Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2005-05-23
From the editor
This is just a brief note to thank everyone who has stuck with The Signpost in my absence, whether as a reader or a contributor. The reporters have put in a lot of work, and I'm glad that the project does not depend solely on me. My guest editor, Sj, will now be able to spend more time working on the next issue of the Quarto for the Foundation. I appreciate him filling in and will continue to value his input and ideas.
We're still trying to make The Signpost as useful as possible to the greatest number of people. You may have noticed more news coming in from Wikipedia in other languages and from the other Wikimedia projects. As noted on the Wikipedia mailing list, a number of Wikipedia languages celebrated their fourth anniversary on Friday. While the focus here is still on the English Wikipedia, I hope this can stimulate efforts to get similar news sources going elsewhere, as well as keep us better in touch as a community overall.
Ban on images with restrictive licenses announced
In a shift to bring Wikipedia policy and practice in line with its theoretical underpinnings as "The Free Encyclopedia", images that cannot be redistributed commercially are now prohibited from Wikipedia and will eventually be deleted.
Jimbo Wales announced on Thursday, 19 May, that effective immediately, images licensed only for noncommercial use, or otherwise restricted to grant permission for use only on Wikipedia, would be prohibited. He said, "We have tolerated them for some time, but only as an interim measure during the time when images which were previously not properly tagged could be tagged."
On previous occasions, Wales has asserted that in order for content to be maximally free, commercial redistribution must also be allowable, and the announcement implements this long-held position. Although unlike text, images are permitted under licensing arrangements other than the GNU Free Documentation License, images using a different license must still qualify as free content.
Wales noted that for many of the images affected by this policy, it would be easy to find a freely licensed alternative. Either one might already be available, or in many cases it would be relatively simple for a Wikipedia editor with a camera to create a suitable replacement.
Dbenbenn noted that this would also apply to a number of the Creative Commons licenses. However, as ABCD pointed out, quite a few images may have been uploaded under more than one license, and people should be careful not to delete images that can still be used legitimately.
The image copyright tags used for affected licenses have been updated to include a warning that an image so tagged stands to be deleted shortly. Images that are newly uploaded with these types of restrictions since the date of the announcement may be deleted on sight. Previously uploaded images will be handled through a more formal deletion process. Eloquence suggested that some of them could be kept on a theory of fair use.
The announcement prompted some questions about whether it would apply to images downloaded from stock.xchng, a community website with a large collection of stock photography under various terms, some with greater restrictions than others. A large number of images from stock.xchng have also been added to the Wikimedia Commons. Gmaxwell noted that stock.xchng's terms of use for downloading images seem to prohibit commercial uses.
However, several people pointed out that the question has already been debated on the Wikimedia Commons site, and a conclusion reached that stock.xchng images are allowable under these restrictions. The argument made was that stock.xchng does not actually control the photographer's ability to grant permission to use an image, and many of its contributors have indicated their photos may be used without any restriction (only images so designated are eligible for inclusion).
Reader comments
New radio show records pilot episode about Wikipedia
Wikipedia was the topic of a one-hour radio program with Christopher Lydon recorded last Thursday for Public Radio International, featuring Jimmy Wales debating some of Wikipedia's critics.
Lydon's show, entitled "Open Source", is a new launch that aims to combine elements from blogging and other online media to capture "the sound of the Web". Its website is in the form of a blog, and those following it this past week could sort of watch the Wikipedia episode develop.
The Wikipedia entry started out as a brief note about the project, originally stating incorrectly that Wales was Wikimedia's only paid employee. The error was pointed out and corrected, and later a producer for the show added some interview notes for the scheduled guests, along with suggested questions for Lydon to ask. In its latest form, the entry has excerpts quoted from the recorded show, along with Lydon's "post-game analysis".
In his analysis, Lydon observes of Wales, "I wasn’t prepared for his laid-back modesty." He finds the critics chosen for the show, a librarian and a philosophy professor, "more memorable ... but their radio presence was stronger than their arguments". The debate itself revolved around whether Wikipedia could be considered as authoritative as traditional encyclopedias and whether it undermined efforts to encourage critical thinking among students.
