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2010-02-08

Commons at 6 million, BLP taskforce, milestones and more

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By Phoebe and Belugaboy535136

Commons reaches 6 million, takes up new servers

Sailing on Ullswater—the 6 millionth file on Wikimedia Commons. Credit: James Hearton.

Commons hit six million files last week, with the mass upload of images from the Geograph website. Geograph is a site containing about 1.5 million CC-by-SA-2.0 licensed images of the British Isles. The Isles are divided into squares of 1 × 1 kilometre (0.62 × 0.62 mi), and the goal of the project is to get at least one photograph of every square. More than 250,000 of these images have been uploaded.

According to Mike Peel of Wikimedia-UK, one of these images—a picture of sailing on Ullswater in the Lake District—became the six-millionth file on Wikimedia Commons.

Photo of arches near Gloucester Cathedral from Geograph. Credit: Helena Downton

This milestone comes less than five months after Commons hit five million files. In response to this rapid growth, the storage space on Commons was recently tripled, according to a recent blog post by Erik Möller, deputy director of the WMF.

In the post, which discusses the "virtuous circle" in which cultural institutions upload freely licensed content to the Commons, Möller highlighted other recent large uploads of collections, and noted two toolserver scripts by Magnus Manske that track usage of Commons files: Glamorous, which tracks where files are used within the Wikimedia projects, and Amalglamate, which tracks comparative collection usage data over time (starting 12 January).

BLP taskforce begins

The Biographies of Living People taskforce starts work 8 February with part one, board recommendations and proposal. This will run for two months, with the second half on community focus, beginning in April. The project has a global focus, and encourages worldwide participation in discussion.

More information can be found on the Strategy wiki page.

April developer meetup

Another MediaWiki developer's meetup will be held in Berlin 14–16 April, just before the annual meeting of the chapters. Wikimedia Deutschland will again host the conference. According to the post, "all MediaWiki developers, Toolserver users, Gadget hackers, and other people interested in the technical side of Wikimedia projects" are welcome. Last year's developer meetup was also held in conjunction with the chapters' meeting.

Briefly

  • WikiCup report: According to WikiCup judge J Milburn (talk · contribs), we are halfway through Round I of the WikiCup 2010. About 64 of about 135 competitors have fewer than 50 points, so Milburn's advice is to get some "creative ideas to erase your writer's block" and to just go at it!
  • A new Facebook group celebrates the approach of one billion Wikimedia edits.
  • The Chapters Committee has issued a call for more members; applications are due 22 February.
  • River Tarnell has been contracted as the first paid sysadmin for the toolserver by Wikimedia Deutschland.
  • Wikimedia's discarded servers have been donated to three non-profit organizations: Drupal, Open Street Map, and Sugar Labs.

Milestones

The Lithuanian Wikipedia at 100,000 articles.
The Portuguese Wiktionary comemorative logo for reaching 100,000 articles in January.

This week in history

2010-02-08

Robson revisions, Rumble in the Knesset, and more

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By Draeco, Amir E. Aharoni, and Smallbones

Robson revisions

Australian television presenter Naomi Robson's manager Max Markson sparked a small edit war and press interest this week when he polished her article in anticipation of the launch of her online dating show. On 1 February, Mumbrella.com first connected several deletions in late January and February to User:Maxmarkson. Claiming that much content was "totally false and libelous", he removed copious unfavorable information, including the entire "Controversy" section and two-thirds of the article's citations (diff). User:Marksonsparks displayed similar behavior (diff) but was not named in the press. Markson expressed no remorse when Mumbrella contacted him for a follow-up article, saying "I'm doing my job", and clarifying elsewhere that that involves "being the good spin doctor and manager that I am". The article was temporarily protected for this and other unrelated IP vandalism.

Rumble in the Knesset

Several academics and Wikipedia contributors were invited to the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) on 2 February to mark the Hebrew Wikipedia's 100,000th article. Representatives of the Hebrew Wikipedia presented their achievements to the Science Committee of the Knesset. At the meeting there were also representatives of Creative Commons Israel, the Ministry of Education, and Israeli academics who use Wikipedia as an educational tool and improve its contents.

