompson, would help with the event. Further information on this bid is expected over the next few weeks.
  • Brisbane, Australia: Craig Franklin (Lankiveil) and MichelleG are contacts for this bid. The Brisbane bid would run from July 31 through August 2, 2009, at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. Among the strengths cited in the bid are the mild winters of Brisbane, the fact that Wikimania has never visited Oceania or the Southern Hemisphere, and the number of Wikipedians who hail from Australia. The bid also mentions a large dining and entertainment district (South Bank) close to the convention centre, various tourism opportunities including the Australia Zoo, and local sponsorship opportunities being negotiated, including government, industry, technology, and media sponsors.
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina: Patricio Lorente is the contact for this bid. The Buenos Aires bid would run at a date yet to be named (likely August 2009), at a venue yet to be named. Wikimedia Argentina, approved as an official chapter in December, would help with the event. While much of the bid has not yet been developed, the bid notes Buenos Aires' status as a "gay-friendly" city; Alexandria, which will host Wikimania 2008, was criticized by some Wikipedians due to its human rights record, particularly with respect to sexual orientation.
  • Karlsruhe, Germany: Wilhelm Bühler (Kawana) and Hauke Löffler are the contacts for this bid. The Karlsruhe bid would run at a date yet to be named, at a venue yet to be named (though organizers indicate they have three possible locations in mind). Wikimedia Deutschland and a non-profit wiki organization headquartered in Karlsruhe would help out with the event. The organizers indicate that the conference venue, including conference rooms and wired and wireless internet will be fully sponsored. A bid from Karlsruhe was withdrawn from Wikimania 2008 contention, with organizers choosing to focus on 2009 bidding. Germany previously hosted Wikimania 2005, which was held in Frankfurt.
  • Kathmandu, Nepal: The conference would be held from July 31 through August 2, 2009, at the Birendra International Convention Centre. Further information on this bid is expected over the next few weeks.
  • Toronto, Canada: Nicholas Moreau (Zanimum) is the contact person for this bid. The Toronto bid would run at a date to be named, at the University of Toronto. Wikimedia Canada, currently in planning stages, would likely help with the event. Toronto organizers note the multilingual, multicultural nature of the city, the ease of travel into Canada, the campus' numerous facilities and green atmosphere, low crime rates, and the progressive atmosphere of Toronto, in relation to sexual orientation and drinking age. A bid from Toronto was withdrawn from Wikimania 2008 contention, with organizers choosing to focus on 2009 bidding.

2009's field covers five continents, with only Africa and Antarctica without bids (in 2007 and 2008, bids from just three continents were submitted).

Wikimania jury selected

Meanwhile, the jury who will decide Wikimania 2009's location was selected this week. It includes:

Five of the thirteen members currently reside in the United States; two members reside in Taiwan, and the other six members each reside in separate countries (Italy, Australia, India, Israel, Japan, and Venezuela). Ten of the members were also members of the Wikimania 2008 jury; Snow was invited to serve on the 2008 jury but was unable to do so; Walsh and Finol are also new to the jury.


SPV

Controversial non-administrator rollback process added

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By Ral315

This week, a new user group was created, allowing users to be added to a 'rollback' group, which gives non-admins the ability to use MediaWiki's 'rollback' tool in a limited fashion. So far, 500 users have received the right, but some users questioned whether the process had community consensus.

A poll was started on December 30, and ran through January 8. The poll received just over two-thirds support, with 304 supporting the new right and 151 opposing it. Two-thirds support is usually considered ambiguous consensus, and a previous poll failed to gain consensus with almost exactly the same support. However, after a Bugzilla request to add the right, a developer enabled the right on the English Wikipedia.

Shortly afterward, a requests for rollback page opened, and users were invited to submit their names for consideration for the rollback right. An extended discussion on the administrators' noticeboard ensued, leading to an arbitration request (which appears likely to be denied).

Another poll was suggested by Jimbo Wales, to determine whether the requests for rollback process had consensus; however, persuasive comments by Anthere, indicating that she had no interest in bringing the matter to the Foundation's board and suggesting a time-out with respect to the page, led to the poll's closure for at least the next three months, to see whether the process should be changed or removed then.

