Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2006-02-27
Wikipedia preparing for millionth article this week
Wikipedia is getting ready to see the creation of its one-millionth article in English this week, a milestone expected to be reached around Wednesday, 1 March. In terms of the number of articles, the English Wikipedia will have doubled in size in slightly less than a year, after reaching 500,000 articles last 17 March.
Among the preparations being worked on is a press release to be issued once the milestone is reached. The addition of a special banner to the Main Page celebrating the occasion has also been discussed.
Given the speed at which both new pages are created and others deleted, identifying the magic article is a challenge and was the subject of some disagreement at the previous milestone (see archived story). Sj said he hoped to get developers to provide a snapshot of the database that, combined with statistical analysis, could objectively identify the actual article in question. If not, an honorary millionth article may simply be designated as such.
While this milestone marks an impressive achievement in just over five years of Wikipedia's existence, size is not the only measure of accomplishment, and some have suggested it be de-emphasized as Wikipedia grows. As Jimmy Wales put it in last week's interview with The Signpost, "We should be tightly focused on the quality of our coverage and content. The goal of Wikipedia is to create and distribute a freely licensed high quality encyclopedia."
Among the tools anticipated to help with this are new features currently being worked on by the MediaWiki developers. These include a feature that allows readers to review and rate articles, and another that would allow a particular revision of an article to be marked as a "stable version". Both of these features could help efforts to publish print editions based on the English Wikipedia, similar to those already involving the German Wikipedia (see archived story).
Work is also being done toward a "single login" feature, so editors can have one account that works on all Wikimedia projects. It is hoped that this will encourage more people to help out across project boundaries and foster a greater sense of community. However, the transition will probably create some disruption as well, due to the technical difficulties of dealing with possible conflicts between existing accounts.
If expectations hold, the winner of the Million pool to correctly identify the date on which this article would be created should be András Mészáros. The next closest guess was 28 February by Kaizersoze, who might still win if it comes more quickly than expected. The pool was declared closed when the half-million article mark was reached.
Interventions by Foundation have bumpy road
A couple of incidents last week highlighted the difficulty of balancing outside complaints regarding articles with the views of Wikipedia editors. Partly at issue was the implementation of a relatively new policy that provides for the Wikimedia Foundation, which normally does not exercise editorial control at the level of individual articles, to intervene in such cases when deemed necessary.
These interventions, covering such things as protecting a page pending further investigation, or deleting possible copyright infringements, are designated as Office Actions. They may also involve reducing the content of articles drastically to stubs, a practice Jimbo Wales has said may occasionally be necessary to deal with complaints, especially involving biographies of living people. Wales created the policy earlier this month as something Danny Wool, his executive assistant, could cite when taking action on an urgent complaint.
Two recent cases underlined the tension between "caving in" to outsiders and "abdicating responsibility" for the content of the website. One of these, another occasion in which congressional attention has been directed at Wikipedia, was the biography of U.S. Senator Harry Reid (Democrat-Nevada). The second was Brian Peppers, about a disabled man whose photograph was promoted as a meme on the YTMND website.
In both cases, a personally interested party directed a communication to the Wikimedia Foundation complaining about the content of the page and/or its existence. Reid's article was protected by Wool on Thursday, 16 February, and remained that way for six days while the situation was sorted out. The delay, caused in part by the weekend and the fact that Monday was a government holiday in the U.S., prompted several people to express their displeasure on the talk page. The second case was not actually handled as an Office Action but done by Wales on his own initiative. Last Tuesday, he deleted the much-disputed Peppers article with instructions that it should not be recreated for a year, saying, "if anyone still cares by then, we can discuss it".
This eventually led to an extended discussion on the wikien-l mailing list about these actions. The debate over Peppers also extended to other issues, such as whether previous deletions or recreations of the article were valid, whether he was actually notable enough as an internet phenomenon to warrant coverage in Wikipedia, and whether this should override his interest in privacy even though he never sought any publicity. Meanwhile, the Reid situation posed the dilemma of what the subjects of articles can do, given that criticism may ensue whether they edit themselves or direct their concerns to the Foundation instead.
The practice of using Office Actions has been designated as official Wikipedia policy. Wales emphasized this last week with the addition of a note that reverting an action taken under the policy "may be grounds for blocking", although he avoided recommending that blocks actually be used in such cases.
News and notes
English Wikipedia reaches 1,000,000 users
The English Wikipedia reached 1,000,000 users on Monday, just a few days before the anticipated 1,000,000th article. The millionth user is believed to be Romulus32, though it is not easily possible to find the exact user with complete certainty. Jimmy Wales however has noted that such a stat is really insignificant, due to inactive and sockpuppet accounts.
Wikimania seeking volunteers
Wikimania organizers this week called for volunteers to join the Program Team for the 2006 conference, scheduled for 4 August–6 August at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Team members will help reviewing proposed presentations, inviting speakers, and coordinating other aspects of the conference program. A call for participation from potential presenters was also distributed recently; deadlines for initial submissions are 30 March and 15 April, depending on the nature of the presentation.