Committee chairman Meir Sheetrit was impressed by the possibilities of the Free Culture model and promised to draft a proposal to loosen the copyright restrictions on images, legal texts and educational materials produced by the Israeli government for the benefit of the public. A press release from the Israeli chapter of Wikimedia reported several supportive quotes from Sheetrit:

  • "This is an absurd! The fact that pictures taken by governmental organizations are not available for general use is horrifying."
  • "My dream was to seek that an encyclopedia in Hebrew shall be given to every child for free. In my days as the minister of education I worked to upload all books needed for school to the Internet. You are are fulfilling my dream, making information accessible for every child."
  • "I greatly appreciate your work and support your cause of continuing expanding Wikipedia and the freedom of knowledge."

The Jerusalem Post documented that the group received both praise and criticism, and lobbied for the Israeli government to release more images.

Briefly

  • McGill University attendees have formed "Students Supporting Wikipedia", a club dedicated to editing and fundraising with projects such as poker tournaments, bake sales, and donation boxes. According to an interview with Wikimedia spokesman Jay Walsh, it is likely to be the first Wikipedia campus club.
  • The Economic Times reported on 2 February that Wikipedia.in may open soon to increase penetration of the English Wikipedia in the large market of India.
  • Jimbo Wales was interviewed by Goldcoast.com.au on 6 February.
  • An excerpt of Jaron Lanier's book You Are Not a Gadget that focuses on Wikipedia, entitled "The Serfdom of Crowds" (requires subscription), appears in this month's issue of Harper's Magazine.
  • In an interview titled "Why Wikipedia beats Wikinews as a collaborative journalism project", Andrew Lih (User:Fuzheado, a journalism professor and author of "The Wikipedia Revolution") offered explanations for the fact that Wikinews "hasn’t grown as quickly" and has "very much a lower profile than Wikipedia".
  • Wikipedia was featured for a little over a second during Google's Super Bowl ad, which featured a French love story. Google's ad played during the third quarter, showing how a bi-continental love affair might play out with the help of Google searches. At one point, the search was for François Truffaut and yielded Wikipedia's article as No. 1 result. (At $3 million for a 30-second ad, this equates to $100,000 in free publicity for Wikipedia.)

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2010-02-08

Content reviewers crucial to setting standards

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By Dr pda
Related articles
Reviewing content


Content review processes such as Featured article candidates (FAC), Featured list candidates (FLC), Good article nominations (GAN) and Peer reviews (PR) are at the core of establishing and maintaining high standards for Wikipedia articles, and provide valuable feedback on how to achieve these standards. Reviewers in these processes tend to gain significant respect in the community for their work. Despite the prestige of the job, such reviewers are in short supply, and 2009 saw a reduction in reviewer participation by most measures.

Featured articles represent Wikipedia's best work, and achieve this status after a review open to the whole Wikipedia community. Editors can support the article's promotion if they believe it meets all the criteria, or oppose it by providing examples of instances where it does not. The featured article director or his delegates will promote an article if consensus in favour of promotion has been reached among the reviewers after a reasonable time.

In 2009, 522 articles were promoted to Featured article (FA) status, while 157 articles had featured status removed via the Featured article review (FAR) process. The net increase, 365 featured articles, is almost 40% down on the 2008 figure of 576.[1] This trend has been evident throughout 2009; the rate of promotion has slowed, because it is taking longer to get sufficient reviews for a given featured article candidate (FAC) to determine consensus to promote the article or not. The decline in reviewer activity has been noted several times throughout the past year on the talk page associated with the FAC process, and is backed up by an analysis of the figures.