The right is limited for non-administrators; users who have the rollback privilege without the "bot" right are allowed just 5 rollbacks per minute, while if a non-autoconfirmed (less than four days old) user were to receive the right, they would be limited to just 5 rollbacks every two minutes. This is designed to prevent the wide-scale damage that some users argued could occur with built-in rollback.

Objections to the process seem to have cooled down, as many users noted that the process was running much better than they had imagined it. Said Ned Scott, who initially opposed rollback but later noted that he misunderstood the proposal:

The situation should have been dealt with better. We should have waited before promoting users. It didn't happen, and for what it's worth, the world did not explode. Still, we need a way of stopping such stampedes in the future.

Still, the way everyone responded, on both sides, was somewhat.. expected/ reasonable, consideration the situations, and how people normally react to such situations (at least for Wikipedia). But I'm still sorry this turned out to be somewhat of a mess. I'm sorry I got mad and that other people got mad. I'm glad that rollback granting itself have gone fairly smoothly despite all this.

However, objections still remain, even though discussion has died down. Doc glasgow, one of the more vocal opponents of the way the process was handled, said on Thursday,

The Christmas holiday coup d'etat has been unprecedentedly successful in forcing through a major change without consensus. All credit to them - I'd probably have tried the same if I'd wanted something as badly and had as little chance of getting legitimate agreement. But, now we effectively have a new status-quo in this crazy process - and I predict we'll rue the day. However, that's what we've got, and the chances of the community obtaining a *genuine* consensus, which could change this status-quo, are as nil as they always have been.


SPV

Supposed advance draft of Jobs keynote surfaces on talk page

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By Michael Snow

Last week an unregistered contributor posted what was allegedly a draft of Steve Jobs's keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo to Wikipedia, sparking a flurry of blog speculation and analysis. While its potential validity was largely downplayed, its appearance still garnered considerable attention.

Macworld ritually kicks off with the Jobs keynote Tuesday, 15 January, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. His address is typically expected to include a major announcement or two, such as new product offerings. The leadup to the event thus fuels a dizzying amount of speculation in the active online community of Apple users and fans.

The "leak" was posted 9 January to the talk page for the article about the conference itself. The IP address, 216.170.223.41, has a limited contribution history and traces to an ISP serving Wisconsin and neighboring states. Its appearance sparked a bit of discussion on the talk page and a brief edit war over whether it belonged there at all - it has since been removed.

Identifying itself as a "Rough Outline; draft 5", the document goes through highlights of various Apple products Jobs would presumably discuss during his keynote. Included are the iPod and iTunes, the iPhone, along with the Mac and MacBook computers. At least in form, it would be plausible if not earthshaking, and as some people pointed out, the real speech is presumably undergoing frequent last-minute changes. This means the actual keynote could be different and makes it impossible to definitively disprove the leak, part of what makes this sort of thing a popular debating subject.

As the opening of the conference approached, a variety of bloggers picked it up, although most thought it likely to be fake, possibly even active disinformation being circulated by Apple. Bryan Gardiner of Wired wrote that it "seems to suspiciously mirror the popular rumors that have gained credence over the past month". On the other hand, Steve Rubel said he was inclined to accept the document - "It sounds real." Steve Jobs keynote on January 15, however did not contain any of the material in the leak.

The choice of the talk page is interesting, suggesting that the poster understood Wikipedia editing practices well enough that source material wouldn't be appropriate to dump directly into the article. For that matter, one could wonder why Wikipedia was chosen at all, as opposed to the unrelated Wikileaks project created specifically for this type of material.


SPV

WikiWorld comic: "The Nocebo Effect"

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By Greg Williams

This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "Placebo" and "Nocebo". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.


SPV

News and notes

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By Ral315, Alabamaboy and Alison

Fundraiser ends, $500,000 donation received

The Wikimedia Foundation fundraiser ended on Tuesday, January 8. At the end of the fundraiser, about 44,600 people had donated at least US$1, and the Foundation has raised nearly $1,500,000. In addition, Erik Möller announced a record $500,000 unrestricted donation, received from an anonymous donor, which along with offline donations brought the fundraiser's total just over $2 million.

Dragons flight (Robert A. Rohde) prepared a series of graphs analyzing this fundraiser as compared to previous fundraisers.