German chapter makes plans
The German chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation held its annual meeting last Saturday in Frankfurt at the site of the original Wikimania conference. As the organization is growing and having to deal with various pressing matters, such as litigation or partnerships to redistribute Wikipedia content, it was concluded that more professional support is necessary. Over the course of the year, the chapter will look to open a physical office and hire an experienced executive to run it. According to Kurt Jansson, one of the chapter's two chairpersons, "The needs of the organization have become so broad and complex that volunteer leadership alone is no longer enough to address them." The chapter reports that it now has about 250 members.
Integration of 1911 Britannica finished
The list of 1911 Encyclopedia topics has been thoroughly examined and edited by a devoted team from WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles, who have verified that Wikipedia now has an article or proper redirect for every single article which appeared in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, the content of which is now in the public domain. On the project page, Alba took pride in "declaring the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica to be, at first draft level, merged into Wikipedia."
A new project has begun at WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/1911 verification to ensure that all 1911 material has been properly updated to the 21st century.
New tools
Henna has taken over the maintenance of the Vandal Fighter tool, a spin-off of CryptoDerk's VandalFighter.
Ask.com has revamped their search page, removing the Ask Jeeves interface and including Wikipedia results. A ZDNet report states "the new tools also include encyclopaedia search, for the US version of the site, that displays direct answers from Wikipedia and others at the top of the results page."
A new third-party search mechanism called Qwika is in development; it aims to provide searchable machine translation between different Wikipedia languages.
Most-edited user talk pages
Upon a request by Raul654, Gmaxwell created a list of the top 100 most edited user talk pages (Note - a user's edits to his own talk page are not counted). Not surprisingly, the page most edited was Jimbo Wales' talk page. The other four talk pages in the top 5 were those of Tony Sidaway, Curps, Cool Cat and Mistress Selina Kyle.
Briefly
- The Arabic Wikipedia has reached 10,000 registered users.
- The Swedish Wikipedia has reached 140,000 articles.
- The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 registered users.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 6,000 registered users.
- The Korean Wikipedia has reached 50,000 total pages.
- The Icelandic Wikipedia has reached 9,000 articles.
- The Georgian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Russian Wikipedia has reached 60,000 articles.
- The Ladino Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 2,500 articles.
- The Waray-Waray Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Nynorsk Wikipedia has reached 14,000 articles.
In the news
Allegations of anti-Islamic bias
Media Monitors Network, a self-declared anti-media-propaganda site, published a long article by book author Abid U. Jan, entitled "Wikipedia: A tool for expediting the clash of religions" on 22 February. Jan states that:
- While the concept behind Wikipedia is admirable, we cannot help but feel that the project has become a tool in the hands of diehard Islamophobes who have planned to add validity to the concept and divisive terminologies.
In reply to a letter from Wikipedian gren, Jan published another detailed article in the editorial section of the Al-Jazeerah Information Center (unrelated to the Al Jazeera TV channel), entitled "Wikipedia: Good Intentions, Horrible Consequences" on 27 February, in which Jan says:
- Keeping the good intentions behind Wikipedia project and sincerity of its editors in mind, it is necessary to clarify some of the basic misconceptions so that one could see how these good intentions are being manipulated and could pave the way for horrible consequences.
Yahoo! adds more Wikipedia links
Promoters targeting Wikipedia?
Public relations magazine PR Week published "Analysis: Wikipedia-friend or foe on the net?", (subscription required), in which the author, Adam Hill, asks how PROs (public relations professionals) can use the online encyclopedia to their advantage. Raul654 was interviewed for and quoted in the article. Interesting quotes in the article include:
- Joel Cere, vice-president and head of netcoms EMEA at Hill & Knowlton -
- "If an entry has been obviously modified to suit a particular agenda, it will only be a matter of time before it is swayed back to a more neutral ground or to the prevalent public opinion. My PR colleagues should have more faith in the "wisdom of crowds".
- Idil Cakim, director of knowledge development at Burson-Marsteller -
- "PR firms can advise their clients to update the information about their industries and companies on Wikipedia, without going into marketing-speak. Clients can also refer Wikipedia readers to websites that provide more in-depth information about the given topic."
- Shimon Cohen, chairman of consultancy The PR Office -
- "It is an example of the very best of the internet: fast, up to date and informative. Of course, it can also be at risk of the very worst of the internet: hackers, misinformation and distortion."
- Cere (again) -
- "PROs wishing to align Wikipedia's and their client's mention of an event shouldn't modify the original entry, unless factually incorrect, but provide additional information to offer a more balanced viewpoint."
Cory Doctorow
Author and Electronic Frontier Foundation alumnus Cory Doctorow, aka User:Doctorow, who has previously defended Wikipedia in print (see archived story), was interviewed by the The Harvard Crimson college newspaper in "Doctorow Pushes for ‘Free Culture’". He mentions Wikipedia briefly:
- THC: Could you speak a little bit about your attitude towards the online, open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia? Because I know there was some misinformation about your career on there for a while, regarding the relative success of your career, among other things.