Summary:
  • Annual increase in FAs down 37%
  • FAC reviews down 26%
  • FAC reviewers down 36%
  • FAC "nominators only" up 250%
  • FAR participants down 32%

In 2009 there were 991 FACs (522 successful, 469 unsuccessful), which attracted a total of 9,409 reviews. 1,434 editors were involved with the FAC process, of whom 224 were nominators only, 302 were both nominators and reviewers, and 908 were reviewers only. A successful FAC had, on average, reviews from 12 different people, while an unsuccessful FAC had reviews from 9. In 78% of all FACs, one of these reviewers was Ealdgyth who reviewed the sources used for reliability.[2] By contrast in 2008 there were 1,328 FACs (719 successful, 609 unsuccessful), which attracted a total of 12,743 reviews. 1,987 editors were involved with the FAC process, of whom 87 were nominators only, 258 were both nominators and reviewers, and 1,642 were reviewers only. A successful FAC had, on average, reviews from 11 different people, while an unsuccessful FAC reviews from 9. Once again Ealdgyth provided sterling service, commenting on reliability of sources for 66% of all 2008 FACs.[2]

Thus compared to 2008, there were 28% fewer people participating in the FAC process in 2009, which led to 26% fewer reviews. However there were in fact 35% fewer people providing reviews; the number of editors nominating an article but not reviewing others increased by a factor of 2.5, or 250%.

Articles can also lose featured status through the Featured article review process. Editors who believe an article no longer meets the featured article criteria can list it at FAR. Ideally one or more editors will take on the task of bringing it up to standard. The FAR process showed a similar decline in participation in 2009. Last year there were 219 FARs (157 demoted, 62 kept), and 767 editors participated in reviews. In 2008 there were 263 FARs (143 demoted, 120 kept), and 1129 editors participated. The number of editors participating thus dropped by 32% in 2009.[3]

Summary:
  • Annual increase in FLs down 38%
  • FLC participants down 23%
  • FLRC participants up 31%

Similar processes to FAC and FAR exist for primarily list-based content—featured list candidates (FLC) and featured list removal candidates (FLRC). In 2009, 500 lists were promoted to Featured list (FL) status, while 83 lists had featured status removed via the FLRC process. The net increase, 417 featured lists, is down compared to the 2008 value of 669.[4] In 2009 there were 574 reviewers and nominators, while in 2008 there were 743.[5]

FLRC bucked the trend, having 235 people involved in 114 reviews, compared to 179 in 72 reviews in 2008.[5] The increased number of lists having their featured status reviewed is possibly a consequence of the large growth of the featured list process in 2008.

Good articles

Summary:
  • Annual increase in GAs down 11%
  • GA participants down 25%

Good articles (GA) must meet a less stringent set of criteria than featured articles. The review process also differs—promotion to GA only requires a review from one editor who was not a significant contributor to the article. The number of Good articles (GA) increased by 2,151 over 2009. This is down 11% on the net increase of 2,416 in 2008. There are currently 8,104 Good articles, 1.8 times the number of featured articles and lists.[6] The total number of nominators and reviewers in this process is also down compared to 2008—1351 compared to 1809, a drop of 25%.[7]

A-Class review

Summary:
  • WP:MILHIST A-Class reviews up 40%
  • Number of WP:MILHIST ACR participants steady

On the Wikipedia 1.0 assessment scale there is a level between FA-Class and GA-Class—A-Class articles. An A-Class rating may be awarded by a WikiProject whose scope covers that article; the process is determined by each WikiProject. This contrasts with the centralised (i.e. not WikiProject-based) processes for Featured articles etc. A small number of WikiProjects have active formal A-Class review systems.[8] Of these half dozen A-Class review departments, that of the Military History WikiProject is the largest, processing 220 A-Class reviews in 2009. This is an increase on the 155 reviews processed in 2008, however the number of participants in the process (nominators plus reviewers) has remained steady; 144 in 2009, compared to 140 in 2008.[9]

Peer review

Summary:
  • PR reviewers down 37%
  • PR "nominators only" down 11%
  • Three editors provided 43% of 2009 reviews

Peer review (PR) differs from the previously discussed processes in that it does not result in the awarding of a particular status to the article; instead it is a means for editors to solicit suggestions for improving an article. Peer review is often recommended as a way of attracting the attention of previously uninvolved editors to spot problems which might not be apparent to those closer to the article. Once again this requires reviewers.

