Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-06-14
Pending changes goes live, first state-funded Wikipedia project concludes, brief news
Please note that:
- This is only a trial and will need community consensus to be continued after that.
- Edits by autoconfirmed users are automatically approved except in some rare cases.
- The ability to review other users' edits is going to be granted liberally using automatically generated database reports.
- The editing process has not changed. An edit cannot be "rejected", besides being reverted as usual.
- Pending changes may be applied only in the same circumstances as usual protection, as determined by the protection policy, and will be limited to 2000 articles for the trial.
Pending changes goes live
The trial of the new pending changes system (see last week's Signpost coverage) will go live at 11pm UTC on June 15 (accompanying notes illustrated); the technical infrastructure was put in place on June 14 and will be switched on to start the trial. Details about the trial are available here.
A new help page, still in the process of being perfected, is here. Some diagrams explaining the terminology are here. Policy related to the new feature is described at Wikipedia:Pending changes.
The announcement on the Foundation's blog tried to dispel possible assumptions that the feature represented a move towards tighter editorial control on Wikipedia, emphasizing its potential to replace existing page protection instead:
- Over the next few days, English language Wikipedia users may notice a small change on some articles: a little magnifying glass where a lock once was. The icon, on the upper right corner of the article, represents an important step that Wikipedia volunteers have taken to open up articles that were previously protected from editing.
See also the Signpost's backgrounder on the history of the extension (An extended look at how we got to flagged protection and patrolled revisions, August 2009) and other Signpost coverage dating back to 2006. This week's In the news notes some early media coverage published hours before the projected start of the trial. For a technical perspective on the upgrades, see this week's technology report.
Wikimedia Foundation endorses open-access petition to the White House; pending changes RfC ends
28 May 2012
The future of pending changes
16 April 2012
The pending changes fiasco: how an attempt to answer one question turned into a quagmire
29 August 2011
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
11 October 2010
French million, controversial content, Citizendium charter, Pending changes, and more
27 September 2010
Page-edit stats, French National Library partnership, Mass page blanking, Jimbo on Pending changes
13 September 2010
Pending changes analyzed, Foundation report, Main page bias, brief news
6 September 2010
Pending changes poll, Public policy classes, Payment schemes debate, and more
23 August 2010
Collaboration with the British Museum and in Serbia, Interaction with researchers, and more
21 June 2010
Wikipedia better than Britannica, Pending changes as a victory of tradition, and more
21 June 2010
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
14 June 2010
Pending changes goes live, first state-funded Wikipedia project concludes, brief news
14 June 2010
Hoaxes in France and at university, Wikipedia used in Indian court, Is Wikipedia a cult?, and more
14 June 2010
"Pending changes" trial, Chief hires, British Museum prizes, Interwiki debate, and more
7 June 2010
First state-funded Wikipedia project concludes after three years
The very first publicly funded project to improve Wikipedia articles concluded recently on the German Wikipedia. It had been started three years ago with the goals of improving coverage of renewable resources (in German: "nachwachsende Rohstoffe", abbreviated "Nawaro") and recruiting external experts to contribute to Wikipedia. Due to its pioneering character, it received a fair amount of attention by international media at the time (see also 2007 Signpost coverage).
The project was funded by the Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e.V. (FNR), a government agency concerned with renewable resources, with means from the German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV). It was directed by the private-sector Nova-Institut. The German Wikimedia Chapter was a partner in the project.
Two longtime Wikipedians who had been employed in connection with the project, Achim Raschka and Denis Barthel, recently published a wrap-up in the Kurier (the Signpost's sister publication in the German Wikipedia). They concluded that the goal to improve content had been fully met – all in all, 557 articles were edited over the course of the project, 434 of which were started or substantially expanded by it. They expressed some disappointment regarding the goal of recruiting external experts as Wikipedia contributors: Although there had been considerable interest and much effort had been made to support such experts, few sustained contributions resulted. (To compensate, in 2009 members of Nova-Institut's own team became involved more directly in editing.) On the other hand, the project was very successful in motivating the German Wikipedia community: Two "Nawaro-Marathon" article drives were well attended, and the "WikiProjekt" founded at the start of the initiative is expected to remain active.
