Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2006-06-12
From the editor
This issue, we welcome back a feature that's been noticeably absent over the last three and a half months. That's right, the Signpost's RSS feed is back up and running on a new server. You can find the new RSS feed at http://wikipediasignpost.com/feed.rss.
I'd like to apologize for the long hiatus of our RSS feed. I've had some technical difficulties with the old RSS feed (mainly user error on my part), and so opted to move the feed to an entirely new server. This should make for a smoother process in updating the feed. I assure you that the RSS feed will be kept up to date this time, and I again apologize for the long wait in getting a new one.
Thanks again for reading the Signpost.
— Ral315
English Wikipedia reaches 1,000 Featured Articles
The English Wikipedia reached a milestone on Thursday this week when the 1,000th featured article was promoted. The promoted article was Iranian peoples, an article pertaining to the ethnic groups in several regions, including the Middle East and Central Asia.
A press release was issued by the Wikimedia Foundation when the article was promoted; because the number of featured articles had been steadily increasing toward one thousand, this milestone was already anticipated beforehand, with some Wikipedians even joking about creating a million-FA pool, similar to the "million article pool". At the beginning of the week, there were 997 featured articles, and two more — Stuyvesant High School and Football (soccer) — were promoted on Wednesday, bringing the total number one short of the thousand mark.
The Iranian peoples article had been nominated last Friday, 2 June, by Tombseye, one of two primary contributors to the article. He commented that the article had been "written with some extensive referencing" and that it had "withstood and evolved with various disputes... now resolved." The other primary contributor to the article was Khoikhoi. The article received mostly positive comments during the FAC. "[It was a] very informative article," commented Eupator, "[that] scrutinizes every aspect of the topic." However, there were also several suggestions on improvements, most of which were acted upon.
Featured articles must pass strict criteria to ensure that they are "well written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral, and stable". Since the inception of the program in January 2004, the number of featured articles has steadily risen. Although several observers have noted that the standards for a featured article have also gone up over time, leading to an increased number of removed featured articles, the number has never decreased in a significant amount of time. Wikipedia reached 500 featured articles in February 2005 (see archived story), and featured article director Raul654 has commented that the number of featured articles increases at approximately one article promotion per day.
Administrator desysopped after sockpuppeting incident
NSLE had his administrative powers revoked on Saturday, after the Arbitration Committee determined he had abused his powers by unprotecting an article, then editing it with a sockpuppet account.
Arbitrator Kat Walsh (Mindspillage) stated in a posting on the administrators' noticeboard, which was also attested to by five other arbitrators:
- The Arbitration Committee has been made aware of very strong (but necessarily privileged) evidence that NSLE abused his sysop privileges in unprotecting an article which he then used a sockpuppet to edit, and we believe that these actions were done under the direction of a permanently-banned user. Despite repeated pleas over many weeks from the Committee for some benign reasoning of the evidence, no such satisfactory explanation was forthcoming.
As a result, NSLE was desysopped, and is not permitted to seek administrative powers again without the permission of the Committee.
No other information was given in the case, with arbitrators and other users involved in the case stressing that the evidence, while damning, was kept private for reasons of deterrence, and per NSLE's request.
NSLE noted that his stand was always that of innocence, though he understood the Arbitration Committee's decision. [1] NSLE also posted in the discussion:
- Thanks for your support, everyone, I've previously discussed this extensively with Jimbo and understand the actions of the ArbCom. I'll continue to be in discussion over this with Jimbo, but for the meantime please just treat this as a blip in the road, and please, for my sake, drop the matter.
In its initial post, the Committee thanked Greg Maxwell and Kelly Martin for their involvement in dealing with the situation. Neither user made any public comment on the issue. As a result of the decision, NSLE becomes the tenth user to lose his adminship involuntarily, and the seventh such user since November 2005.
NSLE later left a note on his talk page, noting that he was on "extended wikibreak," staying only to make minor edits to his favorite articles.
Featured speakers at Wikimania
Wikimania recap
28 August 2006
Wikimania recap
14 August 2006
Wikimania recap
7 August 2006
Wikimania last-minute information
31 July 2006
Events: Contests, parties, and the local area
24 July 2006
Wikimania updates
17 July 2006
Wikimania updates
10 July 2006
Meetups And Newsworthy International Assemblages
3 July 2006
More featured speakers at Wikimania
26 June 2006
Hacking Days
19 June 2006
Featured Speakers at Wikimania
12 June 2006
Other international meetups
5 June 2006
About Wikimania
29 May 2006
About Wikimania
22 May 2006
About Wikimania
15 May 2006
About Wikimania
8 May 2006
About Wikimania
1 May 2006
About Wikimania
24 April 2006
Three years of meetups : 2003-2006
17 April 2006
Introduction to a series: Looking forward to Wikimania 2006
10 April 2006
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Wikimania recap |
This week, the Signpost takes a look at some of the speakers who will be at this year’s Wikimania conference.
Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Stanford University, founder of the Creative Commons, and board member of the Free Software Foundation. He is also the author of the book Free Culture and is associated with the movement of the same name. He will be speaking on Friday, 4 August, about open licensing, giving us his insight on new models of licensing as applied to collaborative projects.
Jim Giles
Jim Giles is a news and features editor for Nature magazine, and author of the much-discussed Nature News article which compared some of the scientific content of Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, and found that the two encyclopedias were comparable in accuracy [2]. Giles will be speaking about the article and about content analysis of Wikipedia.
Karen Christensen, Paul Kobasa
Karen Christensen is CEO of the Berkshire Publishing Group, a publisher of reference works, and experienced international editor and publisher; and Paul Kobasa is editor-in-chief of World Book Encyclopedia, Inc. They will be speaking about traditional encyclopedia editing practices, and what traditional encyclopedias and Wikipedia can learn from each other.
Paul Ginsparg
Paul Ginsparg is founder of the free physics preprint collection arXiv.org, and professor at Cornell University. arXiv.org has developed into one of the largest preprint collections in the world and is a significant repository of works in physics, mathematics and computer science. It does not use peer review, but rather an endorsement system for contributors. Ginsparg will be speaking about information uncertainty and authenticity, and what academic publishing and Wikipedia can learn from each other. He also promises a detour through the world of Jorge Luis Borges.
Wikimedia luminaries
Several notable people from Wikimedia projects will be speaking as well, including a keynote by Jimbo; Anthere on the history of the Wikimedia Foundation; Angela leading a discussion of cross-wiki features and policies; and Soufron on copyright topics, leading a workshop on copyright as applied to Wikimedia, and speaking to Wikimedia legal issues at large.
The full schedule of presenters and topics will be available soon on the Wikimania site. Registration is now open; please be sure to register early if you want to sign up for the discounted accommodation on site.
Next week, the Signpost will take a look at Hacking Days and other events planned for the week of Wikimania 2006.
News and notes
Two resolutions passed
The Wikimedia Foundation passed two resolutions this week. The first resolution defines the scope of the special projects committee, and the second resolution authorizes the creation of a fundraising committee. The fundraising committee will be organized by Daniel Mayer (Maveric149, also known as Mav), the current Chief Financial Officer of the Foundation.
World Cup brings debate
The World Cup brought debate and controversy to the "In the news" section of the Main Page this week. The discussion centered around whether Wikipedia should place updated scores from the monthlong competition, which draws significant worldwide attention, on the Main Page. Previous sporting events, including the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, had been featured with updated scores and/or medal counts, with a distinguishable section placed below the other entries on the template. The question of whether other less-global sport events, such as the ongoing Stanley Cup Finals and NBA Finals, merit updated scores or even a mention on the page was also discussed. As of press time, "In the news" did not have updated scores but had an item mentioning the games with a link to Portal:Association football, which contains the scores.
Language select starts at Meta
Language select was implemented using JavaScript in meta this week. The script allows users to select their preferred language(s) and then narrowing down multilingual templates, pages, and articles to only the languages chosen. For example, the stub template prior to language select contained 20 languages and lines; the new script makes the template only display the languages selected.
Wikipedian dies
The death of a Wikipedian was noted this week. Gérald Anfossi (Nataraja) was an active contributor on the French Wikipedia, where he was an administrator, as well as on Commons and on the English Wikipedia. Known for his contributions to Indian and South Asian-related articles, as well as inter-wiki work, Anfossi succumbed to cancer in mid-March and was buried in India.
Project and logo proposals
Incubator, a proposed project where new projects or new languages "can be arranged, written, tested and proven worth for being hosted by Wikimedia", was started this week. The project is also looking for a logo. In addition, a proposal to change the current Wiktionary logo was also initiated. Finally, Wikicitizens, a forum where people could discuss current events, ideas, and viewpoints, was also proposed this week.
Briefly
- The Bengali Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
- The Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
- The Piedmontese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Northern Sami Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Uyghur Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
- The French Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.
- The Spanish Wiktionary has reached 8,000 entries.
- The Latvian Wikipedia has reached 1,000 registered users.
- The Indonesian Wiktionary has reached 10,000 entries.
- The Japanese Wikinews has reached 1,000 published articles.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
- The Quechua Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
- The Thai Wikipedia has reached 6,000 registered users.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 40,000 pages.
- The Chinese Wikisource has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Sicilian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 100,000 total pages.
- The Greek Wiktionary has reached 30,000 entries.
- The Romani Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
- The Thai Wikipedia has reached 12,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 2,000 registered users.
- The Russian Wikipedia has reached 85,000 articles.