In 2009 a peer review was requested for 1,478 articles, resulting in 2,062 reviews. Of these, 891, or 43%, were carried out by just three editors—Ruhrfisch (343), Finetooth (332) and Brianboulton (216).[10] They were assisted by a further 730 reviewers making one or more review comments. A further 503 editors nominated articles for PR but did not review others.[11] Once again, these numbers are down on last year. In 2008, 2,090 articles had a peer review. For technical reasons the number of reviewers could only be determined for the period February to December;[12] in this period 1028 editors reviewed PRs and a further 499 nominated articles for PR and did not comment on others. In the corresponding period of 2009 the numbers are 645 (37% lower) and 449 (11% lower) respectively.[11]

How can I help?

Start reviewing articles! This previous Signpost article gives suggestions for how to go about it. Perhaps start off at Peer review where "you can literally leave one sentence and help improve an article."[13] To find out more about reviewing Good Articles, you can see Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles. You can even ask for a mentor. At places like FAC or FLC you could start off by checking the criteria (What is a featured article?, What is a featured list?), then reading other people's reviews to see what sort of things to look for. If you don't feel confident enough to support or oppose initially, you can leave a comment instead.

Notes

  1. ^ Source: Wikipedia:Featured article statistics.
  2. ^ a b These figures were obtained by counting the number of links to the User or User talk namespaces from editor's signatures on the individual FAC pages. Queries like this one to the Wikipedia API provided the data in an easy-to-parse form. The nominators usernames were obtained by parsing the HTML of the monthly archive pages (e.g. Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log/January 2009 or Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations/January 2009, and recording the usernames listed after the string "Nominator(s)".
  3. ^ These figures were obtained by counting the number of links to the User or User talk namespaces from editor's signatures on the individual FAR pages. Queries like this one to the Wikipedia API provided the data in an easy-to-parse form. This method probably overestimates the number of users involved, as it counts links to users who, as significant contributors to the article, were notified of the FAR.
  4. ^ Source: Template:Featured list log.
  5. ^ a b These figures were obtained by counting the number of links to the User or User talk namespaces from editor's signatures on the individual FLC or FLRC pages. Queries like this one to the Wikipedia API provided the data in an easy-to-parse form. The number of reviewers cannot be separated from the number of nominators, as was done in the FA case, because the nominators were not listed in a standardised form until February 2009.
  6. ^ Source: Wikipedia:Good articles.
  7. ^ Source: Revision history statistics of Wikipedia:Good article nominations.
  8. ^ Of the 1606 WikiProjects or task forces which have created categories to hold A-Class articles (Source: Category:A-Class articles), only 320 appear to use A-Class, i.e. currently have any A-Class articles. (Source: Wikipedia Release Version Tools). Only 28 have pages in Category:WikiProject A-Class Review, indicating a formal review mechanism. Looking at these pages individually shows that only the Aviation, Ships, Military history, U.S. Roads, and possibly the Tropical cyclones Wikiprojects had active A-class review departments in 2009.
  9. ^ These figures were obtained by counting the number of links to the User or User talk namespaces from editor's signatures on the individual ACR pages. Queries like this one to the Wikipedia API provided the data in an easy-to-parse form.
  10. ^ Source: Wikipedia talk:Peer review.
  11. ^ a b These figures were obtained by counting the number of links to the User or User talk namespaces from editor's signatures on the individual PR pages. Queries like this one to the Wikipedia API provided the data in an easy-to-parse form. The nominators' usernames were obtained by finding the creator of each individual peer review page (e.g. Wikipedia:Peer review/Gilbert Foliot/archive1) using API queries like this one.
  12. ^ The category January 2008 Peer Reviews does not exist.
  13. ^ User:Ruhrfisch at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-09-15/Dispatches.