The FNR's total budget for the project seems not to have been published, but Wikimedia Deutschland, which employed a Wikipedian (Barthel) during the time – tasked with interfacing between the experts and the community and with assisting new authors – recorded 35,248.80 Euro in expenditure with respect to Nawaro in its 2007–2009 annual reports, in essence covered by project funds[1]. At Nova-Institut, several employees were involved in the project, including Raschka.
Briefly
- The team of four people hired to work on the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy initiative (funded by a $1.2million grant from the Stanton Foundation, which also financed the usability project) has been announced. They are Annie Lin, LiAnna Davis, Sage Ross (who recently departed as the Signpost's editor-in-chief; see last week's issue), and Amy Roth.
- In a post titled Usability: Why Did We Move The Search Box?, the Wikimedia Foundation's user experience (UX) team addressed "[t]he single most frequently expressed concern about the changes we’ve made" in the recent modification of Wikipedia's user interface.
- English language reports have recently been published by Wikimedia chapters Wikimedia Deutschland (March 2010, April 2010[2]) and Wikimedia Sverige (May 2010), and by the Catalan Amical Viquipedia association (May 2010).
- Following the "Backstage Pass" tour of Wikipedians at the British Museum (see last week's Signpost coverage), User:Witty lama (Liam Wyatt) has written a blog post summarizing the outcomes of the event, also mentioning the first submissions for the museum's featured article prizes: Backstage Pass and its achievements. He also gave an interview to Culture24 (a British website covering galleries, libraries, archives and museums): Talking GLAMs, the British Museum and low hanging fruit with Wikimedia's Liam Wyatt.
- The log of the IRC office hour on June 11, 2010 with the Wikimedia Foundation's legal counsel Mike Godwin has been posted.
- On June 14, Wiki Academy Israel 2010 took place in Tel Aviv.
- Registration for Wikimania 2010 opened on June 14, less than four weeks before the start of the conference on July 9 (for previous Wikimanias, this interval was longer). Some additional information about accommodation was still forthcoming.
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Hoaxes in France and at university, Wikipedia used in Indian court, Is Wikipedia a cult?, and more
French politician falls for Wikipedia hoax
A hoax article on the French Wikipedia made it into international news last week. According to a report in The Times, the article about "Léon-Robert de L'Astran", supposedly a traveller, scholar and shipowner born in 1767 in La Rochelle, stayed on the French Wikipedia for three years and duped many. The most notable victim was Ségolène Royal (the 2007 French presidential candidate for the Socialist Party), who on May 10, the national anti-slavery day, extolled de L'Astran's opposition against slavery in a comment on Facebook (which she removed after realising the hoax). As of June 14, tourists in La Rochelle were still offered to take La Route de L'Astran named after the nonexistent local hero.
The article (which did not cite any sources in the May 9 version that is still available from Google's cache) was based on an invention by a member of the Rotary Club of La Rochelle, according to Sud-Ouest [3]. Outside France, the case was also covered by major newspapers in Austria and Italy.
Jimbo interviewed about use and abuse of Wikipedia in education
Jimmy Wales was interviewed on the June 9 episode of The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Tech Therapy" podcast, discussing among other things the use of Wikipedia in education and the importance to teach media competence. Wales described various successful and unsuccessful examples of Wikipedia assignments. At one point (starting around 4:20) he was asked about the Edward Owens hoax, an article that had been written in 2008 by a class at George Mason University at the instruction of history professor T. Mills Kelly, and was picked up by a USA Today blog and other media. (In the headline of an earlier article about the case, the Chronicle had summarized the professor's approach as "Teaching by Lying".) Wales said he had not been aware of the case, and that it was "disappointing [to] hear that it comes from a professor", questioning the ethics of Kelly's teaching method: "To ask students to deliberately hoax Wkipedia is a very bad thing ... If you are in a class to train security guards for banks, you don't send the class out to rob a bank. It could be a learning experience, yes, but it's probably better to say, here's a list of 50 cases of bank robberies that went wrong, let's go through each one ...". In a blog post titled Really? Really, Really?, T. Mills Kelly hit back at "Jimmy", advising him to read the earlier debates about the case (both on his blog and in the deletion discussion), arguing that they "quickly move away from the vandalism-is-annoying oversimplification".
