Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2007-04-23
Administrator goes rogue, is blocked
Robdurbar's admin-enabled account went on a brief rampage on Thursday morning, deleting and then vandalising the Main Page, deleting articles, and indefinitely blocking well-known Wikipedians including Jimbo Wales. Editors could not remember another time when an admin went on a vandalism spree, and a debate opened over whether the response (an emergency desysopping after 17 minutes) was speedy or delayed.
Background
Robdurbar created his account on 6 July, 2005 and was granted admin status after a request which concluded with 48 supports and 3 opposes (2 neutral) on 12 August, 2006. On 3 March this year he announced he was leaving, although he would continue to edit occasionally. He declared that "I'd rather start anew" rather than use his existing account for future edits. Other than blocking himself as an accident, his block log was clean.
Vandalism
On Thursday 19 April, Robdurbar returned, firstly to delete an empty article. The vandalism spree began when he unprotected Cheese at 09:57. He then deleted three established articles before deleting the Main Page at 10:01. At 10:04 he recreated Main Page with a nonsense word. When Riana reverted at 10:07, Robdurbar again vandalised the page to say "DO what you will". He was blocked by Lostintherush and then started blocking accounts in good standing, including Lostintherush and Riana, and then unblocked himself to again vandalise the Main Page with the message "how long can i keep this up". After further blocks, at 10:14 Steward Jon Harald Søby (flagged down first by Peter Isotalo) desysopped him via Meta-Wiki.
The overall toll of the 17 minutes was ten good standing accounts given indefinite blocks, five established articles deleted, the Main Page deleted three times (and left unprotected for some minutes during which anonymous users vandalised it), and Robdurbar unblocking himself three times. All vandalism and inappropriate admin actions were swiftly reversed.
Aftermath
With Robdurbar not giving an explanation for his actions, some users wondered whether his account had been hijacked. In response to a request, Checkuser Mackensen said "I see nothing obvious to suggest that the account was compromised", and others noted that among the targets for Robdurbar's blocks were people he has had disputes with. A Request for arbitration to confirm the desysopping was filed and attracted six arbitrators who all agreed to the desysop without hearing a full case. Arbitration Committee Clerks decided that a majority of active arbitrators (which would mean seven) would be needed to decide the issue.
Later, contributors from Wiktionary commented that a similar situation had happened on that project when Wonderfool twice blocked all admins and deleted their Main Page in September 2005. In August 2006, Dangherous went on an identical rampage. On this second occasion, with Stewards unavailable (some were at Wikimania), a developer had to perform the desysopping and revealed via CheckUser that Dangherous was actually a sockpuppet of Wonderfool who worked his way up to adminship once again. A second request for CheckUser tried to find whether Wonderfool was related to Robdurbar, and has shown that Robdurbar is really one of Wonderfool's sockpuppets.
Possible changes
In discussion on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents, Carcharoth asked "is it good or bad that it took 17 minutes to deal with this?" HighInBC commented that the incident showed the "whole emergency de-adminning system works". Robdurbar's actions led to discussion of whether administrators should retain the ability to unblock themselves. Jesse Viviano made a novel suggestion that admins should be able to sacrifice their own sysop status and desysop another admin, in order to allow for debate on which of them should be resysopped.
Wales unblocks Brandt, then reverses himself
In a surprising development, one of Wikipedia's most persistent critics was briefly unblocked last week and allowed to edit alongside other contributors, primarily to comment on the talk page of the article about himself. With the intervention of Jimbo Wales, this change of affairs held up for a few days amid controversy, until Wales reversed the action after his decision was called a mistake by the critic himself.
The critic in question is Daniel Brandt, who for more than a year has been pointing to various flaws he perceives in Wikipedia, ranging from plagiarism to the anonymity of editors. Originally focused on attempts to get the article about himself deleted, Brandt later played a role in the Seigenthaler incident and began criticizing Wikipedia on many points. His critiques of anonymity found expression in galleries of Wikipedia editors posted to his Wikipedia-Watch website, including the purported real names of many pseudonymous editors along with photographs and hometowns.