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2010-02-08

WikiProject Olympics

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By Ks0stm

The Olympics WikiProject is one of the older WikiProjects, having been founded on 1 March 2002. The project has a large amount of content under its scope, with the modern Olympics having been held since 1896. In honor of the Vancouver Olympics that start 12 February, I asked Miller17CU94, Scorpion0422, Parutakupiu, and Andrwsc, all members of the project, to answer some questions about the project and their involvement in it.

Note: Special thanks to User:Kirill Lokshin, from whom I adapted several questions found in his interview of WikiProject Tropical Cyclones.

1. First, tell us a bit about yourself and your involvement in WikiProject Olympics.

2. When did you first join WikiProject Olympics? What are some of the challenges that the project has met since you joined, and how were they dealt with?

  • As mentioned in my earlier comments, I joined within a month of joining Wikipedia in June 2006. Some of the challenges I have seen have been standardizing the formats for Olympic athletes in medal tables, in combining this with the various World Championships such as the FIBT World Championships with bobsleigh and skeleton at the Winter Olympics as an example. Another issue has been finding valid sourcing on the athletes. At first we had databaseOlympics.com, but that only dealt with the medalists. In 2008, a lot of the users discovered sports-reference.com which covered all of the Olympic competitors from the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896 to the most recent Olympics in Beijing in 2008. It also includes the Winter Olympics. It has also forced some of the other websites like FIBT or the International Luge Federation to upgrade their athlete database to assist the growth of their sports interest. Main focus has been with event results and their standardization even though what might work in cross-country skiing may not work in gymnastics. Chris (talk) 14:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I joined the project in February 2007, and first few months, I really did nothing with the project. One of the most challenging tasks the project has faced has been adding complete results for every sport and nation article. It's a tedious task, and we have some fantastic users who have taken up the challenge. -- Scorpion0422 23:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I became a member on November 10, 2006, after realizing I was mainly editing articles and templates concerning the Olympics. When I first joined, the main challenge was the shortness of editors and a huge void content-wise, with lots of stub pages and even more to be created. Although this has improved greatly—thanks to the intensive and committed work of a select few editors—, there is still much to do in this area and the lack of editors is still an issue. Parutakupiu (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I joined the project in February 2006. I think the biggest challenges we've had are in ensuring uniform appearance across thousands of articles, and ensuring that nationalistic POV is avoided. We've managed to do this, despite having a regular turnover in active members, through consensus. We have consensus for simple things like article layout and category structure, and we have consensus for complex issues such as how to handle the presentation of the Olympic history of nations such as Germany, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. We have also demonstrated flexibility, so consensus does not mean rigidity. When someone new comes along with a good idea, we won't be afraid to embrace it and apply it project-wide. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

3. What aspects of the project do you consider to be particularly successful? Has the project developed any unusual innovations, or uniquely adopted any common approaches?

  • One of the innovations I have seen is the ability to use standardized templates for athletes and news articles for different sports where it is now common. Examples of this are from the International Ski Federation and the United States Olympic Committee. Other sites such as the FIBT and the International Luge Federation had their website format changed in the two years so it made sourcing the site difficult. User:Kolindigo assisted on this greatly and has been able to make sourcing of this easier and it was done last November. This has helped on a lot of bobsleigh, luge, and skeleton, especially on the Whistler Sliding Centre. Chris (talk) 14:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • If this WikiProject is where it is, it is thanks to the amazing work and dedication of its most faithful members. I have to highlight the role of User:Andrwsc, which managed the herculean task of creating thousands (yes, THOUSANDS) of standardized articles, and very useful and easy-to-use infobox and navigational templates. This radical expansion of the Olympics-related content was most beneficial to the WikiProject. This was already in action when I joined. One of the first things I gave (literally) to this project was a complete, freely-licensed set of Olympic sport pictograms, intended to be used without restrictions. The idea was that anyone in Wikipedia could use these free icons of sports, but I never imagined it would spread quickly throughout the whole Wikipedian landscape—I even had e-mails from sports event organizations and television channels asking me for permission to use these images! Another relevant contribution of mine was the major restyling of the project pages to its current look, attempting to give it a more professional and attractive appearance, and endowing it with useful sections and tools. As an example of a collective drive towards the project improvement, I underline the creation of a Manual of Style, specific for a category of Olympic pages, which gathered an interesting and motivated share of the membership with loads of ideas. Parutakupiu (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    (blush) thanks! — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think one thing that has worked well is that this project seems to embrace the ideas of WP:There is no deadline, WP:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built, and WP:Potential, not just current state. That is, we have a shared vision of where we want to be, with a complete and fully wikilinked set of articles for each Olympic sport, each participating nation, each individual event, and so on. Early on, we established the structure of that vision, with a set of stub articles (where missing) and infoboxes and navboxes to tie them all together. Many of those stubs have since been developed—and often by editors who aren't openly working for our WikiProject—so the house is starting to be finished around that frame. But it was important to get the frame in place first. I'm not sure how innovative that was, but is has certainly helped us. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

