Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2005-11-28
Committee proposed to screen new Wikipedia languages
In an effort to restructure the process for starting new Wikipedia editions, it was proposed last week that a group of experts screen requests for new languages. The current system, which involves community debates of requests for new languages and sometimes the use of a test Wikipedia to demonstrate feasibility, has been a source of ongoing friction.
On Tuesday, Jimmy Wales proposed a new system for approving the launch of Wikipedia in new languages. The system would involve creating a committee of experts to give advisory opinions on whether a proposal involves "an actual language or merely a dialect." An outside body could be used if a suitable one is available, although existing standards such as ISO 639 and the Ethnologue have been used more as a starting point and are not widely accepted as definitive.
In his comments, Wales also outlined some principles for deciding what language editions would be appropriate. First of all, he said that editions should be encouraged "in all legitimate living natural languages". Wales indicated that it should be made easy for fluent and especially native speakers of such languages to get started.
Dialects and constructed languages would be governed by different principles, and Wikipedia editions for these would be generally discouraged (although not forbidden). Wales stated that he was concerned about these being advanced primarily for political reasons, as well as the potential for hoaxes.
Recent history and problem cases
The addition of new languages has been controversial for some time. Many recent requests to start a new Wikipedia language edition have been for archaic languages (such as Gothic and Old English) or for languages closely related to an existing Wikipedia language. Requests of the latter type tend to raise questions about whether the language is not really just a dialect, along with the argument that anyone speaking it is adequately served by Wikipedia already.
This tension arises in part because of Wikipedia's stated goal of distributing an encyclopedia to everyone "in their own language." A few languages remain without a Wikipedia, but most of the easy cases are in parts of the world with limited internet access. Thus even if the wiki has been created, in many cases nobody has stepped forward to help start writing Wikipedia content in the language. Wales did indicate that using Wikipedia to preserve language and culture was acceptable in situations where few native speakers exist, citing Cornish as an example.
At the same time, creating a Wikipedia edition to advance a particular linguistic agenda arguably violates the neutral point of view policy. For example, the existence of four separate Wikipedias for Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Serbo-Croatian has frequently been criticized. Reliance on ISO 639 codes resulted in the creation of separate editions, but the question of whether these are distinct languages is heavily politicized.
A special case is the Chinese Wikipedia, since as a spoken language Chinese has several varieties that are often mutually unintelligible, but these nevertheless largely share the same written form based on the grammar of the Mandarin variety. As a result, repeated requests to start a Cantonese Wikipedia have never been acted upon, and an existing Wikipedia in Min Nan has never been fully accepted. The situation is further complicated by concerns among Chinese Wikipedia community members about their project's relatively small size considering its potential population base, leading some to argue that splitting efforts into multiple Wikipedias is undesirable for the time being. Again, political implications come into play, and the PRC's ongoing block of Wikipedia access in mainland China (see archived stories) also exacerbates the problem.
Last chance to run for ArbCom
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
The Wikipedia Arbitration Committee and Jimbo Wales announced that all Wikipedians interested in running and serving on the ArbCom should place their name on the candidates' page immediately in order to be considered. Under the changes Jimbo made last month, the Committee and Jimbo will select several candidates, who will all then be confirmed by either a majority or supermajority of Wikipedians. Both the number of candidates, the exact process, and the approximate percentage required to pass are currently unclear, with several Arbitrators also indicating that they are also unsure of the exact procedure. It is expected that Jimbo will announce details in the coming weeks.
Arbitrator Raul654 commented on Saturday that he "strongly suggest[s] to anyone who wishes to be considered for the Arbitration Committee" that they list themselves on the candidates' statement page "immediately (like 3 hours ago)". He later confirmed that the committee and Jimbo will begin deliberations and discussions soon regarding the selection of the candidates.