Brandt edited with the account User:Daniel Brandt as early as October 2005, not long after the article about him was first created. This account had been blocked indefinitely since April 2006, after some previous blocks of shorter duration. Brandt occasionally edited from IP addresses thereafter, either in connection with his ongoing criticism of Wikipedia generally, or to raise complaints specifically about his Wikipedia article. He was unblocked on 18 April, 2007, although apparently some technical issues made unblocking difficult and it took a few hours to sort out before Brandt could edit normally. In explaining the unblocking, Wales said "he asked nicely, we are talking about a productive way forward in the future, it has been more than a year".
The discussion between Wales and Brandt had arisen after Brandt sought to have his block lifted, first by making a request to the Arbitration Committee, and then appealing to Wales. A number of editors strongly opposed the unblocking, charging that Brandt was responsible for "outing" and harassment in publishing the Wikipedia-Watch galleries and other information identifying editors. Meanwhile, a number of other people supported or at least accepted Wales's decision. Only a few days before, a discussion on the community sanction noticeboard had largely favored a "community ban".
Brandt, meanwhile, did make a few edits to Talk:Daniel Brandt, but wrote to the mailing list criticizing Wales for not deleting the article and saying, "I feel that Jimmy Wales made the wrong decision when he unbanned me a couple of days ago." Responding to this comment, Wales then reblocked Brandt's account.
The outcome left things much like they were a year-and-a-half ago, except for the fact that the article Brandt wants deleted has grown considerably in length. One of Brandt's earliest edits, in debating with SlimVirgin (who had created the initial article about him), said, "Please ban me. I didn't want to be here in the first place."
Historian detained after his Wikipedia article is vandalized
Editor's note: The Wikipedia Signpost is an independent, community newspaper, and is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation. Any comments published on this page are the opinions of their author alone, and do not reflect the opinion of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Turkish historian, sociologist, author and professor Taner Akçam was detained for nearly four hours at Trudeau International Airport in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in February. The reported reason, according to Canadian authorities: a vandalized Wikipedia entry that claimed that Akçam was a terrorist.
Akçam's biography has been one of the loci of dispute in an ongoing dispute over the Armenian Genocide. The 1915 genocide, an attempt by the Turkish government to eliminate all Turkish Armenians, resulted in the deaths of anywhere from 300,000 to 1.5 million Armenians. Akçam is one of the few Turkish historians to publicly acknowledge and discuss the Genocide, a position which has made him a source of controversy within the Turkish and Turkish-American communities.
On 16 February, 2007, Akçam flew from Minneapolis to Montreal, for a lecture sponsored by McGill University and Concordia University. Upon landing in Montreal, he was detained by Canadian authorities, as detailed in an 21 April article in The Independent:
The Canadian immigration officer, Akcam says, was "courteous" - but promptly detained him at Montreal's Trudeau airport. Even odder, the Canadian immigration officer asked him why he needed to be detained. ... Akcam was given a one-week visa and the Canadian officer showed him - at Akcam's insistence - a piece of paper which was the obvious reason for his temporary detention. "I recognised the page at once," Akcam says. "The photo was a still from a 2005 documentary on the Armenian genocide... The still photo and the text beneath it comprised my biography in the English language edition of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which anyone in the world can modify at any time. For the last year ... my Wikipedia biography has been persistently vandalised by anonymous 'contributors' intent on labelling me as a terrorist. The same allegations has been repeatedly scrawled, like gangland graffiti, as 'customer reviews' of my books at Amazon."[1]
Akçam, citing the unlikely possibility of the Canadian government finding a two-month-old, reverted copy of his Wikipedia biography, suggested that enemies may have forwarded a copy to the Canada Border Services Agency: "It was unlikely, to say the least, that a Canadian immigration officer found out that I was coming to Montreal, took the sole initiative to research my identity on the internet, discovered the archived version of my Wikipedia biography, printed it out on 16 February, and showed it to me - voilà! - as a result."[1] Upon again arriving at Trudeau International Airport on 18 February to return to the University of Minnesota, Akçam was again detained, this time by the United States Department of Homeland Security. He was allowed to leave after waiting an hour, but was cautioned not to travel until the situation was sorted out with customs.