The librarian, Karen Schneider, has previously been critical of Wikipedia after appearing at a conference with Wales (see archived story). She offered her own site, Librarians' Index to the Internet, as an "anti-Wikipedia", although the site is actually more a web directory than an encyclopedia or similar reference work.
Open Source will actually begin airing 30 May on WGBH in Boston and run Monday to Thursday. The program on Wikipedia is designated as the third pilot for the show, but it's not certain whether this means it would air on 1 June. In any case, live feeds of the show to other public radio affiliate stations are not scheduled to begin until 4 July. However, it is available for download from the show's website in mp3 format (49 MB).
In addition to the two critical voices, the show included author Simon Winchester, who expressed a more sympathetic view toward Wikipedia. Also interviewed on the program were David Gerard, Raul654, and Dewet Diener, a contributor to both the English and Afrikaans Wikipedias. MacGyverMagic, who was initially interviewed in preparation for the show, was unavailable at the time of the show's broadcast.
Reader comments
MediaWiki nominated for prize, new database dumps available
This week on Wikitech-l, time was a regular problem, new dumps were created, the use of meta templates was questioned, encrypted editing was brought up, CVS access was again requested and denied, a German proposal for article standardization was made, MediaWiki got nominated for an award, private user data was asked for, and a number of features were requested.
Time—and its unwillingness to follow the usual "flowing forward only" paradigm—was an issue on more than one occasion. The date on a number of servers was set incorrectly for some time to the year 2025, which caused some minor problems. There was also an issue of edit histories flowing in the wrong direction on some articles.
Database dumps
New database dumps are available at download.wikimedia.org as of last Monday, 16 May. This had previously been a sticking point. The lack of new dumps had prevented new stats runs for some time. Erik Zachte has since posted statistics based on this dump for Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects.
The new dumps are no longer available in split files. This may cause problems for some users, who have trouble downloading multi-gigabyte files. It was suggested that the dumps be bittorrented, but it may not be very beneficial and could not completely replace the normal download. There were other discussions on the process used to import the Wikipedia into a MediaWiki installation on a user's computer.
Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason requested that the user_id, user_name and user_options fields be included in the dumps. This may raise a privacy issue for users, because it would then be possible for anyone to see the full user preferences of anyone else. It isn't as compromising as giving the hashed password, but it's not necessary information, either.
Free software trophy
MediaWiki is one of the three nominees for the Trophées du Libre competition in the PHP Special Prize category. The competition, now in its second edition, is a trophy for free software projects sponsored by Nexen Services. Submitted by developer Brion Vibber, MediaWiki was selected as a finalist by a jury that included the creator of PHP.
The awards ceremony is scheduled for 26 May in Soissons, France. Ryo and notafish will be attending on behalf of the project.
Other notes
The issue of meta-templates came up, with David Gerard asking if they should continue to be supported. Meta-templates are templates that are used to standardize the format of other templates, with the other templates being included in pages. Potentially they can increase the overhead on the servers. Wikimedia CFO Daniel Mayer noted that templates within templates are needed as part of the donation forms, however.
Lee Daniel Crocker announced his first draft of a semantic model for wiki syntax, a possible preliminary step toward an improved syntax standard (see archived story).
A user asked about the feasibility of encrypted Wikipedia editing, for user protection from their government or other nefarious agents. Also the feasibility of warning someone that they're editing by IP after they have registered a username was brought up.
Alexander Sigachov twice requested CVS access to update the Russian language files, with no response. It is supposed to be easy to get that access, but that access has been very difficult to get of late. Another developer requested the access and was denied a few weeks ago. Like the Wikipedia:Administrator mantra of "this should be no big deal", it appears to have become a big deal. CVS is the method through which alterations to the source code of MediaWiki are added to the official source code.
A German user suggested making a framework to standardize the articles on a single topic across all languages using a different kind of meta template, which all articles on that topic would then be required to follow. Exception was taken to this concept, due to the differences of format between different languages, and the un-wiki-ness of requiring a new article to have a very specific format.
New features desired in MediaWiki:
- A new special variable to crop parenthesized words off a page name, for making automatic links to undisambiguated pages, similar to the current magic words {{PAGENAME}} and {{PAGENAMEE}}.