Before and after the call for candidates, there was a flurry of activity on the candidates' page. Karmafist (statement), Morven (statement), and SimonP (statement) all declared their candidacies. In addition, current Arbitrators JayJG (statement), Kelly Martin (statement), and Mindspillage (statement) also declared their intentions to seek office again. Martin's announcement comes a week after she had stated that she would not run again; however, she addressed the issue by saying, "I've decided to reverse my previously announced intent not to run after a curious discussion with another editor who told me that people object to me being on ArbCom because I am too well-trusted and well-respected in the community. Apparently, being trustworthy and respected are qualities not desired in Arbitration Committee members. I found this argument so brazenly illogical that it convinced me to run."
Community input continues
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
This week, Jimbo's changes to the election procedure came under more public scrutiny as news of the changes, which were first announced over a month ago, became more widespread. Ironically, the torrent of community input and opinions was first started by a post to the Administrators' Noticeboard of Incidents by an apparent sockpuppet, Simon Chartres. Chartres expressed his opinions about the decision to lower community input on the process. Radiant! concurred, saying "I... think that refusing to hold elections and not bothering to inform the community why, is a bad idea. At present, the impression is that without having the proper connections, one cannot become an [Arbitrator]." However, others disagreed, saying that the changes would be an improvement over last year's elections. "As anyone who has played an active part in the community for any length of time can testify, our record on voting is not fantastic," Rje stated. "I trust Jimbo, as someone who has made a huge investment in this project, to make the decisions that will best benefit Wikipedia."
In the discussions that followed, some limited details were provided regarding the process from Arbitrators. Raul654 said that the elections would be "a two step procedure -- Jimbo, with advice from the current Arbitration Committee, selects a set of would-be appointees. The community then has an approval vote on them. Would-be appointees receiving greater than 50% approval will be appointed." However, Raul654 later clarified his comments regarding the 50 percent approval mark, saying that the 50 percent mark was "only my best guess. Jimbo has described the process informally several times, and if memory serves, he used supermajority in one description and majority in another."
However, several Arbitrators did caution that the exact procedure has yet to be determined. Said Arbitrator Mindspillage, "The [Arbitration Committee] cannot comment on this with any authority because we don't know what the [exact] procedure will be." However, several Wikipedians called for more details to be released about the elections procedure immediately. "A little keeping-the-community-in-the-loop would be really, genuinely helpful," stated Splash.
Meanwhile, this week the straw poll regarding the elections procedure continued. As of press time, 47 had supported having an elected ArbCom, and 14 had supported having an appointed ArbCom.
Board plans fundraiser, seeks Wikimania organizer
The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has scheduled another fundraising drive for December and is advertising for a professional conference organizer to assist with next year's Wikimania conference.
The Board released minutes from a meeting held earlier this month, indicating that a fundraiser has been scheduled to start 1 December. It will run for three weeks, similar to the most recent drive during August and September. Unlike previous fundraisers, no fixed amount has been stated as a goal, and the fundraiser will simply last for the period of time set.
This schedule is moved up compared to earlier discussions, which had tentatively focused on holding the next fundraiser after the new year. Additional funds remain critical to supplying the hardware necessary to keep the site operating. As part of the meeting, the Board authorized an additional $50,000 expenditure for hardware, but noted that this "could stretch thin available cash resources." Since then, the fund drive start date was moved back a week. It will now be held from Friday 9 December to Saturday 31 December.
Meanwhile, the Wikimedia Foundation is also looking for an experienced professional to help with Wikimania 2006, to be held in Boston in late July or early August. The conference organizer will be hired on a contract basis and work part-time as needed during the year, and full-time prior to and during the conference. Fluency in English and at least one other language is desired. Interested parties are instructed to contact the Board directly about the position.
In additional activity, the Board decided not to give its approval yet to the launch of a proposed Wikiversity project (see archived story), but indicated that with some changes and further discussion the possibility remains open for the future.
News and notes
Article validation to go live soon
Article validation is set to be enabled on Wikipedia "very soon", according to David Gerard. Currently, Brion is "cleaning it up" for usage.
Briefly
- Wikipedia is #8 in the Nielsen/NetRatings list for Top 10 Online News & Information Destinations. [1] (Wikipedia is the first open citizen-powered site to crack the top ten, says Steve Rubel. [2])
- The Danish Wikipedia has reached 35,000 articles.