The story was first reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune on 21 February, but received little attention (the original article is not available online, but excerpts are available here). The story was publicized by professor Juan Cole in a 14 April blog entry. On 15 April, DragonflySixtyseven semi-protected the article; the protection was removed by Omegatron on 22 April, and re-added by Ral315 on 24 April.
It is believed that the original vandalism was introduced by Ahmetcoxall in a series of edits around 24 December, 2006; all of Ahmetcoxall's edits were reverted in 10 hours or less. The edits, since deleted, claimed that Akçam was "a member of an extreme leftist terrorist organization". Ahmetcoxall was blocked indefinitely by Eloquence on 23 April, nearly four months after his last edit.
Reference
- ^ a b Fisk, Robert. Robert Fisk: Caught in the deadly web of the internet, The Independent, 21 April 2007
Efforts to reform Requests for Adminship spark animated discussion
In the last two weeks, several discussions and experiments to reform the requests for adminship process have occurred. In the standard RFA process, users discuss a candidacy by commenting in three separate sections: "Support", "Oppose", and "Neutral." Bureaucrats usually promote candidates with more than 80% support and reject candidates with less than 75% support. Many users have objected to this format because it resembles a vote, and Wikipedia is not a democracy.
Temporary removal of vote tallies
To mitigate the appearance of voting, Thebainer removed the vote tally from the RFA subpages. (For example, the vote tally of 46/0/0 at Thebainer's own RFA indicates 46 unanimous votes to support.) He explained: "The key reason why the tallies at the top are a bad idea is that, as the first thing anyone sees when they come to an RfA, they will undoubtedly have a psychological impact on that person when they come to voice their opinion, conscious or no."[1] He added that users could still find the vote tally manually or by looking up the bureaucrats' noticeboard. The tallies have since been restored.
Experimental RFA formats
Moralis
In a bolder move, Durin reformatted two RFAs with permission of the candidates involved. First, he removed the "Support", "Oppose" and "Neutral" sections from Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Moralis shortly after the discussion opened. Instead, users wrote their comments roughly in chronological order, similar to the standard procedure in deletion debates. This resulted in a lengthy hodgepodge of various opinions.
Moralis's RFA failed with no consensus; supporting and opposing comments were roughly even in number. Much of the opposition focused on lack of experience because Moralis had made fewer than 1,000 edits.
In closing the discussion, Warofdreams explained:
In general, I found that the new format wasn't particularly helpful in determining consensus. On the plus side, it did encourage users to explain their reasons for support or objection, but on the negative side, it led to a large number of comments mixed throughout the discussion repeating issues which had appeared earlier. This made it far more time-consuming than an ordinary RfA to determine which issues had been raised and how many users felt that these were serious concerns.[2]
Matt Britt
Second, and more drastically, Durin created a new style of RFA for Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Matt Britt, modeled after the requests for comment process. Users could not vote on Matt Britt's candidacy as a whole. Instead, separate discussions were created to focus on individual aspects of the candidacy. Some propositions were uncontroversial ("Nominee appears to be trustworthy", "Demonstrated need for tools"). However, the candidate's level of experience with deletions inspired no fewer than four sections of discussion ("Nominee has no experience with XFDs", "Nominee has little experience with XFDs", "Nominee has little experience with XFDs but this doesn't seem to be much of a problem", "Nominee's experience with XFD/DRV is not sufficient to promote"). Two other sections were devoted to Matt Britt's usage of edit summaries.