Wikipedian Scott Laws (Dalf) dies

Scott Laws, username Dalf, died of colon cancer on 14 September, 2007. He had been a long-term Wikipedian, editing since before 2005 and accumulating over 3,000 edits. Among the articles he edited were Imperial Japanese Navy, Horcrux, and Nuclear power. Laws was an alumnus of Hickman High School and the University of Missouri; he worked for Microsoft's Hotmail in Silicon Valley until he was diagnosed with cancer in 2004. He was 30 years old.

Wikimedia Commons picture of the year contest

The Commons Picture of the Year competition for 2007 is now open. Any Wikimedian with more than 200 edits is eligible to vote. There are two rounds of voting (round 1 is Jan 10-17, the final is 20-24 Jan). Information about the voting method and how to get a voting token is at Commons:Picture of the Year/2007/Voting. (Voting is being conducted on custom software on the toolserver written by User:Bryan.)

Briefly


SPV

In the news

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By Enochlau

Professor bans Wikipedia

White bread for young minds, says university professor - A professor of media studies, Tara Brabazon, has described Google as "white bread" for students ("filling, but it does not offer nutritional content"), and says that students turn to Wikipedia unquestioningly because "it's there". Her comments are said to echo Andrew Keen's comments about online amateurism in his book The Cult of the Amateur. Brabazon blames the increased dependence upon pixels over paper on the decline in libraries, and she supplies her students with extracts from peer-reviewed printed texts so that they can experience the "page and the print".

Focus on Simple English Wikipedia

Wikipedia too long-winded for you? Try the simple version - The Simple English Wikipedia got a mention this week, as a version of Wikipedia that uses fewer words and easier grammar. Although designed for people learning English, the simple style can help with understanding. The basis of the Simple English Wikipedia is covered: its use of language comes from Basic English and a special Voice of America protocol.

Other mentions

Other recent mentions in the online press include:


SPV

Tutorial: Fundamentals of editing

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By Enochlau

This week marks the first part of the Signpost tutorial series. The aim of this series is to help you use Wikipedia better: by introducing you to the features of the wiki software, the Wikipedia community and its policies and other helpful tips from experienced editors. As the name suggests, each week, we aim to provide you with a short article in a practical, tutorial format. This week, we begin with the fundamentals of editing: things that every editor should know. Please enjoy it, and let us know if you have any comments or suggestions here.

Level: Beginner

This week, we'll talk about the basics of editing Wikipedia. You've all read Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that you can edit, but what about contributing? Thankfully, it's actually quite simple!

The basics

Try this:
  1. Open up a new browser window or tab, and visit your favourite article.
  2. Click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the page and the source mark-up of the page will be displayed in a text box. You'll see that the text of the article is all there, plus some special commands to add such things as formatting and links.
  3. Click the back button on your browser, or the Cancel link below the text box to close the editing view.

Every page on Wikipedia, whether it is an article, a discussion page or a project page, is produced by editing the mark-up presented on the edit tab of the page. The most basic unit of mark-up is the paragraph block, and you separate the text in the page into paragraphs by separating each paragraph with a blank line like this: 

I am the first paragraph.

I am the second paragraph, because I am separated from the first paragraph by a blank line.
This text is still part of the second paragraph, because there is no blank line in between.

It's important to remember that you need to press Enter twice after each paragraph otherwise your text will be in one big paragraph!

Try this:
  1. Navigate your browser to the Sandbox or a subpage of your user page, such as by clicking here. You should never do experiments in actual articles.
  2. Click the "Edit" tab at the top of the page.
  3. Type some text in paragraphs into the text box.
  4. Click the "Save page" button below the text box.

After you have clicked the save button, you will be taken to the actual rendered view of the mark-up that you have just typed.

Tip:
If you are just writing an article in stages, and you are not prepared to release it to the world just yet, it is a good idea to write your article in a subpage of your user page as shown just now, and move it to the final location later. See Wikipedia:Subpage for more information.

Formatting

Now, what we have looks a little boring. Let's jazz it up with some formatting. To render some text in italics, put two single quotes (not one double quote) around the text like this: ''this is text in italics'', which comes out looking like this is text in italics. For bold, '''use three single quotes''', which comes out as use three single quotes. For both italics and bold, some simple arithmetic will tell you that you need five single quotes, '''''like this''''', which comes out as like this.