- CD: I never actually took that particularly amiss. I think that John Seigenthaler Sr. [Seigenthaler, a former aide to Robert F. Kennedy, wrote a furious editorial after a false biography of him emerged on Wikipedia] mystified a lot of Internet natives, who said “So you found something inaccurate on a wiki? Why didn’t you just change it?”
- As I pointed out before in an editorial response, the difference between Wikipedia errors and errors in the mainstream press is their relative ease in correction. As Bruce Schneier said, the interesting thing about systems isn’t how they perform when they’re working, but how they perform when they fail. When newspapers fail, they perform very badly. When Wikipedia fails, it fails pretty well.
Other articles
In "Nature has Wikipedia in its cites", The Scientist discusses Wikipedia's history, the Nature study of its accuracy, and a few of the ideas Jimbo Wales has for the future.
The Sun Herald in Mississippi also published a balanced overview of Wikipedia in "Wikipedia open to interpretation".
"Wikipedia war over Sue Kelly" in The Times Herald-Record in New York State documents an edit war over the article on U.S. Congresswoman Sue W. Kelly.
The A.V. Club, the non-satirical entertainment section of The Onion newspaper, published "Inventory: Five Truly Useful Websites", putting Wikipedia at number five:
- The ultimate expression of democracy in all its wonderful and awful totality, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that relies on Joe Q. Public for its entries. This is both good and bad. It's good because folks who are passionate about, say, Nikola Tesla, can help provide a comprehensive overview of the inventor's life, complete with references and recommended further readings. Bad because registered users can add an entry to Richard Gere's filmography called The Gerbil Stuffing Club. (And that isn't even funny.) But the users are also diligent police, correcting the entries quickly after they're mangled.
Features and admins
Administrators
Four users were granted admin status last week: Kmf164 (nom), Alex Bakharev (nom), ESkog (nom) and Cohesion (nom).
Featured content
The latest portal to reach featured status is Portal:Tropical cyclones.
Eleven articles were featured last week: Uma Thurman, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Invasion, Arthur Ernest Percival, 3D Monster Maze, Kargil War, Sun, Katie Holmes, Bangalore, 1996 U.S. campaign finance scandal and 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: Sheffield, Raney nickel, History of merit badges (Boy Scouts of America), Panama Canal, Flag of Mexico, Médecins Sans Frontières and History of Portugal (1777–1834).
Articles that were de-featured last week: Freemasonry, Euro, Jazz, Mandarin (linguistics) and Gene.
One list reached featured list status last week: Swedish football champions.
Eight pictures reached featured picture status last week:
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Last week in servers
Server-related events, problems, and changes included:
- 21 February — srv38 restarted to stop segfaults
- 21 February — sq9 assigned an external ip, taking over Wikimedia image squid duty
- 22 February — All remaining Wiktionaries set $wgCapitalLinks to off, pages moved to lowercase lettering as necessary
- 23 February — Search indexes resynced
- 24 February — Old files removed from benet due to space restrictions
- 26 February — Mailing lists moved from zwinger to goeje
- 26 February — OTRS moved from ragweed to goeje
- 27 February — $wgThumbnailEpoch updated to allow missized images to rerender
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee closed three cases this week.
Sortan
A case brought against Sortan was closed on Saturday. As a result, Sortan was warned regarding Wikistalking Jguk. Jguk, the complaining witness, was banned from editing any page or article to change era notation, an extension of a provision in his November 2005 case. Both Jguk and Sortan were heavily involved in edit warring over era notation. Sortan left Wikipedia on 22 December 2005, shortly after the case was opened. Jguk went on a wikibreak on 5 February 2006.
Tommstein
A case brought against Tommstein was closed on Sunday. As a result, Tommstein's ban, imposed by administrator NicholasTurnbull, was endorsed by the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, Central was placed on probation and personal attack parole, and Duffer1 was warned regarding civility and edit warring. The dispute, which primarily involved articles relating to Jehovah's Witnesses, was marred by personal attacks and failure to assume good faith.
WebEx and Min Zhu
A case regarding the articles WebEx and Min Zhu was closed on Monday. As a result, both Larvatus and Henryuzi were banned from editing any articles relating to WebEx or Min Zhu and his daughter, and placed on probation. Additionally, FeloniousMonk was admonished not to use administrative tools and warnings in content disputes that he is involved in, and FCYTravis was admonished not to use the "rollback" button in content disputes. Both Larvatus and Henryuzi were involved in strong point of view editing on the articles.
Other cases
A case was accepted this week involving Agapetos angel (user page). It is in the evidence phase.
Additional cases involving Tony Sidaway (user page), editors on Shiloh Shepherd Dog, and Bible verses are in the Evidence phase.
Cases involving Lapsed Pacifist (user page), Jason Gastrich (user page), users IronDuke and Gnetwerker, Instantnood (user page), Leyasu (user page), Boothy443 (user page), Dyslexic agnostic (user page), and Zeq (user page) are in the voting phase.
A motion to close is on the table in the case involving VeryVerily (user page).