The unorthodox format generated much consternation within the community. Many users supported the proposition that "This method of RFA is so confusing that I am unable to participate." For example, Black Falcon complained, "It's impossible for me to participate within this format in a manner that will actually reflect my view of the candidate. If I were to try, it'd come out to endorsing 5 views and opposing 5 others. Yet, my comments would be a product of the way the views were worded rather than my actual opinion on the candidate." GRBerry added, "While not prevented from participating, the format makes it much more difficult to participate. It also makes it much harder to determine whether the community believes that the candidate should be promoted. As an experiment, it has proven that this format is a really really bad idea, and should be discarded from further consideration." Feydey quipped, "When a simple Rfa gets to the size of a small novel I know which I prefer to read. And good luck to the closing bureaucrat."[3]
Despite the criticism, Durin defended the need to experiment with new methods. He wrote,
- ...come on, it's just an experiment. There's no damage to the project being caused by this. For far too long, RfA has wallowed in a complete inability to come to any agreement on whether RfA is broken or not, whether we should reform it or not, what that reform would entail if anything...The amount of discourse on these subjects could fill a small library. It's really rather absurd.
- So, I got tired of hashing these endless debates out. Instead, I decided to DO something about it and actually try doing something different for a change. Unless someone can show me how these experiments constitute some threat to the project (especially a threat that's worse than the normal, already damaging RfA formats), then I intend on trying others if I can find willing guinea pigs.
- In the very least, you have to acknowledge these experiments are fostering a considerable amount of discussion on actual attempts at reform rather than theoretical notions of how something might work.[4]
Kim Bruning humorously supported Durin's controversial experiment. He wrote, "RFA can use some spring cleaning. And besides, isn't this fun? :-)"[5]
Dan declined to promote Matt Britt. He explained:
I have closed Matt Britt's request as unsuccessful because the community appears far from convinced of the validity of this format. I am sorry to Matt, who I suggest should run again under the regular format until such a time as consensus favors the new format -- which, while intriguing, certainly has its issues. My mandate as a bureaucrat permits me to promote administrators under very specific circumstances; with so many users objecting to the very premise of this request, I cannot in good faith promote Matt. I have, however, studied the request in an attempt to reason out how I would evaluate the request, were the format accepted as valid; I believe I would have promoted him. If this format, or some revised version thereof, ever gains the community's acceptance (and I think it has much promise), I will start dialogue among the bureaucrats to decide on a standard way to evaluate these requests.[6]
Centralized discussion
In a related development, a centralized discussion on RFA reform has garnered 23 proposals and numerous comments. This follows after a survey on adminship from February 2007. The discussions are currently active, and none of the proposals has reached consensus yet.
Citations
Canadian politician the subject of an edit war
Best known for its potatoes and Anne of Green Gables, Canada's smallest province is also home to the longest serving First Minister in the country, Premier Pat Binns of the Progressive Conservative party. Binns’ Wikipedia article was the subject of national print and online coverage, as well as regional radio and television stories, after a liberal versus conservative editing spat arose.
On 12 April, a reporter from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s state-owned broadcaster, contacted admin and press contact Nick Moreau (known as Zanimum), inquiring whether political views are normal or encouraged on Wikipedia, pointing to the article on Premier Binns. Moreau quickly replied to the reporter from CBC Radio One Charlottetown (PEI’s capital city), and checked the page, to see what was the matter.
Until mid-March, Premier Binns’ article was of fairly good length and had a neutral point of view (NPOV), albeit with no references. The situation started when an anonymous user—who decided the article was perhaps too balanced, and not portraying the well-liked Premier in a good light—began editing Premier Binns’ originally NPOV article. Other than a complete lack of references, it was fairly clean, if, perhaps, unexciting prose. It included a photo of Binns, acquired through Moreau who convinced a Flickr user to “free” their creative work. Another anonymous user began cleaning up the less stellar points in his tenure, making the article sound as positive as one would expect from campaign literature.
This attracted the attention of Stephen Pate, a disability rights activist from the province. According to sources, Pate regularly pickets the PEI legislature regarding the issue, as well as running a blog on the topic. Not a fan of Binns' disability policies, Pate decided to revert the article, and add his own content focusing on disability rights. The paragraph included promotion for the Disability Alert blog, labeled as an advocacy organization representing 19,000 people. Pate has since refused to offer the media any membership list, to prove any such organization even exists beyond his PC.
