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2010-11-15

Fundraisers start for Wikipedia and Citizendium; controversial content and leadership

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By Resident Mario and Tilman Bayer

Unofficial "technical testing" start of fundraiser already breaks donation records

See last week's Signpost for a full background report on the annual fundraiser: "November 15 launch, emphasis on banner optimization and community involvement"

A screenshot of one of the fundraising banners featuring Jimmy Wales (as used during testing last month)

Despite being labeled as mere "technical testing" (see also this week's Tech report) before the official launch on November 15, the initial days of the Wikimedia fundraiser since November 12 have already seen a new record for the most revenue on a single day, with $517,938.57 coming in from 18,246 donations on Saturday 13th.

The fundraising "SM [social media] team" collected numerous supportive messages from donors on Twitter on their WikiContribute feed. On the other hand, it appears that the increased use of graphical banners featuring a personal appeal from Jimmy Wales (which had proven to be the most effective during testing, to the point that at least initially none of the community-submitted text banners will be used) was found too intrusive by many readers – staff member Deniz Gultekin acknowledged that "the banners are big, but they are effective", while SM team volunteer fetchcomms reported "seeing a lot of ... 'no-Jimmy-appeals-please' sentiment on Twitter" and pointed out that feedback was welcome on the design of other, upcoming graphic banners. Some readers reacted humorously to finding Wales looking at them from the top of Wikipedia pages, one juxtaposing a banner with the article Scopophobia, another interpreting a banner as "Jimmy Wales, Undead Scourge of Wikipedia".

For logged-in users on the English Wikipedia and Commons, a gadget to suppress the display of the fundraiser banner is available under Special:Preferences.

Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama) has posted several photos from his visit to the Foundation's offices in San Francisco last week, some of them showing the fundraising team at work during the first day. The fundraiser was officially announced in a November 14 blog post by the Foundation's Community Department ("2010 Contribution Campaign launched") and a November 15 press release from its Global Development Department ("Seventh Annual Campaign to Support Wikipedia Kicks Off").

Ten-foot lifeline for Citizendium?

Following the discovery of Citizendium's dire financial situation by its newly appointed "Management Council" (see last week's Signpost: "Citizendium's finances running low"), the possibility of the Wikimedia Foundation throwing the wiki a lifeline has been brought up on the Foundation's mailing list. User:Geni suggested that the Foundation provide temporary support to Citizendium, in the form of "[an] offer to host Citizendium on our servers at no cost for a period of 1 (one) year offering a level of support equivalent to our smaller projects." Citizendium, which aims to become "the world's most trusted encyclopedia and knowledge base," was created in 2006 by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, and went public on March 25, 2007. More recently, Sanger has been involved in several controversial conflicts with the Wikimedia Foundation, most notably accusing Commons of "knowingly distributing child pornography". Following his planned resignation from his post as editor-in-chief, the project's new leadership discovered and published details about its financial situation, most detailedly in a November 12 "Message to the Citizendium Community", which among other expenses noted Internet hosting costs including $750/month for servers "with significantly more processing power than we need", and expressed the intention "to move to a more reasonably provisioned configuration."

On Foundation-l, the proposal has been garnering some opposition but also tentative to enthusiastic support, assuming that the Foundation has the technical capacities; one editor offers his advice: "In business I have found that the most successful companies are those that reach out, build relationships with, and where possible help others that are compatible."

On the Citizendium forums, the new Managing Editor (who happens to be a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Research Committee) noted the suggestion with caution: "I think we should be attentive to that discussion, while continuing to explore other options". The Chief Constable added that "regardless of whether we have financial issues, having a healthy relationship with wikipedia is a good thing", to which other members of the Management and Editorial Councils agreed, one of them saying that "the antagonism that has been occasionally voiced is very strange to me". A tech staff member cautioned not to "get too excited about this": "Having briefly worked with some of the WMF people responsible for their systems, I think the probability of them allowing CZ to run our modified [ MediaWiki ] code on their systems is pretty low (near zero). They have too many problems of their own to take on ours". And in a comment to the Signpost on Twitter, Larry Sanger rejected the idea outright – "we aren't THAT desperate", later clarifying that he was speaking only for himself, but that "I wouldn't touch [Wikipedia]'s nest of vipers with a ten-foot pole".

