Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2005-07-11
Bombings article tracks breaking news with record editing pace
In the wake of the London bombings on 7 July, the Wikipedia article on the subject received record attention from both editors and readers. It also drew considerable media coverage from Wikipedia's reputation as a source for detailed information about breaking news. The article's popularity was such that it received more than a hundred edits every hour for the first day, and was still getting over a hundred edits daily at the end of the week.
Only an hour and a half after the bombings occurred, at 09:18 (UTC) (Note: UTC is one hour behind British Summer Time; the first bombs were at 08:50 BST, or 07:50 UTC), Morwen created the initial article about the event. She reported that she actually knew about the explosions some time earlier from colleagues at work, but true to the principle that Wikipedia only includes information that has been reported elsewhere first, she waited until she could confirm it from initial media reports. Wikinews had its article started at 08:28 (UTC) (using at first BBC radio reports then newswire articles), barely more than half an hour after the first bombs exploded, with the news being the front page headline moments later.
In the next 24 hours after Morwen created the Wikipedia article, over 800 editors contributed 2,857 edits, which as best as can be determined is a Wikipedia record. The previous record was set two months ago in April, when Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope. The pace slowed considerably after the first day, but even on Sunday the article received 189 edits.
The extremely high rate of editing on the article caused frustration for many editors. During the most intense periods, it was difficult to make even minor edits without running into edit conflicts. Another problem was that large sections of the article would occasionally be duplicated, an issue that periodically comes up when the MediaWiki software has trouble processing edit conflicts while someone is editing a section. In one case, the duplication problem resulted in nearly half an hour of edits having to be reverted. Aside from technical issues, vandalism, spamming, and bad-faith edits to add bogus information were also frequent problems, leading to at least 16 people being blocked from editing the article. Once editing slowed down to a reasonable pace, most of these problems were either no longer an issue or easily manageable.
Page moves show how information comes out
One interesting aspect of the article's history is how it tracks the way in which information about the bombings became available. This can particularly be seen in the title being used for the article, which changed repeatedly during the first few hours, something that is now easier to track since MediaWiki 1.5 keeps a record of page moves.
The first title of the article was "London Underground power surge incident", as this was the explanation initially reported before the fact of the bombs became known. At 09:32 (UTC), Morwen moved the page to "London Underground explosions", as rumors about explosive devices gave the first indication that the power surge explanation was false. Once reports of the bus bombing appeared, Alphax moved the article to "London transport explosions" at 09:44 (UTC), given that the explosions were no longer limited to the Underground. At 09:52 (UTC), Harro5 moved the page once more, giving it a date as "2005 London transport explosions", thus distinguishing it more clearly from similar historical incidents.
The title of "2005 London transport explosions" then remained in place for several hours, and the vast majority of outside sites linked to the article in this form. As speculation increasingly focused on bombs, Pigsonthewing finally moved the article to "July 7, 2005 London bombing" at 12:32 (UTC). Over the next half hour, several more people moved the article, tweaking the date format and ultimately settling on the plural to indicate the multiple incidents.
The current form, "7 July 2005 London bombings", is not necessarily the final word either, and the possibility of coming up with a less awkward title has already been raised on the talk page. It was pointed out, however, that the ultimate title of the article depends on how the general public comes to refer to these events, something that will become more clear with the passage of time.
Outside sources point to Wikipedia
The flurry of media coverage surrounding the bombings caused a huge influx of visitors to the article. As of July 9, the London bombings article had received more than 250,000 page views, making it the most popular article in the history of Wikipedia. Unlike many previous flurries, however, the Wikimedia grid showed no signs of stress. This can be attributed to more web servers and improved network configuration. In addition to the heavily trafficked English article, there are currently versions of the article in 24 other languages.
When reporting on the response to the bombings among the public and the press, media sources also frequently discussed activity among online communities. While reporters often focused on Flickr and its collection of images related to the bombings, Wikipedia also received considerable attention. One widely mentioned story was how a photograph, taken by Adam Stacey on the Underground and quickly posted to moblog.co.uk under a Creative Commons license, ended up on Wikipedia and ultimately circulated to many major media organizations.