Death hoax erroneously attributed to Wikipedia
Last week, false rumors about Russell Crowe's death spread on the Internet and briefly made their way into the Wikipedia article about the actor, too. This led RadarOnline [4], the Los Angeles Times [5], Austrian newspaper Der Standard [6] and several user-generated news sites to imply that the hoax had originated on Wikipedia. But according to other sources it had spread on Twitter and elsewhere long before the first such edit that is visible in the article's version history. According to one source, the "Celebrity Fake News Generator" at FakeAWish.com had been used to start the rumor.
Wikipedia cited in Indian court by government lawyer
According to a report in the Indian newspaper DNA, Wikipedia was recently quoted by a government lawyer before the Bombay High Court, adding to the long list of such usages internationally (see "Wikipedia as a court source").
Tarun Tahiliani is an acclaimed fashion designer in India. Earlier this year, he had claimed an exemption as an artist on his income tax for his design work under section 80 RR of the Indian Income Tax Act. "Artist" is not defined under the Income Tax Act. The income tax department rejected this on the grounds that it does not consider fashion design as a part of the fine arts; its lawyer submitted definitions of the terms "design", "art" and "artist" from Wikipedia to argue that it should instead be regarded as an applied art.
The matter finally went to the Bombay High Court, where judge DY Chandrachud asked, "How reliable is Wikipedia? Isn't it subject to user modification?" The opposing party cited definitions from Webster's dictionary and a Sanskrit text.
Interestingly, Wikipedia's article on fashion design currently defines it as "the art concerned with the application of design and aesthetics to clothing and accessories."
Police report filed over derogatory remarks on Wikipedia
As reported by the Straits Times [7], the Hindustan Times [8] and AsiaOne [9], a Singaporean student of Indian origin has filed a complaint with the police after insulting remarks about himself and a fellow South Korean student were inserted into the Wikipedia article about his school, the Tampines Junior College, on June 11. The school's staff removed them from the article, which is presently semi-protected. The version history of the article lists several deleted revisions added between May 30 and June 11.
Is Wikipedia a cult?
In a June 7 InfoWorld article named The High Priests of Wikipedia, Wikipedia was described as one of "Six more tech cults" (the other five being the Slashdot, Singularitarianism, Drupal, OS/2 and open source communities). The article identified the page Wikipedia:FAQ as the cult's "[h]oly scriptures" and Jimmy Wales as its "[p]atron saint". The author Dan Tynan wrote that "[f]or internecine intrigue and power struggles, the Wikipedia makes the Vatican look like a coffee clatch", with administrators as "the Wikipedian equivalent of the College of Cardinals". Tynan cited from an interview he had conducted with writer Sam Vaknin, published recently in Global Politician under the title The Wikipedia Cult (which was also recommended by Larry Sanger, whom Vaknin refers to as "the Wikipedia's real visionary"):
- This is not an informal network: It is completely rigid with a hierarchy, titles, job descriptions, remits, and responsibilities.
Tynan introduced Vaknin as "author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited and other books about personality disorders." Snopes has noted that "Dr. Vaknin is careful to include a disclaimer on his web site stating that he is 'NOT a mental health professional' (his CV lists a doctorate in philosophy from the unaccredited Pacific Western University)".