In the meantime, Citizendium gained some breathing space through an internal fundraising drive that was started on November 10 ("We are in urgent and serious need of funds to pay for hosting our servers"). The drive, though hampered by the lack of an incorporated entity (donations have to be collected on the private account of a member of the Management Council and are not tax-deductible), collected $1,882 from 22 donors by November 14, among them Sanger with $250.

Controversial content and Wikimedia leadership

Sue Gardner in September 2010
Ting Chen (Wing) in 2009

At the Board of Trustees meeting last month, the study on controversial content was presented and discussed, but its recommendations (Signpost coverage) were not immediately adopted, with the Board forming a workgroup instead.

The minutes for the meeting haven't been published yet, but Board member Phoebe Ayers posted an update last week, summarizing the three hours of the meeting that had been devoted to the topic, laying out further steps and inviting more community participation regarding the recommendations, e.g. by summarizing earlier discussions. On the same day, the Foundation's Executive Director Sue Gardner published a posting on her personal blog that started out from the same issue (noting that "we’re the only major site that doesn’t treat controversial material –e.g., sexually-explicit imagery, violent imagery, culturally offensive imagery– differently from everything else") and went on to identify "nine patterns that work" in making change at Wikimedia (the first pattern being "The person/people leading the change didn’t wait for it to happen naturally – they stepped up and took responsibility for making it happen"). She based these on an examination of three earlier cases of "successful change at Wikimedia": the Board's statement on BLPs in 2009, the Foundation's strategy project, and the license migration concluded in 2009.

These three examples, along with the controversial content study and the usability project, had already been mentioned some days earlier by Ting Chen, the Foundation's Chair, in a blog post titled "'Leadership is ...", where he saw them as reactions to changes both in the Wikimedia projects themselves and in the outside world, such as that "almost all governments, western free ones as more restrictive ones, are changing their laissez faire politic to the Internet and imposing more rigid policies for the web". He interpreted the controversial content discussion as "a result of our strategic planning (development and adaption in the nonwestern cultures) and the response of the changes in public policy and in our responsibility".

The posting was the first of several ones that Ting Chen wrote on occasion of attending a four-day intensive course at the Harvard Business School on "Governing for Nonprofit Excellence - Critical Issues for Board Leadership". The others were titled "Vision, Mission, Strategy" (interpreting the controversial content discussion in terms of the Foundation's mission statement), "Theory of Change" (considering various measures of change and success in the case of Wikimedia), and "Scale Up" (concluding that "the course was a good investment for the Foundation" – according to the HBS website, the course fee is $3,900).

Briefly

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2010-11-15

How big can Wikipedia pictures get?; fundraising season

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By Tilman Bayer

The largest image on Wikipedia?

The "largest image on Wikipedia"

Boing Boing [1] and The Atlantic [2] blogged about what they call "the largest image on Wikipedia", File:Georgetown_PowerPlant_interior_pano.jpg, a 27,184 × 16,995 pixels panorama with a file size of 25.79 MB, that was uploaded in 2008. Like other large images, it carries a warning that it might not display properly at full resolution in all browsers, recommending that the Toolserver-based zoom viewer be used instead. The high-resolution version (which has been criticized for being blurry at full resolution and containing "a creepy disembodied head on the left and a child's floating torso on the right", having been stitched together from around 56 photographs) is currently not used in any Wikipedia version; the English Wikipedia's article about the Georgetown Steam Plant museum uses a smaller version of the image. There are images on Commons with larger file sizes, such as the featured picture File:Pano Baalbek 1.jpg, which weighs 44.68 MB at 24,726 × 5,000 pixels. The limit for files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons is currently 100 MB.