Try this:
  1. Click the "Edit" tab at the top of the page that you were editing in the previous step.
  2. Add some bold and italics to the page.
  3. Add an edit summary to describe briefly what you have just done. Edit summaries are recommended, so that people can work out what you just did easily; see Help:Edit summary for more information.
  4. Check the "This is a minor edit" box. When doing only small or cosmetic changes to articles, the minor edit flag helps other editors who are following changes in that article. See Help:Minor edit for more information.

Headings

Structuring your articles using sections and subsections is very important, especially for longer articles. To insert a section heading, type the section name on a new line surrounded by two equal signs like this: ==My heading==. In articles, this is a top-level heading. For a subheading, use three equal signs like this: ===My subheading===. Additional equal signs indicate additional depths in the section hierarchy.

Try this:
  1. Go to an article that has multiple sections and subheadings, and click the "Edit" tab.
  2. Look at how the sections in the wiki mark-up compare with the rendered version.
  3. Go back to the article view, and click on an "edit" link next to a section heading. Notice that you are taken to the edit view for just that section.

Wikipedia is a series of linked articles, so let's create some links! To create a simple link, just surround the text you want to link with two square brackets like this: [[Foobar]]. This creates a link to the article called "Foobar" with the link text rendered as "Foobar" like this: Foobar. Links often appear in the middle of sentences, but you don't have to worry about making the first letter upper case. If you want to change the link text, use the pipe notation like this: [[Foobar|this is some other text]]. This still links to "Foobar", but the link text has now changed like this: this is some other text.

Tip:
Save time with shortcuts. For example, [[encyclopedia]]s renders as encyclopedias while linking to encyclopedia, and [[clean]]ing renders as cleaning while linking to clean.

Lists

There are two types of lists, numbered and bullet lists: 

#This is a numbered list
#Another entry in your numbered list
#Note how the hash symbol is used

while 

*This is a bullet list
*Another entry in your bullet list
*Note how the asterisk symbol is used

To nest lists, you just stack up the symbols like this: 

*My groceries:
*#Milk
*#Eggs
*#Flour
*My subjects:
*#Mathematics
*#English
*#Science

This is rendered as:

  • My groceries:
    1. Milk
    2. Eggs
    3. Flour
  • My subjects:
    1. Mathematics
    2. English
    3. Science
Try this:
  1. Create some links and lists in the sandbox that you were using before.
  2. Try using the colon (:) instead of an asterisk or a hash. What does it do?

Additional activities

Here are some additional activities that you can try:

  • Click the "Random article" link on the left pane, and make some corrections.
  • Read the Wikipedia Manual of Style, so you understand how articles should be laid out.
  • Read the guidelines on templates.

Further reading

For a more in-depth introduction to editing, check out the following pages:


SPV

Features and admins

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By The Placebo Effect

Administrators

Eight users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: J-stan (nom), Canley (nom), Kbthompson (nom), Appraiser (nom), Archtransit (nom), Jayron32 (nom), Rudget (nom), and Jeepday (nom).

Bots

Three bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: JMuniBot (task request), RFRBot (task request), and MonoBot (task request).

No articles were promoted to featured status last week.

Eleven lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Myself ; Yourself episodes (nom), Dischord Records discography (nom), Indianapolis Colts seasons (nom), List of tallest buildings in Tulsa (nom), List of Blue Drop: Tenshitachi no Gikyoku episodes (nom), List of Gillingham F.C. managers (nom), List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by time in office (nom), List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Greater London (nom), List of storms in the 2003 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), List of players with five or more goals in an NHL game (nom), and List of San Jose Sharks players (nom).

Two portals were featured last week: Portal:Tennis (nom) and Portal:Film (nom).

One topic was featured last week: Powderfinger albums (nom).

No sounds were featured last week.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Chicxulub Crater, Swedish emigration to the United States, Oregon State Capitol, Boshin War, Trembling Before G-d, 2007 UEFA Champions League Final and British anti-invasion preparations of World War II.

One topic was delisted last week:

  • Michigan State University (nom) - Nominated on December 17, 2007 by Arctic.Gnome Was promoted on February 16, 2007. Concerns included some articles being only B-Class, and a not comprehensive selection of articles. Topic was delisted January 12.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: EIAJ connector, White-crowned Sparrow, SS American Star, Cirsium arvense, Full Moon, Eristalis tenax, and neutrophil granulocyte

Nine pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.