In 2006, after an article about Vaknin had been deleted and User:Samvak had been blocked (for sockpuppet activities involving the article Narcissistic personality disorder and other topics related to Vaknin's work), Global Politician had published an earlier article by Vaknin that was critical of Wikipedia: The Six Sins of the Wikipedia (see also a rebuttal by Ta bu shi da yu). In 2007, Global Politician published Vaknin's article Wikipedia - Can Teenagers Write An Encyclopedia?. In a January 2010 article on the same website, titled Positioning the Encyclopedia Britannica (see Signpost coverage), Vaknin granted that although "the data are riddled with errors and do not amount to structured knowledge ... Wikipedia-like online efforts are more than adequate for the needs of the vast majority of users", advising Britannica to cooperate with Wikipedia and "to study and emulate" the model of Citizendium.
Tynan's recent article and interview quoted Vaknin as saying:
- By 2003, the Wikipedia had acquired all the hallmarks of a cult: hierarchy, arcane rules, paranoid insularity, intolerance of dissent, and a cosmic grandiose mission.
Wikipedia researcher Joseph Reagle called the criticism of Wikipedia as a cult "hyperbolic", pointing out that the project did not meet several criteria from cult checklists. He classified Vaknin's criticism as
- a wonderful example of the criticism of WP enthusiasm as a cult or religion, many earlier examples of which I describe in my dissertation.
In his 2008 NYU dissertation about Wikipedia,—to appear in book form later this year—Reagle had examined various kinds of Wikipedia criticism and placed them into a centuries old context of encyclopedia criticism, in a chapter called "encyclopedic anxiety"—also the title of a recent conference talk of his (Summary, slides, video; see also Signpost coverage).
Pending Changes
Hours before the trial of the "Pending Changes" feature was to start at 11pm UTC Tuesday (see this week's News and notes), media coverage began with articles by the BBC (Wikipedia unlocks divisive pages for editing), the Daily Telegraph (Wikipedia rolls out 'pending changes'), V3.co.uk (Wikipedia modifies editing system for controversial pages) and Network World (Wikipedia to unlock frequently vandalized pages). At that time, it appeared that the Foundation had been relatively successful in its efforts to emphasize the feature's potential for easing existing page protection and to dispel assumptions that it represents a move towards tighter editorial control on Wikipedia (which had dominated media coverage of the proposed trial last August, see Signpost coverage: Misleading media storm over flagged revisions).
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Copy Editors' Backlog Drive with a Note From Jimbo
- WikiProject Malaysia has been revived and is searching for more active contributors
- Join the "Talk Page Cleanup Crew" at WikiProject Talk Pages
- Macintosh is the current collaboration at WikiProject Apple Inc. and the project's iOS Task Force is looking for members
- ArticleAlertbot has been down for several months, casting many WikiProjects into a deep sea of despair. If you have experience working with Java, contact Legoktm and tedder to find out how you can help fix the bot
This week, we revisited the folks at WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors (GOCE) to check out their successful May Backlog Elimination Drive. The last time the Report featured the Copy Editors was in October 2007 when the "Guild" was still called a "League" (check out the old article for a brief introduction to the project). The project has recently completed an ambitious month-long backlog elimination drive involving over 8,000 articles tagged with the {{copyedit}} tag or specifically denoted on the project's request page. The May Copyediting Backlog Elimination Drive's 33 active participants hacked away at 1,175 articles, resulting in a net improvement of 760 articles after that month's newly added tags are taken into account. Participants received barnstars based upon the total word count of the articles the participant copyedited. Special awards were given to the participants who copyedited the most articles, had the highest total word count, and fulfilled the largest number of special requests. After seeing such a strong reaction from the Wikipedia community, the project has decided to hold a second drive in July. We interviewed the drive's coordinators noraft, S Masters, and Diannaa. Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales also dropped by to say a few words.
Are you pleased with the results of the Backlog Elimination Drive?