Briefly

  • Bio-wikis: An article in Nature ("No rest for the bio-wikis"), published in anticipation of a conference titled "Biological Wikis" later this month, examined the various uses of wikis by biologists to maintain databases, such as Gene Wiki, a collection of more than 10,000 Wikipedia articles on single genes. As an advantage of such bio-wikis that are "hosted by Wikipedia", the article cited that they "benefit from the contributions of its existing altruistic community of 'Wikipedians'", and that they attract more readers as well. As a disadvantage, it mentioned being subject to Wikipedia rules, in particular the notability guidelines. Bio-wikis in general were said to be still limited by the text-based wiki syntax (with Semantic MediaWiki as a possible solution), and the fact that a scientist's contributions to wikis are not yet being recognized by funding agencies and tenure committees.
  • How do students use Wikipedia?: Following up on last week's article by Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times Magazine (see Signpost coverage), where she had praised "the lucid exposition that Wikipedia brings to technical subjects", the NYT's "Learning Network" blog asked their student readers (13 years and older) How do you use Wikipedia?, eliciting 72 comments at the time of writing.
  • Fundraiser: After the annual Wikimedia fundraiser began with a "technical testing" phase on November 12 (see this week's "News and notes"), media coverage started on November 13, with Softpedia reporting that "Wikipedia has kicked off 2010's donation campaign", noting the lack of an official announcement (the official launch of the fundraiser was on November 15), but quoting from a version of Jimmy Wales' personal appeal to donate. ReadWriteWeb followed on November 14 ("Wikipedia: We Need $16 Million To Stay Free"). On November 15, articles by The Huffington Post ("Wikipedia Fundraising Begins: $16 Million Needed To Stay Free", New York Magazine ("Wikipedia Asks Public for $16 Million to Stay Free-to-Use") and Techland ("Wikipedia Needs $16 Million to Remain Ad Free") appeared, the latter reporting that "[the banner with Jimmy] Wales sad, Don Draper-esque expression was the most effective at getting people to give up a couple bucks." Non-English coverage included Heise News [3] and El Pais [4].
  • Fundraising easier for Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales was interviewed on the blog of Creative Commons, as part of a series called "Meet our board members". Among other things, he commented on the difference between CC and the Wikimedia Foundation with regard to fundraising opportunities: "At Wikipedia, we are able to fund-raise directly from small donors because we are huge, public, and visible, and our community builds something that everyone uses every day. With Wikipedia, we can always know that there will be lots and lots of $30 donors from the heart and soul of the Wikipedia donor community. It’s harder for Creative Commons."
  • Termites explaining termites: The Hindu last week reviewed "Smart Swarm", a recently released book by Peter Miller that seeks to elucidate collaboration in companies and online communities by examples from the animal kingdom ("What creature crowds can teach us"). Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia is mentioned as an example of online collaboration - according to the review, Miller reveals that "indirect collaboration that makes it easy for almost anyone to get involved is one of the secrets of Wikipedia's success" and illustrates this by citing "a quote that compares wiki to a termite nest, thus: 'One initial user leaves a seed of an idea (a mudball), which attracts other users who then build upon and modify this initial concept eventually constructing an elaborate structure of connected thoughts.'" Curiously, the sentence appears to have originated on Wikipedia itself, where an anonymous user added it in 2004 to the article Stigmergy, preceding it by "This wiki is a perfect example!". The insect analogies shouldn't be taken too far, however - The Hindu notes that according to the book "as members of such groups, we don't have to surrender our individuality, because good decision-making comes from competition as much as from compromise, from disagreement as much as from consensus."

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2010-11-15

Sizzling: WikiProject Bacon

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By Mabeenot
WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.

This week, we looked at a new project that started just 30 days ago. WikiProject Bacon was created by admin and frequent FA contributor Cirt to improve Wikipedia's coverage of bacon. Despite the narrow focus, the project is already home to 11 active members, many of them previously contributors to the "Bacon Cabal." Several other bacon-related initiatives predate the project but now serve as support for the project's goals, including the Bacon Challenge and the Bacon WikiCup. While too new to judge the project's success (four bacon-related good articles predate the project), WikiProject Bacon offers a unique glimpse at how any group of editors with a common interest and a little motivation can build a worthwhile WikiProject. We interviewed Cirt, Drmies, and SuperHamster.

What motivated you to join/create WikiProject Bacon? Has bacon had a profound impact upon your life?

Cirt: I was motivated to create WP:BACON after participating previously in Bacon WikiCup 2010. Bacon is an interesting product, and it has been a fun experience researching and writing about it as part of this quality improvement challenge.
Drmies: Well, I was more or less cajoled into it by some fellow editors, including Kelapstick, Bongomatic, and he who shall not be named. It was clear to me that they needed someone whose brain was less affected by pork fat than theirs was, and I was happy to join--and look at me now. I'm as fat as they are, just scraping by, living from one slab of delicious smoked and cured pork meat to the next. Anyway, Bacon Explosion happened, and the rest is history.
SuperHamster: I joined WikiProject Bacon for basically the same reason Cirt created it. Editors coming together on Wikipedia to work on expanding and improving Wikipedia's coverage of bacon isn't anything new, and the project simply adds to the age-old experience. In addition to that, joining the project and continuing to participate in bacon-related activities on Wikipedia is not only fun, but also interesting. It's surprising how much bacon-related stuff is out there to write about. As for having a profound impact on my life, I can't say that my cholesterol level didn't go up in last year's Bacon Challenge, due to me buying more bacon than I usually do so that I could photograph it.
In addition to joining the project, editors can help out by working through the project's to-do list. Pictured above is the Bacon Barnstar.