4. Have any major initiatives by the project ended unsuccessfully? What lessons have you learned from them?

  • I wouldn’t say unsuccessful, but it’s a fact that the WikiProject-based Peer Review department hasn’t had many requests, since its inception. Once again, I point the lack of editors, but also perhaps on the fact that not many users are acquainted with this option or find it extremely necessary. Parutakupiu (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think we've had any unsuccessful initiatives; I'd say the problem is a lack of initiatives in the first place. This project seems to have a somewhat temporal membership, with each Games bringing a lot of new editors and creativity to the project, but that fizzles afterwards. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

5. What experiences have you had with the WikiProjects whose scopes overlap with yours? Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?

  • We don't really have a "sister project", but there tends to be overlap with projects devoted to specific Olympic sports. For example, WP:HOCKEY (which I am also a member of). -- Scorpion0422 23:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • This project began as a subsidiary of the WikiProject Sports, but its steady growth made its "independence" logical and inevitable. Still, has it concerns every sport that is practiced in the Olympic Games, sometimes an ongoing editing of an article on a particular sport bumps into an issue that might need input from our and the sport-specific WikiProject. From what I can recall, so far we haven’t had the need to contact nor have we been contacted by other projects. Parutakupiu (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sometimes our results pages will overlap those of another project (football, tennis, ice hockey, figure skating, etc.) but for the most part, the Olympic pages still retain a closer link to other Olympic sports. In the end, all these projects seem to be working towards similar goals, so there is rarely any conflict. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

6. What plans does WikiProject Olympics have concerning the 2010 Winter Olympics?

  • Cover every event and every athlete competing in those events. It includes winners and previous champions so that you can see what the results in as close to real time as possible. Chris (talk) 14:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • We will try to keep the site as up to date as possible, though it will be challenging given the number of athlete and events articles that would need updating (I recently read an article relating to the 2004 Summer Olympics which kept referring to them in the future tense). The real fun is going to be updating the articles and bringing them up to standards while fighting off IP vandals and good faith users who think there is some kind of award for being first to update a page and just add things without caring about guidelines. Going a bit off-topic, another problem is nationalists and users who hate certain nations. Back during the 2008 Olympics, we had a public outcry because the 2008 Summer Olympics medal table used a lead image (Image:Michael Phelps Ryan Lochte Laszlo Cseh medals 2008 Olympics.jpg) that showed two Americans. It was the best one available at the time, but a number of users complained about it, saying it showed an American bias. Eventually it was replaced with the image that is currently used (after the Games ended, nobody ever brought the issue up again and the image was re-added to the page further down). That's the kind of stuff we have to look forward to, so it should be interesting. -- Scorpion0422 23:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The project members will do their best to create, maintain and update articles concerning the upcoming Winter Olympics. One of the most important tasks is to try and keep Olympic event results pages within the established format guidelines, as we expect a flood of edits by the time they are known. Parutakupiu (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • We will certainly create all the new results articles and update existing articles, while fending off the vandalism and nationalistic POV that always appears around the Games. And hopefully we'll attract a new set of editors interested in working on the project long after these Games are over. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

7. What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles within its scope, developing over the next years and future Olympics?