- noraft: For a first drive, I am pleased, as we had 33 active participants, no major catastrophes, and learned as we went. However, subsequent drives are going to require better participation in order to really get the backlog under control. Before the drive, it stretched back to 2007. On Wikipedia, over 400 articles are tagged with {{copyedit}} each month. This Backlog Elimination Drive saw the copyedit tag removed from 1,175 articles. During the course of the drive 415 articles were added to the backlog, giving the Backlog Elimination Drive a total of 760 articles removed. At that rate, if we held a drive every other month with the same level of participation, it would take over a year and a half to clear the backlog. That's way too long in my opinion. I don't believe there are only 33 editors out there who are copyediting for Wikipedia. My challenge is to find the rest and motivate them.
- S Masters: WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors has a request page, which had a sizable backlog of its own. There were 62 articles dating back to February 2009, and this was a cause for concern as the credibility and confidence in the work of the Guild was at stake. I am particularly pleased that the drive completely cleared this backlog to a manageable number of just three articles. One of the big accomplishments of the drive is that it has restored confidence in the ability of the Guild to assist editors who are trying to further raise the quality of their articles.
Walk us through some of the planning for the Backlog Elimination Drive. What preparation took place before the drive began and how much work was left after the drive ended?
- noraft: It came together pretty fast, with my initial concept to the start of the drive being less than three weeks apart. I participated in the April 2010 Good Article Backlog Elimination Drive, and thought that the model could be used with lots of different projects. So I cloned it, modified it, and deployed it. To walk you through the planning:
- On April 9, I floated the idea at the WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors talk page. There was immediate support, and we began to kick the idea around a bit.
- On April 11, I cloned WikiProject Good articles/GAN backlog elimination drives/April 2010 in my userspace, and started refitting it for use with our drive.
- Between April 11 and 13 we discussed some of the ways our drive would need to be different. For one thing, there are both copy edit requests (people who specifically petition the Guild of Copy Editors for an article to be copyedited, commonly when a GA or FA reviewer says the article needs copyediting) and there are articles tagged with {{copyedit}}. Also, articles are of many different sizes, and it isn't fair to give the same credit to a 400 word article as a 12,000 word article. So we had plenty to discuss and eventually came up with a model that worked well.
- On April 18 I moved it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/May 2010, and we began limited marketing efforts, which were greatly assisted by use of AutoWikiBrowser. Marketing is really the most time intensive part.
- After the drive was over, we had to put out a final newsletter, check the math of the participants, and bestow the awards.
Did you encounter any unexpected problems during the drive and if so, how did you solve them?
- noraft: While there were no mission critical issues, there were a couple bumps in the road. One is that some editors were racing through the various award levels, which only went up to 40,000 words. I was afraid that when they earned their highest award, they'd stop. This was solved by 1) creating a special, very exclusive award at the 80,000 word mark; and 2) awarding the prestigious Guild of Copy Editors' Gold Star Award to the top copyeditors in three categories: most requests, most articles, and most words. This helped motivate a few super-editors that copyedited HALF of the drive's total articles between them. A second problem was that editors got into the habit of "claiming" articles. While this in itself is not problematic, sometimes they wouldn't actually work on the article claimed, and more than a couple articles never got finished because of this. That will be solved by some policy changes during the next drive. We also learned a lot with the drive. For example, editors reported being very motivated by the graphs, which were provided by S Masters. I also learned that the project is best coordinated by multiple people (in case someone has to go away) and that they should have clear responsibilities. So I deputized Diannaa and S Masters to help out about halfway through and they did a fantastic job.
- Diannaa: We will be adding some charts to our home page to help editors plan their workload. They are a great visual aid.
When attracting editors for the Backlog Elimination Drive, how important were the drive's awards? Would you recommend other projects create similar incentives to increase participation? What other methods did you use to advertise the initiative?
- noraft: I think the awards are very important. It shouldn't be hard to get your first barnstar in Wikipedia, as long as you put in some work that is worthy of recognition. Far too much worthy work goes unrecognized. I observed discussions between editors involved in the April 2010 Good Article Backlog Elimination Drive, who talked about how they commonly edited as many articles as necessary to get to a certain award level that they wanted to achieve. That's really what I did as well. People like the feeling of attainment. It makes them proud of the work they've done: they served the encyclopedia and have a token of our appreciation for that service.