What are some of the difficulties a new project faces? How have you handled some of these hurdles in the past month?

Cirt: New projects face initial difficulties in getting enough members and participation to make it worthwhile to have a project in the first place. We at first grew membership from those that had previously participated in the "Bacon Challenge" quality improvement drive, and subsequently other members have joined more organically. In the past month, we have had some initial discussions on the WikiProject talk page.

How has the unique allure of bacon affected the project's membership? Do you have any concerns that the project's novelty may wear off over time?

Cirt: It is true that the allure of bacon may have had some impact on the membership makeup of the project. When one analyzes the phenomenon of Bacon mania over time, it seems to have had a lasting impact so far, so let's hope this interest continues on Wikipedia as well.
Drmies: The allure of bacon is not likely to run out--it's good stuff--but the big mania seems have passed a little bit. With a Republican majority in the US House it's also less likely that fat-reducing measures will be passed in the US, and so the people (who have indeed spoken, even if unintelligibly) have less of a reason to thumb their nose at a government who showed an interest in the population's health, a decidedly un-American idea. That was, in one part at least (represented by Chicken fried bacon, for instance), the attraction of bacon. Then again, as my investigation last year into churchmen named Bacon showed (preacherman Leonard Bacon and his four preacher sons, also Bacons of course), there's still plenty of bacon to go around.
SuperHamster: I do believe that the fashionable and unique allure of bacon is quite the factor when it comes to an editor choosing whether or not to join the project - and that allure is not likely to run out soon as I see it. It may slow down, but I think there will always be people who wish to express their love of such a fine subject. I also think that one of the reasons why people join WikiProject Bacon is that it focuses on a rather non-traditional subject when looked at from an encyclopedic view. It's not every day that one sees a coordinated effort to expand bacon-related content on an encyclopedia, and it is that uniqueness that I think helps attract people to the project.

The project is home to four good articles which predate the creation of the project. Did you contribute to any of these articles? Are you currently working on preparing an article for featured or good article status?

Cirt: Yes, I wrote those four good articles: Bacon: A Love Story, Everything Tastes Better with Bacon, The BLT Cookbook, and The Bacon Cookbook. Prior to WP:GA status, all had appeared previously on the Main Page under the Did you know? section. I recently completed a peer review for Everything Tastes Better with Bacon, where I responded to input from Casliber and Herostratus. Those GA articles were all on the topic of cookbooks - I am currently focusing on a different sub-topic, children's literature, in efforts to get Don't Forget the Bacon! to GA quality status.
WikiProject Bacon helps host two WP:BACON-related quality improvement challenges, the Bacon Challenge and the Bacon WikiCup. Pictured above is a bacon wrapped scallop

What relation does WikiProject Bacon have with the annual Bacon Challenge and the Bacon WikiCup? Does WikiProject Bacon plan to absorb any of these competitions?

Cirt: At this point in time, WikiProject Bacon functions as a central location for discussion and maintenance of all things bacon on Wikipedia. It would be utilitarian and logical to absorb those competitions - but that is up to the discretion of those that already maintain them in their userspace subpages.

What standards or recommendations does the project maintain for producing good bacon-related images?

Cirt: The only pictures I have contributed within this topic so far, are fair-use book covers for the above-mentioned GA articles. However, from what I have seen of helpful image contributions from others that are free use, good bacon-related images should be well-lit, with focus on the product itself, colorful, and quickly and easily draw in the viewer's interest into the subject matter.

Do bacon articles frequently run into notability issues? Has the project undertaken an effort to source or eliminate articles of questionable notability?

Cirt: Some bacon articles do indeed frequently run into notability issues. The project has not yet taken a specific effort to source or eliminate articles of questionable notability. However, as a result of the formation of the WikiProject, we now have easier ways to maintain such articles - for example the category Category:Stub-Class Bacon articles.