Numerous bloggers commented on the rapid development of the London bombings article. Nik Cubrilovic wrote "It is amazing how quickly a page detailing every aspect of the attack forms together on Wikipedia - they have more information than any of the major news providers." Ross Mayfield suggested using Wikipedia Animate to watch the article "evolve with thousands of edits into collective understanding". A more critical comment came from Tollie Williams who wrote that a "plethora of information was very quickly posted but sometimes inaccurately or without attribution of sources." On the day of the bombings, the Wikipedia article ranked as the third most prominently mentioned link in the blogosphere according to BlogPulse.com.
Several mainstream media sources also commented on Wikipedia's coverage of the event. Newsweek proclaimed "It is no longer newspapers, as the old maxim goes, that write the first draft of history." The Scotsman used an instance of vandalism in the article as an example of a weakness of "citizen news". Despite this criticism, the article termed Wikipedia as "usually excellent". The Wikipedia article was also used as a reference by many news sources, including the New York Times and Newsday.
Statistics indicate where Wikipedia is most popular
New statistics compiled last week give a clue as to why German is the second-largest Wikipedia language, while traffic measurements show that Wikipedia continues to pass other websites in popularity.
Country statistics
On Tuesday, developer Kate announced that webalizer statistics were available again for all Wikimedia Foundation projects[1]. Also provided was information about how many page accesses were made from each country, as determined by IP address.
By adding population data for the busiest countries, Jimmy Wales created a table of page views per capita. He said the results confirmed his observations that Wikipedia is most popular in German-speaking countries, as Switzerland, Germany, and Austria occupied the top three spots in the list. Among English-speaking countries, Canada ranked sixth and the United States eighth; Australia and the United Kingdom were numbers 14 and 15 respectively out of 31 countries on the list overall.
The statistics may not be completely reliable, as Kate noted the sample size involved was small enough that problems with log collection might have introduced errors. Developer Mark Bergsma also pointed out that the databases linking IP addresses with countries could be inaccurate, particularly for African countries.
Alexa and the bombings
Also on Tuesday, Wikipedia inched into the top 50 websites in terms of visitor traffic for the first time, according to Alexa's daily rankings. Wikipedia fell back again slightly in subsequent days, but the overall trend for site traffic continues to move upward.
Daily rankings tend to fluctuate, although given Wikipedia's size these fluctuations now have less dramatic effects on the ranking. The impact of web traffic related to the London bombings, which set records on British news sites, didn't even register significantly for Wikipedia, in spite of the heavy editing on that article and many people linking to it from outside. In the main Alexa ranking, which is calculated for a three-month period, Wikipedia has just passed About.com and currently stands at #65 worldwide.
The smaller Wikinews project, however, did experience a major spike in traffic from the London bombings, with its number of visitors more than doubling. At the present, Wikinews traffic is roughly in a similar position to that of Wikipedia during its second year of existence.
Wikipedia prompts compliments, analysis, and call to action from blogs
Discussion of Wikipedia in the blogosphere over the past week — besides the great many people linking to and discussing the London bombings (see related story) — provided a variety of reactions to the project's treatment of other subjects. One blogger complimented Wikipedia for including information other publications had ignored, while another took issue with its coverage and promoted a campaign to fix it. Also, bloggers returned to analyze an issue that has received increasing coverage recently, the use of Wikipedia as a marketing tool (see archived story).
Monday, 4 July: Chris Crain, blogging for the Houston Voice, a gay and lesbian news site, wrote about "The straight-washing of Luther Vandross", charging that media coverage in the aftermath of the singer's death had papered over the evidence about his sexual orientation. He noted the contrast to Wikipedia, which mentioned rumors that Vandross was gay even before the flurry of edits that followed his death.