The decision to not only revert, but add an extra helping of criticism angered the anonymous user, who again whitewashed the article. This process repeated itself a number of times, until it degenerated into pranks and name-calling. The Conservatives started to add paragraphs solely knocking Pate, while Pate chose to blank the entire article, with exception of the introduction and criticism sections. He also deleted Binns from an information box template of Canadian premiers. This despite later saying, “to just delete [parts of an article] is very unprofessional.”[1]
During this process, established Wikipedians would occasionally step in with the revert button. None, however, realized that all-out intervention was needed, no one seeing how both sides displayed childish behaviour for weeks on end.
CBC radio, TV, and online coverage
With an election impending in PEI, CBC found the article, and discussed the editing process with Moreau by email, and with Wikimedia Foundation Communications Manager Sandra Ordonez by telephone. Premier Binns was interviewed by the station, as was the activist, Pate.
Nelson Hagerman, the husband of PEI's Lieutenant Governor, Barbara Oliver Hagerman, was dragged into the story, after Pate stated that he might be the anon. Hagerman said that he’d never even heard of Wikipedia, let alone engaged in editing it. The interview didn’t make air on the CBC.
The 10-minute story, as told by Barb McKenna, was used both on 17 April on Island Morning, a PEI-only show, and Maritime Noon, heard also in the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. CBC PEI and CBC Manitoba’s news pages both posted an abbreviated story. Later that evening, a CBC-TV story by reporter Sophia Harris played on CBC Compass, the nightly news program in the province.
For his part, Binns commented, "I live in a public domain, I understand all that; the unfortunate part about it is, someone who's not familiar with Wikipedia ... they would think it's gospel, but it's not."
The initial radio coverage only added to the situation, as a new anon editing the article to suggest Binns was taking bribes to pass laws.
Story spreads west
A writer for the Canwest News Service picked up on the story, publishing in it in the National Post, the Charlottetown Guardian, the Windsor Star (in Ontario), the Montreal Gazette (in Quebec), and on Canada.com. By this time, the Progressive Conservative party had placed the blame on “a pair of computer-literate, overzealous PC Youth members who took it upon themselves to write nice things about Binns.”
Moving on
Semi-protection of the article, which was implemented on Thursday, was done indefinitely; it is expected to soon be removed. Pate has agreed to back off from the article. Moreau has created Disability rights in Prince Edward Island for Pate, but the advocate has yet to edit the separate article he is free to expand, without exposing a biography of a living person to undue weight. Binns is a current candidate for the Article Creation and Improvement Drive.
Activists could use Pate’s tactics to their advantage in the future; by commencing an edit war in an unfrequented corner of Wikipedia. Such activists would not seek any form of mediation from administrators, then pointing the media to the edit war, get a national audience of thousands for their cause. As commented on a message board, "if you are an attention seeking troublemaker who loves nothing more than to see his face on the t.v. and read about himself in the media - it helps your own cause."[2]
Around 1:00 MST on 23 April, Pate sent out a press release to an undetermined number of media outlets, pointing at recent anonymous edits to the article "Disability rights in Prince Edward Island". Whether this stirs up any more hub-bub is to be seen.
References
- ^ “Wikipedia new P.E.I. election battleground”
- ^ "Binns page on Wikipedia battle ground of guerrilla editing" (Press release). Charlottetown Guardian. 2007-04-18. Retrieved 2007-04-23.
Virginia Tech massacre articles rise to prominence
| “ | The Virigina [sic] Tech shooting incident occurred on April 16th, 2007. One person has been reported to be slain. | ” |
The article on the massacre that occurred last Monday in Blacksburg, Virginia had humble beginnings. It was created with the above 18 words by Taoster some two hours after the second shooting incident, and has since been edited nearly 7,500 times by more than 2,000 unique editors and is now more than 5,000 words long. Each revision has lasted for an average time of only 70 seconds.
In less than one week, it rose to the #2 article position on the top 100 list according to WikiCharts (effectively #1, since the top position belongs to the main page). When the flurry of edits began, it was requested that the article remain unprotected because it is linked to as a news item on the main page. Administrators found a compromise to the consistent vandalism by semi-protecting the article in short segments of roughly 3 hours, hoping to thwart off casual vandals. It has since been semi-protected 12 times, a status under which it remains as of press time. Natalie Erin and Kizor have led the way; the former editing the page more than 170 times since its conception. The two, as well as Swatjester, also figured in a New York Times story covering the development of the article.