Some food and drink projects have remained independent (WikiProject Beer, WikiProject Spirits, and WikiProject Wine) while others have been merged into WikiProject Food and drink as task forces (Bartending, Cheeses, Cocktails/Mixed Drinks and Soft Drinks, Foodservice, Herbs and Spices, and Ice Cream/Desserts). Are you confident that bacon can sustain an independent WikiProject? What are the most important things needed to keep this project alive?

Cirt: Due to the niche interest of multiple participants, I would sincerely hope that we can sustain an independent WikiProject. The most important things needed to keep this project alive, include active participants willing to contribute and/or improve quality content within the topic.
A bacon doughnut

How can a new member help today?

Cirt: A new member can help today in several ways. 1) Join WikiProject Bacon and list yourself as a Participant. 2) Users can show their participation in the project on their userpage, with the userbox {{User Bacon}}. 3) Users can join in the discussion centrally located at WT:BACON. 4) There are a many other ways to help out, listed at Portal:Bacon/Things you can do.
SuperHamster: Once an editor has signed up for the project using the instructions left by Cirt, I think one of the best ways for an editor to help is to contribute to areas that they already enjoy working in, but applying that to bacon-related content. If a user enjoys researching and expanding articles, then expanding one of the many bacon-related articles could be something to do. If a user likes photography, there's always bacon waiting to be photographed.


Next week, we'll hit the gridiron with our favorite college teams. Until then, study old plays in the archive.

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2010-11-15

Of lakes and mountains

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By Tony1 and Dabomb87
Featured picture Choice of the week: Wikipedian Ira Goldstein's panorama over Jökulsárlón, the largest proglacial lake in Iceland. Considered one of the country's natural wonders, the lake has expanded rapidly due to glacial retreat and is now four times larger than it was four decades ago.

Interactive large-image-viewer (non-Flash)

New administrator

The Signpost welcomes VernoWhitney (nom) as our newest admin. Verno has been with us for almost a year, during which time he has become a central part of Wikipedia’s copyright cleanup. Among his contributions, he has contributed to work on suspected copyright violations and as been a conscientious clerk at WP:Contributor copyright investigations. He is an active volunteer for the permissions queue at OTRS, and runs User:VWBot, which handles much of the manual labor at various copyright points and helps to ensure that articles tagged for problems receive appropriate review.


Newly promoted FA, Edward Elgar, favourably mentioned by the FA judge. This picture is from the early 1900s.
Six articles were promoted to featured status:
  • Edward Elgar (nom) (1857–1934), one of the most well-known English composers in the romantic tradition (nominated by Tim riley; picture at right).
  • Talbot Baines Reed (nom), described by the acerbic critic and saxophone player Benny Green as a hereditary prig and religious huckster. Reed was a writer of fiction for boys, and his school stories were widely and enthusiastically read in middle-class households (Brianboulton).
  • Mauna Kea (nom), a dormant Hawaiian volcano that by the count of dry elevation is higher than Mount Everest (Resident Mario, Iridia, and Hamiltonstone; picture at the bottom).
  • Illinois (album) (nom), a 2005 concept album by American indie folk songwriter Sufjan Stevens (Jujutacular and Koavf).
  • Benedict Arnold's expedition to Quebec (nom), the story of how in 1775, early in the American Revolutionary War, a force of 1,100 Continental Army troops went on an expedition from Cambridge, Massachusetts to the gates of Quebec City (Magicpiano).
  • Pedro Álvares Cabral (nom), a major early Portuguese explorer who deserves wider recognition, according to nominator Astynax.

Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer TonyTheTiger to select the best of the week.

"As the director of WP:CHICAGO, I disqualify Ilinois (album), which is part of the project, from contention. I must say that since every now and then I attempt to have an appreciation for culture I was quite pleased to see that Edward Elgar was raised to FA-quality. His Pomp and Circumstance Marches are heroic and recognized worldwide, and I view his article as the runner-up for the week. However, because of the international significance of the Mauna Kea Observatory region, I feel that Mauna Kea is the top choice. It is chock full of instructive links to educational articles. It is an exemplary model of encyclopedic content."