Thursday, 7 July: Joe Brockmeier, blogging for ZDNet, wrote a post called "Is Wikipedia ripe for PR?", reviewing the significance of Wikipedia in product marketing. This came after Russell Shaw noted the use of Wikipedia to provide up-to-date information about the Skype VoIP network. Brockmeier described the entry as more neutral than spam, but conceded that he found the constant use of new media for advertising purposes repulsive. However, he said he liked that Wikipedia entries could be rewritten or deleted if necessary, and that "Unlike other media, no one gets the last word".
Saturday, 9 July: La Shawn Barber, a Christian blogger who was the subject of a debate in February over whether to delete the article about her (see archived story), took the opportunity to indirectly comment on the fact that a quote from her is listed in the Islamophobia article. The statement quoted, written in the context of the controversy over handling of the Qur'an at Guantanamo Bay, said that "Despite what they may say, Muslims are and have always been on a mission to conquer and kill infidels" and that the US should "focus on stopping the spread of Islamofascism." Barber suggested that use of this quote as an example of Islamophobia was an ironic contrast with how criticism of Christianity is generally viewed, and called for her readers to collect similar quotes for the Christianophobia article, as a way of providing balance. However, when last checked this article showed no sign of being edited since 26 June.
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
Due to the resignations of several members of the Arbitration Committee, the Wikipedia arbitration process ground nearly to a halt last week. No existing cases were decided, nor did any new cases get opened. Several new requests for arbitration did come in during the week, but were still awaiting some kind of resolution. Instead, concern began to focus on how to replace the resigning arbitrators.
As early as 3 June, Delirium had indicated that he was planning to resign as an arbitrator (see archived story). Since then, Ambi stated on 29 June that she was "resigning effective immediately". In updating the committee roster, former arbitrator Jdforrester noted that Grunt, who had taken an indefinite leave of absence from the committee on 20 June, would also be resigning once a replacement was found. This leaves only six out of twelve arbitrators currently listed as "Active".
Discussion then turned to the question of what would be done about the situation. -Ril- asked whether the next three vote-getters from last December's elections would step up as and serve as replacements (in this case, Fennec, Mirv, and Cecropia, respectively). However, Dbiv said, "I would be totally against just pulling the highest losers into position", and suggested a new election instead.
Arbitrator Raul654 indicated that the committee had been discussing the matter already with Jimbo Wales for several weeks, and that an announcement on the issue would be forthcoming. When this would happen is uncertain, but several people suggested that it should be taken care of as soon as possible. However, avoiding overlap with the Board of Trustees election, which concludes today, may also be a consideration.
New effort to overhaul deletion being voted on
After working for over a month, a group of editors seeking to reform the deletion process submitted a proposal to the community, calling for a vote on a number of changes to the criteria for speedy deletion.
The complex proposal managed to include even more separate items to be voted on than did an earlier poll about expanding the speedy deletion criteria (see archived story). Its development was initiated by Radiant, who helped draft guidelines that have been credited with reducing the amount of debate over schools being nominated for deletion. A sizable group of people helped shape the proposal, most of whom are fairly regular participants in deletion debates.
Objectives and details of proposals
The primary purpose of this effort was to deal with growth in the deletion process and make it more manageable. Numbers were cited indicating that the number of pages being listed on Votes for deletion has roughly doubled since January. Over the course of the past year, it was contended that the number of votes for deletion has tripled.
A particular target in drafting the proposals was the attempt to formulate criteria that could apply to vanity pages. As these are frequently created and routinely deleted, they have been repeatedly suggested as grounds for speedy deletion, but this has always encountered objections that the definitions of "vanity" were too subjective.
Among the proposals, therefore, were separate new speedy deletion criteria for people, bands, websites, and clubs. In general, these focused on articles that fail to assert some basic level of significance for the subject. Other proposals being considered include speedy deletion for certain transwiki and translation material, duplicates of content on other projects, and some categories and templates. In addition, it was suggested that one of the existing criteria, "Very short articles providing little or no context", be deprecated in favor of new criteria that tried to define this more specifically.