- The ability to edit the HTML whitelist (i.e. which HTML tags are allowed) through a "Special:" page, rather than PHP hacking.
- An ability to make anonymous edits on third party MediaWiki installations without showing the anon's IP, but still user-unique to make vandal tracking possible.
Further reading
}}
In the news: Wikipedia serves as supplement to science, BBC
Wikipedia enhances scientific journalism
Wikipedia and other online encyclopaedias are supplementing and enhancing science journalism, according to a report in German magazine Heise Online this week [1]. The paper reported on a talk given by Wolf-Andreas Liebert, a professor of linguistics at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Koblenz-Landau, in which he noted that mainstream science journalism is "increasingly hemmed in by commercial constraints", of which Wikipedia remains free.
In a demonstration of the success of Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, the professor said that Wikipedia's scientific articles showed the "discussion-bolstered character of science", while traditional science reporting tended to show science as a "uniform system generating truth". The fact that both experts and laymen were free to edit articles reinforced Wikipedia's ability to highlight a variety of positions, he said.
The professor's main criticism of Wikipedia was its lack of uniform quality assurance, and Liebert said that "very high quality articles rub shoulders with poorly written ones". He speculated that in the future, the self-organisational wiki model might give way to working with professional authors to hone content.
Wikified BBC News
Internet entrepreneur Stefan Magdalinski has recently created a wikified version of the BBC News website. The service, called Wikiproxy, takes BBC news content and links to the Wikipedia entries of proper nouns. Policy on the BBC's website is not to include any links within articles, although they often provide links to Wikipedia articles in an 'external links' section. The Wikiproxy site is described here, and was created by Magdalinski in cooperation with the BBC.
Magdalinski's project was described at Wired News, in an article looking at various moves towards openness and reusability by the BBC [2]. Projects like Wikiproxy have now been facilitated by the launch of the beta version of Backstage, which provides BBC content for people to build on [3] (The Backstage website, incidentally, recommends Wikipedia's entry on intellectual property for a primer on the subject).
Another free content BBC innovation is the Creative Archive, in which digital content is released under a copyleft license similar to the Creative Commons nc-by-sa license. This allows users to freely copy, redistribute and build upon content, as long as they credit the original author and release their work under the same license, but forbids commercial use.
Envy encourages work on Singaporean articles
The Straits Times this week reported on the activities of Singaporean Wikipedians who want to ensure that their towns have respectable entries in Wikipedia [4]. Demonstrating the phenomenon known as keeping up with the Joneses, editor Faith Toh declared that she "seethes with jealousy" when she sees that nearby Sengkang has a more expansive article than her home town of Punggol.
Toh says that she has now made it her "personal mission" to ensure that Punggol gets a "lengthy, updated entry" in Wikipedia, although she does not know when this "mammoth task" will be completed. The news article claims that Toh has even created a category for Punggol, although this appears not to be the case just yet.
Citations this week
Among the diverse and varied publications using Wikipedia articles as source material this week are: Illinois newspaper the Marion Daily Republican discussing rednecks with help from our article [5]; the Malaysia Star quoting from Eurovision Song Contest in an article on Europe's slightly embarrassing premier music event [6]; the Pittsburg Post-Gazette in an article on the hundreds of thousands of people across the Commonwealth now giving their religion as Jedi on census forms [7]; and the Global Politician quoting Wikipedia's work on cannibalism in an article on the long history of humans eating each other [8].
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
With the arbitration caseload whittled down, activity was relatively slow last week with only one new case accepted and none of the existing cases being closed. (Since this column was missing for a few weeks, it will also briefly report on items that have yet to be covered).
On 4 May, the Arbitration Committee issued its decision in the case of Netoholic, which was opened as a separate case after a significant amount of evidence focusing on Netoholic's conduct was added to 172's case. The complaints focused on revert wars and non-productive behavior on a variety of issues, such as the use of meta-templates and a proposed system for de-adminship.
The arbitrators found that Netoholic engaged in revert wars and consistently assumed bad faith on the part of those disagreeing with him, thus creating "a bad working atmosphere". They also acknowledged that on the meta-templates issue he "was arguably completely technically correct — but he interacted so negatively with others that he actually convinced people he was not". Because the disputes generally involved questions of policy development, the arbitrators avoided settling the underlying issues, leaving those for the community or the developers to resolve. Instead, the decision focused on Netoholic's "editing habits and interactions with others".
