Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2011-01-03

Comments

The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2011-01-03. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

2010 in review: Review of the year (3,471 bytes · 💬)

• A memorable year, no? Lets see what's to come in 2011 ;). ResMar 03:45, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• "..based on Wales' "creepy" persona." Lol! ;p poor Jimmy... -- œ^™ 10:08, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• Regarding "the number of active editors has fallen 10% over the last 12 months. It's entirely to be expected that the number of active admins would also fall by 10%", in fact the number of active admins decreased by 12% (from 869 to 768) in 2010. That compares to an 8% decrease in 2009 (from 943 to 869), and to a 6% decrease in 2008 (from 1004 to 943). (data) Given that the population of admins is "aging" (for the past three years, the number of new admins has been decreasing significantly), it's quite likely that the trend (of a decrease in active admins) will accelerate. (Another reason to think acceleration is likely, if nothing changes policy-wise, is the potential for a vicious cycle, where unpleasant tasks are spread among fewer and fewer admins, who have less and less time to do the non-admin things that got them interested in Wikipedia in the first place.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• I wonder if all of those "This user doesn't want to be an Admin" userboxes will be so popular if your predicted crash in the number of active Admins does happen. -- llywrch (talk) 21:04, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

• How many of the "beat Jimmy" banner submissions were actually tested? Less than 1/3 of those submitted, as far as I can tell. As variant as they proved to be in terms of their ability to attract donations, why didn't they test all the submitted banner texts? 208.54.5.51 (talk) 16:04, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Some of the submitted ideas just weren't realisticly usable for one reason or another. Kaldari (talk) 00:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
    • 2/3rds+? 71.198.176.22 (talk) 15:16, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

• Excellent "In review" report, thanks for putting it together! --Elonka 17:39, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Agreed. An excellent and enjoyable read. Carcharoth (talk) 05:26, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
• Compliments to the writers, a great summary of the year. It was quite eventful. Dcoetzee 02:29, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
• And we're on to the next one! --Sharkface^T/_C 09:26, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Arbitration report: Motion proposed in W/B – Judea and Samaria case (639 bytes · 💬)

• Nothing on Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II? It's still open. bahamut0013^words_deeds 15:38, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Features and admins: Featured sound choice of the year (809 bytes · 💬)

Yayyyyyyyyyyyy, something to put on my userpage :) J Milburn (talk) 00:45, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Congrats, J, on your powers of persuasion :P Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 01:23, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

As if you don't have enough stuff on that page, lol. ResMar 05:30, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

In the news: Fundraising success media coverage; brief news (3,369 bytes · 💬)

Can someone explain the discrepancy between the actual amount of money raised, and the "live statistics" given? Cheers, 92.156.20.181 (talk) 19:15, 3 January 2011 (UTC).

To quote the blog post mentioned, "the $13.5 million accounted for online only includes online donations, and the rest of the more than $16 million comes from checks and individual chapters." Guoguo12--Talk--  21:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The blog post mentioned is wrong, by the way. It's actually my article that the quote is from: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wikipedia_raises_16_million_to_remain_ad-free.php — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwwmike (talk • contribs) 00:20, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

...which was in fact cited in the News and notes article about the fundraiser. (Sorry btw for this slight overlap between "News and notes" and "In the news" regarding this particular topic.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:36, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about the source issue, guys (I'm the author). Should I fix it? Guoguo12--Talk--  20:25, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, this should indeed not remain uncorrected (above I had assumed that Rwwmike was only referring to your comment on this talk page). I just fixed it.

The wrong attribution actually happened in this copyedit by Tony1 where two quotes from different sources were merged, but the main problem was that the source was missing for the second quote. Also, a link to the CNET article should have been given.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:27, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

What is with Doc's arm? ResMar 05:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Doc Searle's arm is partly obscured by the camera's neck strap (which has motion blur.) --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 15:13, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

HaeB, thanks for fixing the citation issue. Guoguo12--Talk--  21:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

News and notes: Record fundraiser celebrated and debated; Board-appointed Trustees; brief news (2,633 bytes · 💬)

• One can't help but wonder what the fundraiser total would have been if Indian Wikipedians were able to easily donate without having to send cheques to WMF offices! The donation by people in India was a recurring theme on the Help desk both last year and this year (Paypal doesn't accept Indian accounts). I think the Foundation should find an easy way for Indian Wikipedians to donate with a credit/debit card, before the next fundraiser -- PhantomSteve.alt/talk\^{[alternative account of Phantomsteve]} 02:41, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

  Yes there were a couple of queries about this at WP:EAR as well. Jezhotwells (talk) 11:36, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

  The Wikimedia foundation, according to the information presented on otrswiki, has now set up some donation arrangement here which would allow for Indian Rupees to be accepted. This information is new to me; I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere (not to say I doubt its veracity). Killiondude (talk) 18:15, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

  That was a trial balloon to see if that particular payment solution would work - it's better than nothing, but it's not ideal. We haven't widely publicized it because of issues with the interface usability and because it didn't really solve the full problem - which is that in many cases donors who wish to use Indian Rupees actually don't want to use a credit card to make the contribution. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 13:40, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

• I wonder why the fundraising total didn't have the same visibility as it did last year, was it because there was no official goal? I was expecting it when I clicked to donate and it wasn't there; I'm sure it would increase donations as people try to meet the target. MasterOfHisOwnDomain (talk) 18:29, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
  • Some of the donation landing pages had the progress "thermometer", some of them didn't. Kaldari (talk) 00:23, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News (611 bytes · 💬)

On prompting, Magnus has change the name to WYSIFTW :-) - 193.22.89.22 (talk) 14:42, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I've written a blog post as well, reiterating what's in the email and linking to Magnus' editor. He's also given it a page on meta: meta:WYSIFTW - David Gerard (talk) 23:08, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject report: Where are they now? Redux (920 bytes · 💬)

Excellent redux :) ResMar 05:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Ditto. Awesome review. Ocaasi (talk) 13:42, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Anyone interested in the progress in backlogs might like to look at this diff which shows, over a five week period, some of the monthly categories that were eliminated. Rich Farmbrough, 23:29, 10 January 2011 (UTC).