Current status of vote
The vote provided that 70% support would be required in order for any individual item to pass, just as the earlier proposal had. When last checked, five of the proposals had the necessary level of support. These included one for articles where the transwiki process had been properly completed, two proposals covering very short articles (those with "no information other than a rephrasing of the title" and those that "serve no purpose but to disparage their subject"), and a revision of the policy dealing with previously deleted content. Voting continues for another week and is scheduled to close 19 July at 15:11 (UTC).
Only one of the measures for dealing with vanity pages looks like it may pass, that being the proposal dealing with individual people. One of the critics of this proposal, Tony Sidaway, pushed for a counter-proposal that was also being voted on, which would require such articles to be tagged first and held for 48 hours before being deleted. Sidaway also launched a vote for the proposition that the deletion process was not actually broken, and that all of the proposals were unnecessary instruction creep. Neither of these motions currently has support from a majority of voters.
Even without London events, Wikipedia draws media coverage, award
After the bombings that shook London last Thursday, much of the media focus naturally turned to those events, and to the extent that the subject of Wikipedia came up it was often in relation to its coverage of the bombings (see related story). However, Wikipedia was also featured independently in several news stories, ranging from national newspapers to specialty publications, and the site won an award from one magazine.
In The Globe and Mail on Friday, Ivor Tossell wrote a review of Wikipedia entitled "By, of, for the people". The article briefly mentioned both positive and negative aspects of Wikipedia, describing its growth as "a fascinating process to watch, like a giant human ant farm." The reporter noted the recent buzz of activity surrounding the Live 8 concerts by relating that he had gone to the article about Neil Young and found that his performance was not mentioned; however, by the time he tried to edit the page ten seconds later and add the information, he discovered that someone else had beaten him to it.
Last week, Linux Journal awarded its "Editors' Choice Awards 2005: Nontechnical or Community Web Site" to the Wikimedia Foundation for the Wikipedia project. Points singled out for praise included its size ("1.5 million articles and editions in 195 languages") and the fact that Wikipedia is not "cluttered up with flaming, drivel and spam like other on-line fora" (although some people might beg to differ; perhaps the description depends on whether one focuses on the encyclopedia, or also considers talk pages and the mailing lists).
Wikipedia, births, and deaths
Science News managed to tie Wikipedia into the subject of baby names, without actually mentioning any Wikipedia content related to such names. The article was originally about Name Voyager, a program that visually represents the popularity of various baby names in the United States over time, developed by the wife-and-husband team of Laura and Martin Wattenberg.
An IBM researcher, Martin had previously, along with Fernanda B. Viégas at MIT, developed a "history flow" technique for visualizing the development of Wikipedia articles. The reporter used this opportunity to segue into a discussion of their research, which took up nearly as much space as the original topic. Points noted include the swiftness of responses to vandalism and the persistence of quality text.
Also, Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal responded to reader questions about his earlier article noting Wikipedia's erroneous casualty figure for the Korean War (see archived story). In response to the question of why he reported on the error instead of changing it, Bialik said, "I didn't correct the entry myself because I thought it inappropriate for me to be writing about the story and also making it." He also noted that the correction had been made very quickly, and that the article had stayed correct since.
Citations
CNN/SI turned to Wikipedia to identify the name of the theme music for The NBA on NBC, which was "Roundball Rock" [2]. The Rutland Herald cited Wikipedia about the debate over whether public broadcasting in the US is biased [3]. Reporting on an open source security flaw, ZDNet quoted Wikipedia on zlib's status as "something of a de facto standard" [4]. Etymology questions brought in the Provo Daily Herald, for the history of weblogs [5], and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, for the phrase melting pot [6]. And the Bangor Daily News quoted Wikipedia's description of The Simpsons character police chief Wiggum [7].
Changes in displaying featured pictures discussed
The Featured pictures visible page may soon be reworked, possibly being converted to a gallery to alleviate long loading times or split into distinct pages to avoid redundancy with Featured pictures thumbs. Meanwhile, there were 6 new admins, 11 new featured articles, 5 new featured lists, and 7 new featured pictures this week.