The Committee enacted, with full agreement from all parties, an innovative remedy which the arbitrators called a "mentorship". The ruling provided that three mentors would have the authority to restrict Netoholic's editing as they deemed necessary, but that they should also work to assist Netoholic's communication and interactions with other editors. The mentors assigned are Grunt, Kim Bruning, and Raul654 (Grunt and Raul654, both Arbitrators, had both recused themselves from the case itself). The agreement indicated that the mentors would have a "free hand", and recommended that any future problems be referred to the mentors before taking action. Should mentorship prove unworkable, a contingency was included which would restrict Netoholic to one revert per day and prohibit him from editing the Wikipedia and template namespaces. This is suspended while mentorship is in effect.
The one new case opened last week was a complaint against Wareware, in which deeceevoice alleged that Wareware had directed a series of racial insults at her. Even with this, the Arbitration Committee currently has a total of only six cases open.
}}
Political scandal engulfs German Wikipedia
Suspicious edits to election candidate article originated from national parliament
The German Wikipedia this week became embroiled in something of a political scandal in the run-up to regional elections in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The elections were widely seen as a barometer of nationwide public opinion in advance of federal elections later this year, and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took the win from the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) after some 38 years in opposition in the region.
The scandal surrounded the Wikipedia entries for CDU Prime Ministerial candidate Jürgen Rüttgers and, to a lesser extent, SPD incumbent Peer Steinbrück. The entries saw a very large number of edits in the run-up to the election, many from anonymous IP addresses, and a number of passages critical of Rüttgers were removed by the anonymous users. In particular, sections of the article reporting a controversy in which the politician expressed his view that Catholicism and Christianity were superior to other religions were subject to removal and alteration.
Culprits in the German Parliament
Investigation of the IP address via reverse DNS look-up revealed that many originated within the Bundestag (German Parliament) in Berlin, with a substantial number also coming from Düsseldorf, capital of the region. All the edits looked to be attempting to insert a point of view into the article in an attempt, perhaps, to influence the election, breaking Wikipedia's policy on neutrality.
The edits from within the Bundestag led to the suspicion that party workers themselves were behind the attempts to manipulate Wikipedia content for political ends. However, tracing those responsible further than their location proved impossible, because of the way the parliament assigns its IP addresses. One IP may be used by any of the 600 members of parliament or their 6000 members of staff.
One attempt to pin down the suspect apparently didn't take this into account, and incorrectly pointed the finger at CDU parliamentarian Ole Schröder. Schröder was forced to issue a statement denying any involvement, and said those who had accused him of being responsible were 'uninformed'.
Protection for political articles proposed
High-profile elections are always likely to trigger a flurry of edits to articles relating to them, and to prevent a similar kind of attempt at manipulation in the future, some Wikipedianer proposed that relevant political articles be protected during the week prior to the election. However, the idea did not gain favour, with others saying it was too severe a solution, and that instead, users should simply add the articles to their watchlists and monitor them carefully for signs of biased edits. Temporary protection of articles was not ruled out though.
Mathias Schindler asked on his blog that people back away from the gamesmanship and find better ways of occupying their time. Among his suggested alternatives was translating the respective articles into other languages instead of fighting over them; so far, no article exists in English for either candidate.
Wikipedia is unlikely to have played a crucial role in the outcome of the election, as Rüttgers defeated Steinbrück by a decisive margin of 44%-37%. The result was a blow to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has now said that he will call federal elections later this year, much earlier than originally expected.
Debate over designation of years yields inconclusive result
A proposal to change Wikipedia policy on the format for presenting calendar years resulted in an apparent stalemate last week, ultimately leaving the status quo apparently unchanged despite lengthy and sometimes heated debate.
The basic suggestion was to adopt a style guideline that when identifying years, using BC and AD "represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view." Otherwise, the proposed guideline recommended that BCE and CE should be used instead.