  • My vision is to see more of the people who have actually competed there. Some of Wikipedia's FAs have featured Olympians such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Ian Thorpe. I would like to see an expansion of venues. One of my goals is to get the Sliding Centre mentioned in the third question up the GA and hopefully FA status. No Olympic venue has reached this plateau and I would like to see that happen. Chris (talk) 14:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd like to see users take more interest in cleaning up the more important articles, such as ones for the various Olympic Games, as well as articles about the sports. The main Olympic Games article is a FA, which I think is a major accomplishment. The project will most likely gain some new members over the next few weeks, and hopefully some who will take a long term active role in the project. -- Scorpion0422 23:08, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • This WikiProject has had its moments of incredible growth and membership input, as well as frustrating moments of staleness and lack of interest from editors. Fortunately, it has never regressed. I believe that, as the Olympics, this project has its own rhythm synchronized with the Olympiad. Each time the Games are held, the amount of data and work increases day by day, while the period between Games is occupied by the faithful editors and stable members working on the selection, inclusion, review and organization of the new content, and on the expansion of pre-existing pages. My hope for the future of this project is that, through its members, it is able to recruit more editors with the motivated spirit I had when I first joined, and that this can reflect on a higher level of quality of its articles so that they can serve the purpose of informing the user. Parutakupiu (talk) 03:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The ultimate vision for me is that the Wikipedia Olympic pages become a key research reference site for Olympic history. That means that we have to properly collate and document all the data we have available from our reliable sources, but present them in a highly effective format. There is a great power in Wikipedia being a key resource for multiple diverse topics, and by linking Olympic content in with the rest, there is information to be gleaned that is not possible from other Olympic-only references. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Next week, WikiProject Report will focus on a cosmopolitan country that has never competed in the Winter Olympic Games. Until then, check out previous reports in the archive.

Reader comments

2010-02-08

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Taelus (nom) and Calmer Waters (nom).

Ten articles were promoted to featured status this week: Umbriel (moon) (nom), Chadderton (nom), Aaliyah (nom), Subway (Homicide: Life on the Street) (nom), Rumours (nom), Takalik Abaj (nom), Alexander Pentland (nom), L'ange de Nisida (nom), Panellus stipticus (nom) and The Green Child (nom).

Twelve lists were promoted to featured status this week: List of Copenhagen Metro stations (nom), List of Texas Tech Red Raiders men's basketball seasons (nom), List of National Treasures of Japan (shrines) (nom), List of UTA TRAX stations (nom), List of Governors of New Jersey (nom), List of IIHF World Under-20 Championship players for Canada (nom), United States Secretary of Transportation (nom), Black Eyed Peas discography (nom), Bodley's Librarian (nom), Providence Grays all-time roster (nom), List of National League pennant winners (nom) and List of Boston Red Sox first-round draft picks (nom).

No topics were promoted to featured status this week.

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: "Bale Out", Marshalsea, Wii Sports, GRB 970508, Ghosts I–IV, Carucage and Roman–Persian Wars.

Two articles were delisted this week: Turkish literature (nom) and Karen Dotrice (nom).

No lists were delisted this week.

No topics were delisted this week.

No portals were delisted this week.

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Brighton, Ottoman camel corps before the First Suez Offensive of World War I, New Holland Honeyeater, Passionfruit, Babe Ruth, Quarterback and Morchella conica.

No featured sounds were promoted this week.

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Thirteen pictures were promoted to featured status this week.



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2010-02-08

Arbitration Report

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By Jéské Couriano

The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week and closed none, leaving two open.

Open cases

  • Chabad movement (Week 5): A case opened to examine accusations of biased editing and combat on articles related to Judaism's Chabad movement. Currently still in the evidence/workshop phase.
  • MZMcBride II (Week 3): A case opened to look into allegations of misconduct by MZMcBride with regards to BLPs and Thekohser. Currently in the proposed decision phase. Several concerns have been raised regarding a few of the proposals, but attempts are being made to resolve these concerns, short of other means.

Motions

Miscellaneous

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