The ordination certificate of a 9th-century Japanese Buddhist monk, from the new FL List of National Treasures of Japan (ancient documents)
Five lists were promoted:


This newly promoted FP, a Punch cartoon from 1876, shows Russia holding back the Balkan countries from attacking Turkey. Serbia and Montenegro declared war on Turkey two weeks later; Russia followed suit the next year.
Nine images were promoted. Medium-sized images can be viewed by clicking on "nom":

Choice of the week. Avenue, a regular reviewer and occasional nominator at featured picture candidates, told The Signpost:

"This week saw several seasoned FP contributors maintaining their high standards, including an intriguing addition to Alchemist-hp's chemical elements series, another delightful marine creature from Nick Hobgood, and Mbz1's sobering shot of what remained after a gas explosion. It's hard to choose between such a wide range of powerful illustrations. Lycaon's cathedral image shows impressive detail, and I love Richard Bartz's nice sharp frog photo. But for me, the pick of the bunch is from an FP newcomer, Ira Goldstein, who gave us his stunning panorama of Iceland's iceberg-studded Jökulsárlón. The strong visual contrasts in glacial landscapes can make them a challenging subject, but this photo, taken in a lovely soft light, captures the scene's peace and grandeur beautifully."


Featured article Choice of the week: the massive dormant volcano Mauna Kea from Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii. Don't be fooled by appearances—measured from its oceanic base, this baby is taller than Mount Everest.


Information about new admins at the top is drawn from their user pages and RfA texts, and occasionally from what they tell us directly.

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2010-11-15

A guide to the Good Article Review Process

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By Wizardman
Can you review an article against the GA criteria while flying an aircraft? Perhaps not, but the former is certainly easier!

A Good article is one that has been determined to be "well written, factually accurate and verifiable; broad in coverage, neutral in point of view, and stable; and illustrated, where possible, by relevant images with suitable copyright licenses."[1] There are currently over 10,000 such articles on Wikipedia. All of these articles have been reviewed by at least one Wikipedian, and often more. The quality of the Good Article program relies on a body of reviewers who decide whether these articles are good enough to be listed. This article is about becoming one of those vital reviewers.

Introduction

Anyone who has been involved in creating an article that they think meets the good article criteria can nominate it at the good articles nomination page. Here, editors are able to see which articles have been nominated for good article status, and choose one to review.

Over the past few months, a backlog has developed at the list of nominations, and regularly more than 300 articles are on the list waiting to be reviewed.[2] This week, The Signpost encourages editors to enhance the quality of content at Wikipedia by doing good article reviews. Below is a guide explaining how to effectively review good article nominations, and giving reasons why editors might consider reducing the backlog of nominations.

The process

Articles submitted to the good article process must satisfy six points in order to become categorized as a good article: it must be (1) well-written, (2) factually accurate and verifiable, (3) broad in its coverage, (4) neutral, (5) stable, and (6) illustrated if possible. Reviewers compare the article to the criteria, and then either pass the article; put it on hold until issues are resolved; or fail it because it does not meet the criteria. Sometimes, reviewers might also seek a second opinion before making a decision.

Each of the six points is reviewed in its own way. To see if an article is well-written, you just need to read the article and make sure it makes sense. If you can't understand what a significant part of the article is trying to say, it likely fails this criteria. Beyond that, check for spelling errors, punctuation issues, paragraph structure, and similar possible problems. Minor copyediting problems can be fixed by the reviewer, though if you wish not to touch the article at all and note every issue on the GA review page, that is also acceptable. To see if it's factually accurate, make sure any controversial note is sourced; if something sounds odd, and it's unsourced, ask for source, and also make sure no original research is present by using the same method. The sources that are used also need to be checked to make sure they're appropriate. A book by a major author or article from the BBC would be an acceptable reference in an article, for example, while a random forum posting or blog entry would be an invalid source.

Whether the article is broad in coverage is harder to gauge unless you know the subject. Take a quick look around the web; if the subject is very important or influential, then expect a longer article, and if it's rather short, note that. For example, if the article on Abraham Lincoln was only about 1,000 words, the article would fail the broadness guideline. Conversely, if the article was 15,000 words, then that would be far too much detail for an individual article, and the article would need to be condensed (possibly by splitting off daughter articles with much of the detail).

An article's neutrality can be evaluated while reading for prose (point 1). For a biography, if it's obvious that the article is hiding good or bad points of the person, then that's a problem. The use of some adjectives can create neutrality problems. If you see "outstanding", "impressive", "terrible", and the like in the article, then those need to be removed, as they are meant to sway the reader.

To check for stability, simply glance at the edit history to make sure several users are not fighting back and forth, and make sure that the article doesn't keep drastically changing each week. If an article was written from November 3-15 and nominated on the 15th, then the article is stable, even though it was edited that day.