The main policy proposal was formulated primarily by Slrubenstein as a potential addition to the Neutral point of view policy. He elaborated his ideas and presented the arguments both for and against it in considerable detail at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate, trying to rebut the arguments of the BC/AD side. The broader proposal grew out of a debate on Talk:Jesus about how to handle the problem of dates there. Many of the basic arguments had already been raised in that discussion, along with points specific to the Jesus article.
As implied by its presentation, the primary argument made for changing the policy was that the literal meanings of the abbreviations BC ("Before Christ") and AD ("Anno Domini") were ultimately not neutral. It was also claimed that the BCE/CE alternative was increasingly prevalent, or had already become standard, in scholarly academic writing.
Opponents of the proposal expressed doubt that BCE/CE was actually neutral, contending that it too promoted a particular viewpoint and in any case merely papered over the system's Christian origins. Accordingly, they argued that considerations of neutrality favored using BC/AD as the most widely recognized system, similar to the way naming conventions are typically handled. Silversmith cited an email she had received from the Encyclopedia Britannica explaining their policy. It stated, "Britannica uses the BC-AD method of designating centuries because it is the most commonly accepted and widely used system for most of the world", noting a few special circumstances where exceptions are made (Encarta uses BC and AD as well).
Rapid editing during the discussion produced some edit conflicts and a few flare-ups over how the page was maintained, while the debate also extended to the mailing list. The latest results of the voting showed a slight majority favoring BC/AD, or at least the existing practice whereby both forms are allowed. By contrast, a similar poll on Talk:Jesus had the majority running the other way.
An alternative technical solution of allowing different dating systems to be displayed according to user preferences was also brought up, and later even voted on in a separate poll. As Eloquence pointed out, however, "Voting on features on the wiki is unlikely to get anything done." He advised instead that anyone interested pursue this as a feature request on Bugzilla, although it is uncertain whether any developers would actually want to work on this.
Unless something new develops, it appears that the situation with BC/AD vs. BCE/CE may settle into a rough compromise, in much the way spelling variations among different forms of English are handled. That is, either form would be acceptable so long as the usage is consistent, and one would only be preferred over the other when appropriate to the topic at hand (thus, an article dealing with the history of a non-Christian religion might prefer BCE/CE, assuming the dates go back far enough that disambiguation is even necessary).
}}
Invasion of librarians spawns new WikiProject
Amid considerable debate among librarians about their experiences with Wikipedia, a new WikiProject to coordinate their efforts as Wikipedia contributors started last week. The project attracted additional discussion and a significant number of participants have already joined in.
The immediate impetus for the debate came from librarian-blogger Jenny Levine, who related her negative experience in trying to add an external link to a Wikipedia article about The Da Vinci Code, one that would allow readers to find libraries with a copy of the book. Comments on the subject spread to other blogs and mailing lists, and eventually a WikiProject for librarians was started by Peter Binkley last Monday.
In addition, Jeff Pomerantz, a library science professor at the University of North Carolina, had earlier posted some reflections on a presentation held at the school about Wikipedia. Pomerantz said the presentation changed his thinking on the subject when he realized that collaborative editing fundamentally resembles the academic peer review process. Observing that people will undoubtedly continue using Wikipedia, sometimes naively unaware of issues about its accuracy, he concluded that librarians have a "professional responsibility to make Wikipedia a reliable information source."
Librarians infiltrating Wikipedia
Luke Rosenberger recounted how the discussion prompted him to become an active Wikipedia contributor. Word continued to spread and a number of other people signed up for the WikiProject, both old hands and those new to Wikipedia. Pomerantz also signed up, commenting, "I have just joined this project, and so should you." Several other librarian-bloggers posted about the project, and it has even gotten attention from the media, as both Binkley and Rosenberger were contacted by producers at the new public radio program Open Source for its show on Wikipedia (see related story - although they were not used in the segments actually aired).
At the same time, some people were voicing concern about the rhetoric of "invading Wikipedia" and how such attitudes might be received. Richard Akerman and Jessamyn West blogged about the need for librarians to adapt to Wikipedia's culture as well. One initial concern was the organization of Wikipedia:Book sources, which is linked whenever a book's ISBN number is wikified. It was generally agreed that the page is a "nightmare", and it was partially a misunderstanding over Wikipedia practices and the function of the page that prompted the discussion initially.