SPV

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By ais523

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.5 (d64f667), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Fixed bugs

  • Some minor HTML errors in the produced HTML during an edit conflict have been fixed. (r29474, bug 12553)
  • section=0 now returns just section 0 when used with action=raw, rather than the entire page. (r29476, bug 12505)
  • The definition of a category timestamp (not normally visible to users, but available via the API and used by some scripts, and on some other projects) has changed; the category timestamp for a page now never changes when the page is renamed (previously it did only if the category was included without an explicit sortkey). (r29615, bug 12584)
  • The dropdown box for selecting a namespace on Special:Newpages now reflects the true setting of the namespace filter when the page is loaded; previously it sometimes incorrectly displayed that all namespaces were included even though the filter was set to the article namespace only. (r29618, bug 12588)
  • When a bot creates a page, that edit now again doesn't appear in Recent Changes by default. (This behaviour used to be the case, but was accidentally broken and fixed again.) (r29699, bug 12611)

New features

  • API queries for a page's protection status now also query whether the page is create-protected. (r29427, bug 12543)
  • It's now possible for a bot-flagged user to make an edit that isn't bot-flagged, by appending &bot=0 to the end of the relevant URL. (r29539, bug 12574)
  • It was also realised this week that at some point it became possible to write universal interwiki prefixes; that is, an interwiki prefix that works no matter which Wikimedia wiki the prefix is rendered on. The link should be written [[m:project:language:page name]] (e.g. m:w:en:WP:POST); this routes the parsing of the links via Meta, thus making them universally correct. (bug 4285)

Configuration changes

  • The user rights framework configuration was changed for the English Wikipedia this week, allowing administrators to cause users to become 'rollbackers' or to remove that right (see related story). A rollbacker can perform rollback in much the same way that an administrator can, except that if the rollbacker is not also a bot the rate at which rollbacks may be done is limited (to 5 per minute, or 5 per 2 minutes if rollback is for some reason granted to a non-autoconfirmed user). (bug 12534)

Other technology news

Ongoing news

  • Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See mw:Localisation statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.


SPV

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By David Mestel

The Arbitration Committee opened four new cases this week, and closed five cases, leaving seven currently open.

Closed cases

  • Dbachmann: A case involving alleged misconduct on the part of administrator Dbachmann and editing by other users on several race-related articles. As a result of the case, Dbachmann was "reminded" not to use administrator tools in editing disputes, and the articles Afrocentrism and Race of ancient Egyptians were placed on article probation.
  • Zeraeph: A case involving alleged misconduct by Zeraeph. As a result of the case, Zeraeph was banned for one year.
  • John Gohde 2: A case involving alleged misconduct by John Gohde, which he denied. As a result of the case, Gohde was banned for one year.
  • Jim62sch: A case involving alleged off-wiki harrasment by Jim62sch, possibly involving reporting of potential on-wiki violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As a result of the case, Jim62sch was instructed to "refrain from making any comments to another user that could reasonably be construed as harassing, threatening, or bullying".
  • John Buscema: A case involving editing of the John Buscema article by editors including Tenebrae and Skyelarke. As a result of the case, both editors were banned from editing that article for three months.

New cases

  • Waterboarding: A case involving a dispute between a large number of editors on Waterboarding, relating to the question as to whether the technique should be described as torture.
  • Bluemarine: A case involving alleged civility and COI violations by User:Bluemarine on Matt Sanchez, the article on himself, which has also been edited tendentiously (from a hostile point of view) by a number of other editors, many of whom have been blocked.
  • R. fiend: A case involving a controversial block of Ed Poor by R. fiend. The case has been suspended, since R. fiend has expressed his intention to resign adminship.

Evidence phase

Voting phase

  • IRC: A case involving an alleged personal attack by Tony Sidaway on Bishonen on #wikipedia-en-admins, which led to an edit war on WP:WEA, involving page protection and unprotection by David Gerard, Geogre and others, and a block of Giano II, which was quickly undone. Various findings of fact have been proposed relating to the editors in dispute, but no remedies have yet been proposed by arbitrators.

Suspended by motion

  • Matthew Hoffman: A case involving controversial blocks of MatthewHoffman by a vanished user. Various remedies were proposed including either desysopping or admonishing the vanished user and annotating Matthew Hoffman's block log to reflect the arbitrators' view that the blocks were unjustified. A motion has been passed suspending the case for 30 days (until approximately 20 January , 2008) to allow for community input at a request for comment.


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