Images are not required for GA status, but if they are in the article, make sure that the file is in the public domain or tagged with an appropriate free license. If it's not, then make sure the fair use rationale listed is convincing as to why the image should be in the article. If there isn't a fair use rationale, ask for one.

While the above may seem daunting, this is all you need to do when reviewing a GA, and as such it is not an onerous process. If you need help with the above, there is a GA List template that can help you. Also, you can always get help on the GAN talk page, where experienced reviewers regularly make suggestions, and will respond to your questions.

In the past few months, the GA process has become mostly automated, making it much easier to nominate and review articles. Articles are placed automatically at the GAN page when the nomination template is placed on the article's talk page. The only manual work is changing the template when the article is passed or failed, and adding the name of the article to the main good article page.

The results

Why does the Good Article review process matter? First, this is generally one of the stepping stones to getting a Featured Article, and a great review at this stage can make the FA process go much more smoothly, or even be the difference between the article passing or failing an FA review. The GA review process also greatly increases reader awareness of what constitutes quality information in Wikipedia: each good article has a green plus sign on the upper right corner, symbolizing that it's one of our better articles, and showing that it has undergone an independent review. Lastly, the GA review process improves our public reputation by showing we do quality assurance and actually check on articles.

As for you, the (potential) reviewer, helping improve articles to GA status means that you get to read some of Wikipedia's most interesting and detailed content before it becomes officially recognized as such.

References

  1. ^ Wikipedia:Good articles
  2. ^ Wikipedia:Good article nominations, Revision as of 17:03, 3 November 2010


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2010-11-15

No cases this week; Amendments filed on Climate Change and Date Delinking; Motion passed on EEML

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By Ohconfucius and Tilman Bayer

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

Closed cases

Date delinking

Gigs alleged that Lightmouse (talk · contribs) has engaged in "high speed semi-automated editing without BAG approval in apparent violation of the previous sanctions", and requested an amendment to the sanction, extending it to an indefinite ban on all automated and semi-automated editing.

At the time of writing, following arbitrators' request, Lightmouse has commented; comment requested from the Bot Approval Group remains outstanding.

Climate Change

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Eastern European mailing list

A motion was passed to amend the restriction that had been imposed on Piotrus at the conclusion of the case. Piotrus is now banned from topics concerning national, cultural, or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe (previously, this topic ban encompassed all Eastern Europe topics).

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2010-11-15

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250

MediaWiki logo: does it need refreshing?

The present MediaWiki logo
As of time of writing, the proposed new logo

An idea was floated this week on the wikitech-l mailing list about converting the present MediaWiki logo (an embellished photograph of a sunflower, above right) into an SVG (i.e. converted it to a pictorial representation that can be easily scaled, below right). Whilst opinion was mixed over this colour of the bikeshed issue, Markus Krötzsch summarised the case for updating the logo:


The question was also raised about whether or not a revised MediaWiki logo would have to conform to WMF logo guidelines, which are based around the core colours of blue, green and red. "As for the colours", wrote developer Trevor Parscal, "I think there's no reason for MediaWiki's logo to conform to the WMF colour scheme. MediaWiki, like Wikipedia, has its own community of which some WMF staff are a part - it's totally reasonable for them to have their own identity."

In brief

Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for many weeks.

  • The automatic blocking of Tor exit nodes is working reliably again (bug #23321).
  • Developer Max Semenik (User:MaxSem) urged those familiar with the technical English vocabulary of the new MediaWiki installer and proficient in a language other than English to help translate it into their language (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • XML data "dumps" (backups) have been temporarily suspended given a significant hardware failure and the potential risk of losing data posed by overly hasty action (wikitech-l mailing list).
  • Head of the 2010 Fundraising campaign Philippe Beaudette said on Saturday that, following 22 hours of testing, his team was happy with the technical infrastructure they had in place ahead of the official launch today. "There were a few initial hiccups," he wrote, "but they're resolved or being resolved nicely. The new cluster of servers for supporting the traffic is [also functioning well]" (foundation-l mailing list). See also this week's "News and notes".
  • Developer and sometime Technology report writer User:TheDJ blogged about printing Wikipedia articles and his work in improving the process.
  • At the end of last month, Microsoft published a cost-free Microsoft Office Word Add-in For MediaWiki that allows users to save Word documents into a MediaWiki wiki.

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