Another task for the project is rewriting the article on digital reference services, which participant Stephen Francoeur had previously complained was partially plagiarized from his website.
Importance of librarians to Wikipedia
Joe Mabel noted that librarians have skills that can be helpful to Wikipedia both in terms of organizing information and evaluating whether or not sources are credible. Another area in which connections between Wikipedia and librarians are important is simply in terms of their using and recommending it as a reference tool. Although not himself a librarian, Mabel has worked on reaching out to librarians and helped start a guide to researching with Wikipedia last year.
Wikipedia's level of acceptance among librarians has long been a particular focus of attention, as librarians are frequently quoted by the media when discussing Wikipedia and they can have a special influence on perceptions of Wikipedia's credibility. Considerable discussion resulted last August when an article in the Syracuse Post-Standard quoted local librarian Susan Stagnitta on what she told her students about Wikipedia, using the headline "Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as a source".
Some libraries have already found Wikipedia a useful outlet to more widely distribute information they have special expertise in; for example, the library system for Barnet (a borough of London) reports having a project to add local historical information about the area to Wikipedia. As further evidence of interest in Wikipedia among librarians, project participant Neschek reported landing a librarian job "in part because of a well-received talk I made last year on Wikipedia and wikis in general."
}}
Traffic growth in US second only to baseball
Additional data on Wikipedia's growing traffic was reported last week, as it showed the second-largest percentage gain among all internet sites for the month of April.
In a report from comScore Media Metrix, the Wikipedia sites showed a 40.9% growth in the number of unique visitors from March to April (5,413,000 to 7,626,000). In percentage terms, this placed behind only Major League Baseball's site at mlb.com, whose traffic increase can be explained by the opening of the baseball season.
The comScore data focuses only on internet activity for the United States. Based on comScore's figure of 164 million internet users, this means that 4.65% of all people in the US who used the internet in April visited Wikipedia (or 2.58% of the total US population, using the latest estimates).
Top 100 in US and worldwide
With its information limited to US traffic, comScore shows Wikipedia coming in exactly at #100 when ranked according to the number of unique visitors. However, rankings that take worldwide internet traffic into account show Wikipedia placing higher, suggesting that its appeal is even greater outside the US.
According to Alexa traffic rankings, Wikipedia is now solidly in the top 100 internet sites, with its traffic over a three-month period standing at 88th. Furthermore, a number of the sites ranked by Alexa are not focused on the US and do not figure in the comScore report. Among English-language sites, Alexa now ranks Wikipedia in the top 50 at 48th.
}}
Wikijunior project appeals for help
Do you like sharing what you know with eager young minds? Do you like the idea of writing for children? Are you looking for new ways to contribute to Wikimedia's work? If so, Wikijunior needs you. Wikimedia's project to create a series of educational books for children has stagnated after the initial surge of activity following its founding in November, 2004.
The project's story began when we were approached in October, 2004 by the Beck Foundation, which was interested in sponsoring educational materials for children. They offered Wikimedia a $10,000 grant to help in creating this content. The resulting project was tentatively named Wikijunior, and started in November 2004. It was decided that initially, we would concentrate on three books: Big Cats, South America, and The Solar System.
However, while the project has amassed a long list of interested participants, the number of Wikimedians who have made substantial contributions is small. The three initial books were intended to be only a starting point, but after six months none are near completion.
The Solar System project is closest. All of its pages have substantial content, and there is a standardized format across its pages. Some pages, like the glossary, are still incomplete, but most of the needed information is in place. Work still remains in polishing and fact-checking, and in making sure the pages are easy enough for kids to read.
Big Cats has made some progress, but still has a long way to go. Four out of its eleven pages have nothing but an external link or a picture, and all of its pages need expanding. South America has barely even started: only 6 of its 19 pages have any content at all, and one of those was written by your fearless reporter while researching this story.
What does this all mean? It means we need some dedicated editors to spend some time over on Wikibooks, helping get Wikijunior on its feet. This is a good opportunity to spread the Wikimedia name to a new area, and we've received a grant specifically for this work. We can't let it sputter out.
}}