On the day of the incident, a timelapse video was created, quickly running through screenshots of the article's first twelve hours. It was uploaded to YouTube, where it has been viewed nearly 40,000 times. On Thursday, Dalejenkins nominated the Virginia Tech massacre article for featured status. However, the nomination was delisted by Michaelas10 7 hours later, after nearly 20 opposing comments that all cited a lack of stability.
The article on Virginia Tech itself has been semi-protected since Monday afternoon. Articles currently exist for three faculty victims of the massacre, though one is being reviewed after a decision was made to cut off discussion on its possible deletion. A fourth was deleted Sunday after exhaustive discussion. Also proposed for deletion are inaccurate media reports, a list of victims, and a navigational template. The article for Seung-Hui Cho, the man confirmed to be the shooter, has been edited nearly 2,500 times since TedFrank created it. It has been the target of a number of malicious edits, and remains semi-protected. There was also confusion over the article's title; as Korean names list the family name first, he may be known as Cho Seung-Hui and Seung Cho.
20 April, 2007 marked the eighth anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. The milestone, combined with the discovered connections between the two incidents, propelled the article to the fourth most-viewed for the month of April, behind Seung-Hui Cho. It is currently semi-protected; the new interest may have been detrimental, as the article is now under review to challenge its featured status, which it received in August of 2005.
Wikipedia enters China one disc at a time
With the website blocked in mainland China for over a year and a half, except for a brief interlude last year, it turns out that Wikipedia content is making its way into the country in other surprising forms. Andrew Lih reported seeing suspiciously familiar text gracing the packaging for DVDs of American television shows in Beijing.
In a blog entry posted Wednesday, Lih told how he had been browsing the selections of a Chinese DVD store, whose back-cover descriptions (in English) are notoriously poorly-written or belong to the wrong film entirely. He said one DVD, the box set for a season of Family Guy, caught his eye for its uncharacteristically fluent English. Sensing something familiar, Lih, who is working on a book about Wikipedia due out later this year, noticed some clues that prompted him to check the Wikipedia article for the show.
To verify his suspicions, Lih bought the box set even though he said he was "not terribly fond of the show." As it turns out, the text was in fact copied directly from the introductory paragraph of the Wikipedia article. Although the current version has changed somewhat since then, Lih was able to find a revision from 1 December 2006 that matched, posting the two excerpts for comparison on his blog.
Given the innocuous nature of the content, "importing" Wikipedia in this fashion obviously would not present any political concerns. Those issues are believed to be part of the reason Wikipedia is not generally accessible in the People's Republic of China. As printed text rather than an editable wiki, it would also have little relevance to efforts by the PRC government to control internet activity in the country.
Ironically, if this curious circumstance were to raise concerns anywhere, theoretically it should be among Western intellectual property rights holders. The DVD is undoubtedly an unauthorized copy, and Lih explained that legal movies are quite scarce in China. The legal version would often be prohibitively expensive to the average Chinese, leaving the market dominated by cheap knockoffs. This phenomenon, along with the fact that potential customers might be Western tourists as much as locals, explains the resort to low-cost English blurbs. As Lih put it: "Wikipedia: bringing information to pirated DVDs near you."
WikiWorld comic: "Buttered cat paradox"
WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential. The comic can now be found on cartoon site Humorous Maximus.
Cartoonist Greg Williams developed the WikiWorld project in cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation, and is releasing the comics under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
News and notes
Unreferenced biographies under scrutiny
After continued concerns about the dismal quality of certain unreferenced articles about living people, Messedrocker has compiled, through an analysis of article categories, a list of over 16,000 articles on living persons that do not completely cite their sources. The list is divided into 17 sub-pages; users are encouraged to review uncited statements, attempt to find sources or remove uncited, controversial statements, and correctly tag articles.
Wikipedia user studies continue
The WikiProject Vandalism studies recently finished its first study and has published its conclusions (a full and detailed copy can be found here).