- The Bosnian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Romanian Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
- The Telugu Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
- The Udmurt Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
In the news
Esquire article published
The December print issue of Esquire magazine includes "Wikiworld: The Experiment", the article that seventy five Wikipedians collaborated on for Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs. (see archived story) The article compares before and after versions of Wikipedia:Improve this article about Wikipedia, noting the deliberate errors in the original (including one that Wikipedians failed to correct: the number of articles in Britannica), and making various comments about the experiment. Also in the article is a sidebar profiling Jimmy and giving more context about the project itself.
The first few paragraphs can be read at KeepMedia; the rest is available online only to subscribers of the print magazine.
Russian news
Semi-weekly Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published "Зрители снимаются с мест" on November 21. The article discusses the tendency of modern people to want to control the information they receive. The examples include TiVo and LiveJournal as well as Wikipedia, which it describes as "the most popular free-of-charge online encyclopedia, one of the 50 most visited websites in the world."
Interviews of note
Jimbo Wales
- On November 21, "Wikipedia: the dawn of democratic media?" was published by I&DeA Knowledge, the online journal for the Improvement and Development Agency which is targeted at United Kingdom local government professionals. The interview with Jimbo Wales is an introduction to Wikipedia. Wales says, "We are deeply committed to being a fully global project, and so I have thought to myself that I will feel that my life work is complete when we have at least 250,000 reasonably high quality articles in enough different languages that 99 per cent of all people on the planet can use them."
Angela Beesley
- During a trip to Australia for the X|Media|Lab international digital media conference, Wikimedia Foundation member Angela Beesley gave an interview to The Age which appeared on November 22 under the headline "Quest for the universal Wiki". Angela describes Wikipedia: "You need to find a balance between discussing every little change and just getting on with it. There's not really a concept of leaders within Wikipedia. It's very much a bottom-up process with the community deciding. Currently there's a split in the community about whether voting is really useful. We end up with what we call a rough consensus where most people at least agree enough that they're going to stop arguing about it." Angela also met with other Wikipedians at a meetup in Sydney.
Peter Morville
- Author Peter Morville, mentioned two weeks ago for his discussion of Wikipedia in Business Weekly, is again touting Wikipedia in interviews promoting his book. On November 1, Boxes and Arrows published "Ambient Findability: Talking with Peter Morville". Journalist Liz Danzico asks "If [Encyclopaedia Britannica's] findability were greater, would Wikipedia have a viable competitor on its hands?" Morville replies: "I did a great deal of research for my book. And I made extensive use of licensed bibliographic and full-text databases. But the Wikipedia was the single most useful source. Findability is only part of its success. It’s also strong in quality, currency and breadth of coverage. As the world’s largest, most popular encyclopedia, the Wikipedia illustrates the efficacy of open source content creation and the power of collective intelligence. So, in short, the answer is no. Wikipedia has nothing to fear from EB."
Anti-Wikipedianism
The long article "Wikipedia: A Techno-Cult of Ignorance" bills itself as a manifesto against Wikipedia, and appears to be written by the editors and subjects of aetherometry, "the experimental and theoretical study of massfree energy".
Wikipedia in comics
The irregularly updated webcomic Kernel Panic published a strip on November 23 titled "Wiki is the new black", about deletionism.
Citations in the news
Wikipedia was cited in the last week in the following publications:
- Times of India (India), on The finger [3]
- ARRL, on CONELRAD [4]
- Norwich Bulletin (Connecticut, USA), on Black Friday [5]
- Minnesota Daily (Minnesota, USA), on Congress of the United States [6]
- Kathmandu Post (Nepal), on Sun Myung Moon [7]
- Manila Standard (Philippines), on dyslexia [8]
- Green Bay Press Gazette (Wisconsin, USA), on Art Fiala [9]
- Hattiesburg American (Mississippi, USA), on turducken [10]
- OnMilwaukee.com (Wisconsin, USA), on Black Friday [11]
- Hopewell Valley News (New Jersey, USA), on Sarah Josepha Hale [12]
- American Thinker (Arizona, USA), on Human Rights Watch [13]
- Knoxville News Sentinel (Tennessee, USA), on dog [14]
Features and admins
Bureaucrats
A request for bureaucratship is underway for Johnleemk.