- The Norwegian Wikipedia has reached one million edits.
- The English Wiktionary has reached 150,000 entries.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 45,000 articles and 500,000 edits.
- The Greek Wiktionary has reached 100 registered users.
In the news
Seattle Times column
On 3 June 2006, Linda Knapp, a columnist for the Seattle Times, described her first encounter with Wikipedia. She states in the article that she has now gone from a skeptic to an uneasy believer. She describes her journey through the category system, listing specific articles, and also describes some of Wikipedia's processes and policies. Ultimately, she winds up liking the site, and asks her readers for their responses. The article is freely available online, without a subscription.
Discover analyzes evolution
The July issue of Discover (already done by the beginning of June) sports a map of "evolution evolving" on page 21. Indeed, it is a history chart produced by IBM's Watson Research Center of all the different versions of evolution up to October 2005. It looks like a bar graph, upside down, with hundreds of paper thin bars squashed together next to each other. There are black lines, breaking the flow of the graph, indicating emptiness where the page was vandalized. The magazine lists six important moments in the history of the page (omitting that the article became a Featured article on 30 January 2006, although the graph is older than that). The article gives special mention to Dmerrill, Graft, and Jlefler.
Discover does not have nearly as much sway as Science or Nature. Nevertheless, it correctly states that Wikipedia has over 1 million entries, about half of all vandalism is reverted in five minutes, and that Wikipedia is "the Internet encyclopedia that anyone can edit". It also touched on Neutral point of view, though did not clearly state that it was a policy.
Newsweek names Wikipedia as a way to "Recharge America"
An article titled "15 Ideas to Recharge America" by Paul Saffo (Wikipedia advocate and Director of Institute for the Future) appeared in the 12 June 2006 issue of Newsweek. Saffo named Wikipedia as one way to invigorate the United States by focusing on a "New Age of Creators."
Features and admins
Administrators
Seven users were granted admin status last week: Staxringold (nom), Richardcavell (nom), Philip Baird Shearer (nom), Ben W Bell (nom), Kukini (nom), Ganeshk (nom) and Gurch (nom).
Featured content
Eight articles were featured last week: Stuyvesant High School (nom), Football (soccer) (nom), Iranian peoples (nom), Battle of Midway (nom), Watchmen (nom), Binary star (nom), Dog Day Afternoon (nom) and Torchic (nom). The promotion of Iranian peoples brought the list of Wikipedia:Featured articles up to 1,000 articles (see related story).
One article was de-featured last week: Breastfeeding.
Four lists reached featured list status last week: List of New Jersey hurricanes, List of Anuran families, List of Fullmetal Alchemist episodes and List of The Simpsons episodes.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: Keratoconus, Krazy Kat, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, FIFA World Cup, USS Wisconsin (BB-64), Red vs Blue and Søren Kierkegaard.
These were the pictures of the day last week: Radiolarians, Mushroom, Nevado Alpamayo, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Euro, Grand Central Terminal and Hanko, Finland.
Ten pictures reached featured picture status last week:
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Information about recent software changes was not provided as of press time.
Last week in servers
- Japanese Wikipedia database dump stalled in infinite loop, restarted.
- Job queue speed changed to allow for faster clearing on the English Wikipedia.
- Hemlock, a new login services Toolserver, was installed
- clematis tested, failed with Squid 2.6.
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee closed two cases this week.
Sam Spade
A case brought against Sam Spade was closed on Thursday. As a result, Sam Spade was placed on indefinite probation, and cautioned to avoid assuming bad faith. Sam Spade, who says he "[edits] controversial topics almost exclusively", was found to have edit-warred on numerous articles, including God, Human, and Socialism. Sam Spade has not edited an article since 17 May.
DarrenRay, 2006BC
A case brought against DarrenRay and 2006BC was closed on Saturday. As a result, DarrenRay, 2006BC and AChan were all banned indefinitely from editing Dean McVeigh, Melbourne University student organisations, University of Melbourne Student Union, and related articles. The dispute centered on the controversial liquidation of the Student Union after the Union fell into debt. The users involved were also involved in the liquidation, and were involved in point of view editing on the articles.
Other cases
A case was accepted this week involving Raphael1 (user page).
Other cases involving a request to unblock Saladin1970 (user page) and editors on Francis Schuckardt are also in the evidence phase.
Cases involving a naming dispute on U.S. highway articles, a request to unblock Blu Aardvark (user page), editors on the article 2004 U.S. presidential election controversy and irregularities, Deathrocker (user page), Infinity0 (user page), PoolGuy (user page), and editors on Biological psychiatry are in the voting phase.
A motion to close is on the table in the case involving Locke Cole (user page).
A motion to restrict StrangerInParadise to one user account was officially approved, with seven supporting users and no opposition.