The first study analyzed a randomly sampled pool of 100 random articles. Within these 100 articles there were a total of 668 edits during the months of November 2004, 2005, and 2006. Of those 668 edits, 31 (or 4.64%) were a vandalism of some type. The study's salient findings suggest that in a given month approximately 5% of edits are vandalism and 97% of that vandalism is done by anonymous editors. Obvious vandalism is the vast majority of vandalism used. From the data gathered within this study it is also found that roughly 25% of vandalism reverting is done by anonymous editors and roughly 75% is done by wikipedians with user accounts. The mean average time vandalism reverting is 758.35 minutes (12.63 hours), a figure that may be skewed by outliers. The median time vandalism reverting is 14 minutes.
The planned second study is in a developmental stage; details relating to the study, which will involve a larger sample size, are being planned.
Meanwhile, one of the few user surveys of Wikipedians, conducted in 2005 and originally available only in German, was translated into English recently.
Briefly
- Jimbo Wales attended a wikimeetup on Monday, 23 April in Adelaide, South Australia and another one in Perth, Western Australia on Tuesday, 24 April. Upcoming wikimeetups include a Wednesday, April 25 meetup in Sydney, and a Friday, April 27 meetup in Melbourne. Jimbo is also expected to be in attendance at these meetups.
- Wii demolished a record for edits on a Main Page featured article on 18 April, with 667 edits over the 24 hours that it was linked to; the previous record belonged to The Lord of the Rings, which received 453 edits on 5 October, 2006.
- The Friulian Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 3,000 users.
- The French Wikinews has reached 1,000 users.
- The Korean Wikipedia has reached 36,000 articles.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 75,000 edits.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 9,000 articles.
- The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 9,000,000 edits.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 1,000,000 edits.
Wikipedia in the news
Wikipedia's reporting of the Virginia Tech massacre
The way Wikipedia covered the Virginia Tech shootings was examined in an article by Noam Cohen of the New York Times which was also syndicated to other newspapers. He found that there were contributions from 2,074 editors, in the 7 days following the event and that, the site created a polished, detailed article on the massacre, with more than 140 separate footnotes, as well as sidebars that profiled the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, and a timeline of the attacks. He noted that even The Roanoke Times, which is published near Blacksburg, Virginia, where the university is located, stated on Thursday that Wikipedia “has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event.” Cohen goes on to say how, in marked contrast to some recent criticism of its accuracy, Wikipedia had extended from its usual reference work role into an ever-updating and accurate news source. The same thing had happened in other similar critical events, like the Southeast Asian tsunami in 2004, and the London bombings in 2005.
- Cohen, Noam (April 23, 2007). "The Latest on Virginia Tech, From Wikipedia". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2007-04-22.
Future funding possibilities
Reuters published a report of an interview with Jimmy Wales in which he considers avenues for future funding streams for Wikipedia that avoid the use of advertising. It mentions plans for trivia games and quiz programs as possible income sources. Wales has since said that such measures were mentioned off the cuff. He also tried to get Reuters to remove the content from the article, saying these were far flung possibilities. Reuters issued two separate corrected versions of the story; the last said these possibilities had been "mulled" but that Wikipedia "has no plans" to pursue them.
- Roelf, Wendell (April 20, 2007). "Wikipedia founder mulls revenue options". Reuters. Retrieved 2007-04-23.
Features and admins
Administrators
Six users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Wrp103 (nom), Anthony Appleyard (nom), Shirahadasha (nom), Fishhead64 (nom), Walton_monarchist89 (nom), and TerriersFan (nom).
Featured content
17 articles were promoted to featured status last week: Halo 2 (nom), Holden VE Commodore (nom), Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell (nom), Shuttle-Mir Program (nom), Shahbag (nom), Adore (album) (nom), Josquin des Prez (nom), Reign in Blood (nom), Smells Like Teen Spirit (nom), Surfer Rosa (nom), What You Waiting For? (nom), Earth (nom), George V of the United Kingdom (nom), Battleship (nom), British anti-invasion preparations of World War II (nom), Thomas Crisp (nom), and Lochry's Defeat (nom).