Featured pictures visible
As image galleries become more popular on Wikipedia, some users have begun to discuss the possibility of overhauling featured pictures visible, the page that shows all current featured pictures in one place, to reduce loading time and simplify the featured picture promotion process. Currently, nearly all images are displayed with a long dimension of 300 pixels, and with over 250 featured pictures, the page takes a significant amount of time to load on slower internet connections.
To alleviate the problem, Silversmith suggested that the page be converted to a gallery, which would use smaller image sizes. Solipsist pointed out that this would make featured pictures thumbs largely obsolete, and put forth the possibility of splitting "Featured pictures visible" into several pages according to categories. Solipsist also noted that eliminating the featured pictures thumbnail page would reduce the complexity of promoting featured pictures, but suggested that a variety of presentations can be useful for users trying to find a specific picture.
Featured pictures may also be getting additional exposure in the near future, depending on whether the Picture of the day gets added to the Main Page (see related story).
Admins
Six wikipedians received administrator status after their requests for adminship received wide support: Craigy144 (nom), Vsmith (nom), Woohookitty (nom), Starblind (nom), Feco (nom), and Talrias (nom).
Featured content
Eleven more featured article candidates were featured this week, namely Caulfield Grammar School, Doom (which its primary author, Fredrik, resubmitted for featured status after requesting that that status be revoked in May), Chagas disease, Monty Hall problem, Flag of India, United States House of Representatives (Following closely behind United States Senate, also Emsworth's work), IFK Göteborg, African American literature, History of Central Asia, Washington gubernatorial election, 2004, and Rail transport in India (the second installment of Nichalp's railway series).
Five featured list candidates were promoted this week: List of snakes of Trinidad and Tobago, English national cricket captains, Wisden Cricketers of the Year, List of popes (graphical), List of Test cricket grounds by date. Meanwhile, on Featured picture candidates, seven images were promoted.
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Sweet Chesnut -
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Sunrise over Stonehenge
News and notes: Possible main page redesign
Last week saw some renewed discussion about the possibility of changing the content that appears on Wikipedia's main page. The developers also implemented a change to the blocking feature and added a new tool for name changes.
New articles or pictures?
A proposal was made last week to add the Picture of the day to the Main Page (currently it appears at the bottom of the Community Portal). Raul654 suggested that it could replace the Did you know template, saying that the template is not well maintained and the articles on it tend to be of poor quality. To encourage feedback on the idea, he created a demonstration of what this might look like.
A few people objected to losing the "Did you know" section, saying that it motivates them to produce new articles, and no decision has been reached yet. Solipsist mentioned that the base of featured pictures is still small, but also pointed to the consideration that "As Wikipedia matures, putting our best material on display is plausibly more important than stimulating new articles." As a compromise, Mindspillage brought up the possibility of rotating between the two features.
Change to blocking feature
Developer Tim Starling added some code to the MediaWiki software to modify the restrictions on blocked users. The change, which allows an account to edit its own talk page even after being blocked, is a temporary workaround while Starling works on a feature for per-article blocking. It was done partly to relieve the pressure on the wikiEN-l mailing list (see archived story), to which blocked users are directed when inquiring about the reasons for their block. However, some concerns were also raised on the administrators' noticeboard about how to deal with potential abuse, and whether it would be necessary to protect talk pages on occasion.
Name changes
In another programming note, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason has created a tool to allow bureaucrats to take over the function of changing usernames, a task previously handled by the developers. After briefly being disabled due to security issues, the tool was fixed but is only able to perform this operation for accounts with fewer than 5000 edits. Also, a significant difference is that instead of a person having two accounts, and migrating from one to the other, the tool requires that the requested new account not exist yet.
Dealing with imitation names
The proponents of a policy proposal dealing with so-called doppelganger accounts are planning to start a vote on the policy today. The vote is scheduled to run through Tuesday, 9 August.