- I think the backlog elimination drive is a good model for almost any kind of backlog. Elements of it (i.e. "Do X and get award Y") are also directly used by WikiProjects to encourage participation. For example, WikiProject Military History gives out the "A-Class Medal" to participants who have made a significant contribution to three or more military history A-Class articles promoted since August 1, 2008. An ambitious project could even do a promotion drive, awarding points for each article promoted during a particular month.
- Regarding our marketing efforts, I notified every member of the Guild of Copy Editors of the drive on their user talk pages. We also announced it here in The Signpost and on a few talk pages where we thought interested parties might be. I also invited Jimmy Wales, as I believe if people saw his name on our participation list, they'd be thrilled that in a small way they got to directly collaborate with him on a project. Plus he's an apologist for "quality over quantity," and this drive truly seeks to improve quality, so I thought it might be of interest to him. I have even more comprehensive marketing ideas for the next drive, which begins July 1.
Now that the Backlog Elimination Drive is over, what projects will the Guild of Copy Editors focus on next? How can a new member contribute to the Guild's goals?
- SMasters: As the aim of the Guild is to raise the quality of articles in Wikipedia, our ability to really make a difference is dependent on the strength of our numbers. We will need a break from the Backlog Elimination Drive, and will use this time to recruit and motivate people who are interested in the craft of copyediting. There is a good demand for professional copy editors, not just in Wikipedia but also in the real world. As such, the development of any copyediting skills is extremely useful. The Guild is more than happy to assist those who have not had much experience in copyediting, and will also help raise the copyediting skills of all its members to a professional standard. For the remainder of the year, the Guild will concentrate its efforts in raising its profile and awareness among Wikipedians. There are many ways new members can contribute. Regardless of whether you are a novice or professional, you can work on a wide range of articles that will match your skill set. You can also receive coaching from more experienced members if you ask. So, if you feel that copyediting is something which will be rewarding for you, do join us at the Guild — you can be assured of a warm welcome.
- Diannaa: One does not have to be a professional editor to improve Wikipedia articles. Anyone with a good command of the English language will be able to find articles that can be improved with their skill set. As more experience is obtained, higher profile and more complex articles can be attempted.
Following the success of the May Backlog Drive, WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors will be hosting another backlog elimination drive in July. As of 20:00 UTC on May 13, a total of 50 editors have already signed up for the July Backlog Drive. Among those editors is Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Jimbo dropped by to share his thoughts with us.
Why did you decide to participate in the July Backlog Elimination Drive? What role do the drives and collaborations sponsored by WikiProjects (competitive or otherwise) play in improving Wikipedia as a whole?
- Jimbo Wales: I was excited to learn of the elimination drive last time around, and figured I should do my part in July. To the outside world, Wikipedia seems to appear through magical chaos, but we know better: it's through the efforts of thoughtful people getting organized, rolling up their sleeves, and getting something done.
- In addition to being good for Wikipedia, though, I think this drive simply sounds like fun. I hope to be working something completely random and - more or less by accident in the process - learn about something that I know little about. This is one of the great intellectual joys of Wikipedia: random learning!
Next week, the entire world will be saved by Bono. Until then, do your part by rocking the archive.
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Approved this week
TFOWR (nom) was promoted to administrator.
The following seven featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article:
- Portrait of a Lady, a small oil-on-oak panel executed around 1460 by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden
- Halkett boat, either of two types of lightweight inflatable boat designed by Lieutenant Peter Halkett during the 1840s
- Ashford v Thornton, an 1818 English legal case in the Court of King's Bench that upheld the right of the defendant, on a private appeal from an acquittal for murder, to trial by battle
- Loihi Seamount, an active undersea volcano located around 35 km (22 mi) off the southeast coast of the island of Hawaiʻi
- Mycena haematopus, a species of fungus in the Mycenaceae family, of the order Agaricales
- Sargon of Akkad, an Akkadian emperor famous for his conquest of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th and 23rd centuries BC
- Sydney Newman, a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s.