1 article was de-featured last week: Seabiscuit (nom).
2 lists were promoted to featured status last week: List of Florida hurricanes (1975-1999) (nom) and New England Patriots seasons (nom).
2 portals were promoted to featured status this month: Portal:Cuba (nom), an Portal:Robotics (nom).
1 sound was promoted to featured status last week: .
1 featured sound was demoted last week: .
No topics were promoted to featured status this week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: United States Marine Corps, Wii, Charles Darwin, Yosemite National Park, City of Manchester Stadium, Dhaka, and The Waterboys. On April 18, Wii toppled the previous record for most revisions for the Featured Article of the Day with 667 edits. The previous record was set by The Lord of The Rings last October with 453 edits.
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Construction on the International Space Station, Red Tailed Hawk eating a vole, Lesser Brown Blowfly, Eastern Gray Squirrel, Wreckage of the RMS Titanic bow, Mars north pole, and The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist.
6 pictures were promoted to featured status last week:
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The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee opened four cases this week, and closed no cases.
New cases
- Paranormal: A case involving the actions of various users, especially as regards WP:NPOV and WP:ATT, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon.
- Transnistria: A case involving the actions of MariusM (talk · contribs) and William Mauco (talk · contribs) on Transnistria-related articles. MariusM alleges that Mauco (who has not made a statement because he is blocked) has engaged in sockpuppetry, edit warring and other misconduct.
- Tobias Conradi: A case involving the actions of Tobias Conradi (talk · contribs) [sic] who, while acknowledged as a productive contributer, many allege to have been incivil on various occasions.
- Zeq-Zero0000: A case involving the actions of Zeq (talk · contribs) and Zero0000 (talk · contribs). Zero alleges that Zeq has engaged in POV-pushing, while Zeq alleges that Zero has misused administrative tools in blocking him, the case in particular involving the question of whether probations, article bans, etc. can be enforced by involved admins.
Evidence phase
- E104421-Tajik: A case involving the actions of E104421 and Tajik. The case was opened, but a motion to suspend the case pending a referral to community-based mediation has the support of five arbitrators.
Voting phase
- Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram: A case involving the actions of Certified.Gangsta and Ideogram, both of whom Durova and others allege to have been involved in edit-warring on Taiwan-related articles. Ideogram, who has also been accused of improper behaviour on the community noticeboard, denies the allegations. Certified.Gangsta presented evidence, in which he alleges that Ideogram has engaged in canvassing, wikistalking, and orchestrating an anti-Certified.Gangsta campaign. He also denies Durova's allegiations. Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies placing both parties on revert parole, and admonishing Ideogram.
- Betacommand: A case involving the actions of Betacommand. Some of Betacommand's blocks have been questioned, and his bot-related actions have led to his removal from the bot approvals group. Betacommand has noted that he makes numerous username-related blocks, and that most of his blocks were appropriate. Whether Betacommand used his administrative account for bot-related activity, whether he is unique in doing so, and whether such an action should be allowed or not, have also been questioned. Paul August has proposed a remedy, with the support of four arbitrators, desysopping Betacommand; voting on other remedies is split.
- Mudaliar-Venki123: A case involving the actions of Mudaliar and Venki123 on a series of articles. Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies banning both parties for one year, with the support of three arbitrators.
- Freedom skies: A case involving the actions of Freedom skies. JFD and others allege that he has edit warred to push his point of view. He denies the allegations. A remedy to place Freedom skies on revert parole has the support of three arbitrators.
- Falun Gong: A case regarding the conduct of various editors on the Falun Gong article. Olaf Stephanos and Asdfg12345 allege that Samuel Luo has edit-warred in removing pro-Falun Gong material from the article, while Luo, Tomananda and others allege that Stephanos, Asdfg and others have edit-warred (including page blanking) in removing anti-Falun Gong material. A remedy placing Falun Gong on article probation has the support of five arbitrators; a series of other remedies placing various users on revert parole and/or banning them from Falun Gong and related articles and talk pages have been proposed, but voting on them is split.