Administrators
Twelve users were granted admin status this week: Jareth (nom), Ann Heneghan (nom), MONGO (nom), Yelyos (nom), The Tom (nom), Jkelly (nom), Miborovsky (nom), Hiding (nom), Demi (nom), MarkGallagher (nom), Sean Black (nom) and Harro5 (nom).
Notably, MarkGallagher received 100 support votes and 0 oppose votes. According to Zzyzx11's RFA nomination records page, MarkGallagher is only the fourth admin to reach 100 support votes, and the first since Func's 112 supports in August.
Featured content
Eight articles were featured this week: History of the Jews in Poland, Yuan (surname), StarCraft, Omnipotence paradox, Claudius, Arrested Development (TV series), Rosa Parks and Dawson Creek, British Columbia.
No lists reached featured list status this week.
Three pictures reached featured picture status this week:
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Twenty new servers ordered
On 15 November, twenty new servers were ordered. Ten of these servers will be used as cache servers, while the other ten will be used as multi-purpose application servers. In all, the server order totaled approximately US$50,080.00.
Currently, $114,436.00 has been spent on hardware during the fourth quarter; altogether, $285,676.00 has been spent on hardware in 2005.
Article citation feature created
Developer Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason has created a new page for citing articles, Special:Cite. Links to this page can be found in the toolbox when viewing pages in the article namespace. The page shows information about a given article necessary for citing articles, and generates citations in different citation styles, including APA, MLA, and Chicago.
New site status page
A new site status page has been created by Ambush Commander, in response to the 'unwieldy' nature of editing the current status page, hosted on OpenFacts. Rather than using a conventional wiki environment, the page allows a user to select a series of options to display the current status and leave a comment.
Amane installed
Images and image uploads were disabled for a time on 22 November while a new image server, 'amane', was installed. The outage was necessary to allow the copying of images from 'khaldun', 'bacon', and 'albert'.
Last week in servers
Other server-related events, problems, and changes included:
- 23 November — Routing problems involving certain Cogent IPs fixed.
- 26 November — 'Srv5' breaks, taken offline.
- 27 November — Wikipedia-l, Wikien-l, and Helpdesk-l lists blocked in the Robots.txt file, following complaints that 'newbie questions', often embarrassing, were showing up in search results.
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee closed three cases this week.
Lightbringer
A case against Lightbringer was closed on Wednesday. As a result, Lightbringer has been placed on personal attack parole for six months. In addition, Lightbringer has been banned indefinitely from editing article and talk pages relating to freemasonry. Lightbringer had made personal attacks against other users, and according to the ruling, had a 'passionate POV' in freemasonry-related articles.
Maoririder
A case against Maoririder was closed on Saturday. As a result, it was ruled that Maoririder shall receive a mentor, possibly assigned from the mediation committee.
Silverback
A case against Silverback was closed on Monday. As a result, Silverback has been placed on personal attack parole for six months. In addition, Silverback has been limited to one revert per article per week. Silverback was accused of making personal attacks, and edit warring on Iraq-related articles.
Other cases
Cases were accepted this week against numerous editors on Neuro-linguistic programming, editors Ted Wilkes, Wyss, and Onefortyone, editors on climate change-related articles, AndriyK (user page), and EffK (user page). All are in the evidence phase.
Other cases against Johnski (user page), a series of editors on Winter Soldier, Xed (user page), Pigsonthewing (user page), Copperchair (user page), and numerous editors on Ted Kennedy, are in the evidence phase.
Cases against numerous editors on Political Research Associates, Rangerdude (user page), and Ultramarine are in the voting phase.
Motions to close are on the table in cases against Rex071404 (user page) and Instantnood (user page).