Promoted and former featured pages
Eight articles were promoted to featured status: Madonna (entertainer) (nom), Transandinomys talamancae (nom), Indiana class battleship (nom), River Parrett (nom), Harris Theater (Chicago, Illinois) (nom), Rock Martin (nom), William Ellis Newton (nom) and Ninja Gaiden (Nintendo Entertainment System) (nom).
Eight lists were promoted to featured status: List of Lincoln City F.C. seasons (nom), List of National Treasures of Japan (archaeological materials) (nom), List of international cricket centuries at the Kensington Oval (nom), List of Major League Baseball batting champions (nom), List of Washington & Jefferson College buildings (nom), List of Record Mirror number-one singles (nom), List of accolades received by The Hurt Locker (nom) and List of Plymouth Argyle F.C. seasons (nom).
One portal was delisted this week: Portal:Mars (nom).
Media features
Eight pictures were promoted to featured status:
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| Ernest Hemingway | Fresco in the Saint Paulin Church | Heath fritillary | ||||
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| Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image of cloud cover on Earth | Military recruitment poster for the United States Navy | Würzburg Residence | ||||
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| Alpine Fault | Highway 401, the busiest highway in North America, was closed during the 2008 Toronto Propane Explosion |
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Arbitration Report
The Arbitration Committee opened one case and closed none this week, leaving two open.
Open cases
- Climate change (Week 1): This case was opened as a result of several related Arbitration requests concerning the same topic matter being merged into one case and a related request for comment on the matter failing to make headway. Special rules of conduct were also put in place due to the nature of the dispute. Currently in the evidence/workshop phase.
- Race and intelligence (Week 2): The case was opened to examine accusations of incivility, disruptive editing, and tag-teaming in order to control the content on articles related to race and intelligence. Currently in the evidence/workshop phase.
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Bugs, Repairs and Internal Operational News
Pending changes goes live
The technical basis for the pending changes trial went live in parts throughout June 14. Developer William Pietri described how the changeover would take place in a Wikimedia techblog post:
| “ | This new configuration requires new features, which in turn required substantial code changes to Flagged Revisions. For technical reasons, we can’t release that code just to the English Wikipedia, so we will upgrade all copies of Flagged Revisions in use on Wikimedia Foundation projects. Happily, that will result in a number of minor improvements for all Flagged Revisions users. We believe this won’t cause any trouble, but if bugs do crop up, we’d like to hear about them. Our team will be standing by, prepared to fix any small issues immediately, or roll back if there are any big problems. |
” |
In the event, there were no catastrophic errors, though a number of significant bugs - some related to the English Wikipedia's chosen setup, others not so much - needed to be ironed out before usage of the system on the English Wikipedia could begin.
For a non-technical perspective on the developments, see this week's news and notes. Bot operators may also like to take a look at some ideas for new pending changes-related bots here.
Page view statistics broken and fixed
For a while this week page view statistics (collected officially but most commonly viewed on external tools like http://stats.grok.se ) were much lower than expected (up to 80 or more percent so). A number of possibilities were suggested for why this might be, but ultimately the answer lay in the amount of filespace available to the recording software. User:Midom has now reported the problem fixed. It is unlikely that any fix would apply retrospectively, but new dates will be recorded correctly.
In brief
Note: not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at time of writing, or may not in fact be scheduled to go live for many weeks.
- Bug #5210 has been closed as fixed, allowing for proper handling of <noinclude> when a page is being preloaded.
- Revision deletion is no longer the default 'enter' action on administrators' page histories (bug #23747)
- Revision 67975 has gone live, meaning Wikimedia no longer uses the form validation facility built into HTML5. Support for it remains patchy among web browsers, meaning that virtually all users were receiving a worse, rather than better, experience by utilising it. The feature can be turned on again when HTML5 achieves mainstream support.
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