Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-09-13
Page-edit stats, French National Library partnership, Mass page blanking, Jimbo on Pending changes
Global page-edit statistics
Erik Zachte has posted an analysis of page edits on all Wikipedias by region (on his Infodisiac blog, a site dedicated to Wikimedia statistics). The analysis, similar to an earlier one focusing on global page views (see 18 January Signpost), was based on a 1 in 1000 sampling of Wikipedia's squid logs, and excludes known bots and web crawlers. While not perfectly accurate, the analysis does reveal several important editing trends:
- On average, Wikimedia projects received 2000 views per edit in July 2010.
- The breakdown according to global region is similar between edits and views, but there were striking differences within the statistics: Europeans contribute 51% of edits and 35% of views, whereas North Americans contribute 23% of all edits and 38% of all views. A respondent to the blog post suggested that the relatively mature stage of the English Wikipedia may cause its edit rate to be lower than those of foreign-language Wikipedias.
- Of all Wikipedias, the English Wikipedia received 51% of page views and 41% of page edits.
- North America, Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, and a few associated countries account for 81% of total views plus edits, with 46% of the world's internet population and just 19% of the world population.
- Monthly requests from China are 10 times lower than average (one in 10 views and one in 14 edits) than its population would suggest, given the average for Asia.
- In India, 94% of page views and 78% of edits of all Wikipedias are for the English Wikipedia.
Wikimédia France partnership with the French National Library
In April, the French chapter Wikimédia France signed an agreement with the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF, the National Library of France), to make about 1,400 public domain books from their digital library Gallica available for Wikisource (see 12 April Signpost).
A team of three volunteers from Wikimédia France then retrieved high-resolution image files (in the lossless but bulky TIFF format) and OCR files from the BnF, and produced DjVu files that were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons in July. The heavy compression used in conversion of image files to DjVu resulted in a substantial loss of quality. Since the support of TIFF was imminent (see Signpost coverage in April and August), all of the original, high-resolution TIFF files were uploaded on Wikimedia Commons at the end of August, for future reference.
The BnF's OCR files, which indicate the position of each word and all graphical elements such as illustrations in the books, allowed extraction of more than 22,000 image files, although many of them may be useless (detection errors, mere black lines), of limited interest (stamps, vignettes), or duplicates, and thus require human review before a mass-upload to Wikimedia Commons. Nonetheless, many interesting images, such as educational diagrams, novel illustrations, scientific schematics, portraits, and maps, were obtained. The team is currently investigating the possibility of making the files available to Wikisource contributors.
- Sample of image files obtained (JPEG version, since TIFF is still not deployed)
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Map of the battlefield between the Mincio and the Adige during the French Revolution (in 1796) -
Device to measure the elastic force of vapor (1854) -
Portrait of the 18th-century French actor François-Joseph Talma -
Average daily number of marriages in Switzerland by month, from 1906 to 1910.
Mass blanking of copyright violations
Darius Dhlomo, a Wikipedia contributor with more than 163,000 edits dating back to 2005, has been indefinitely blocked for extensive copyright infringements. Following debate on the user's talk page, the incident was transferred to contributor copyright investigations. Copy-pasted articles brought to light numbered almost 10,000 creations and possibly 25,000 infringements. Consensus was established for the automated mass blanking of all confirmed and suspected infringements by the user (about 17,000; see Task explanation) – roughly 10% of his article edits. Most of the articles are very short tabular stubs with little prose, explaining how they were not noticed for so long.
Manual repair efforts faltered due to the sheer number of articles. According to Uncle G, managing administrator and coder of the bot responsible for the mass blanking, the infringements were "on quite a large scale, and with a regular pattern." All articles created by Darius Dhlomo are now suspect and need to be reviewed for potential copyright infringement. The bot will roll back every article to the version immediately prior to Darius Dhlomo's first edit, based on a master list generated by VernoWhitney. The articles he created will not be deleted, but the bot will blank the page completely.
This short-term solution to the problem was announced on the project-wide watchlist notice; the long-term solution will require that editors review the copyright infringements and turn them into proper articles. The hope is that this Signpost article can help spread the word about user involvement in resolving the issue. Uncle G says this mountain can be moved "by a thousand teaspoons all digging together."
Jimbo weighs in on the Pending changes poll
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
Jimbo Wales has made an Announcement about Pending Changes, having been asked to interpret the results of the Pending changes poll for the Foundation. Wales said his intent was to communicate the community's desires to the Foundation and not to act as a final authority on the matter. There is "absolutely no consensus for simply turning the system off and walking away", he said, citing the result of the poll (65/35% Support/Oppose, despite the large number of contributors who opposed the structure of the poll itself). He conceded there has been substantial, vocal, and articulate opposition to using a system of this kind at all, or to using it in its current form, and addressed three concerns:
- Openness: "I believe Pending Changes, used properly, can make Wikipedia more open if used on pages that would otherwise be put under some other form of protection." He acknowledged that while he had hoped that Pending Changes would make it possible to open up articles like George W. Bush and Barack Obama for anonymous edits, the trial had shown that for these particular pages "the workload of vetting edits and the polluted edit history weigh greater than the benefit of the system." However, he continues to believe that the system is useful for opening problematic pages to unrestricted editing, and should be further refined and tweaked for that purpose.
- Effectiveness: On doubts about effectiveness, Wales said the results indicate that there is still much to learn. Noting that PC does not work as well on high-traffic pages, he said it seemed to be effective on such articles as those dealing with current events. Referring to supporters' suggestions that the feature could be applied to determine if a page is eligible to be moved from semi-protected to unprotected status, he said it all argued for further careful exploration of the tool.
- Complexity: In response to complaints about the system's complexity—particularly the user interface—he agreed that the current iteration was "rough around the edges", but was hopeful it would integrate better with user experience over time, and work like traditional page protection now. On this basis, he has already asked the foundation to keep Pending Changes enabled, to streamline the interface, and "to increase the hard-coded limit of pages as the performance characteristics of the system allow it." He suggested a six-month waiting period, and proposed inviting opposers to provide feedback in the hope that by "working together, we can build a system and policies that have even broader support, similar to page protection and user blocking today."
Wales also took part in the ensuing discussion and responded to the comments on his page. Community members expressed their views following his statement on their concerns, suggesting an alternative straw poll for the future and discussing ways to resolve the issue in the meantime. Wales proposed a quick poll to determine what to do pending the availability of version 2.0, saying he has asked the Foundation for a firm schedule and will report back when he hears from them. The two proposed options for the poll would be to stop using the feature altogether or use it only on an evaluation basis. Rob Lanphier from the Foundation has advised that he will make a timeline available by September 17.
Briefly
- Chief human resources officer hired: The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the hiring of Cyn Skyberg for the position of "Chief Talent and Culture Officer" (CTCO). She will be responsible for the coordination of Wikimedia's human resources and organizational, developmental, and recruiting strategies. The position was originally advertised as "Chief Human Resources Officer" but was renamed so as to show "a strong focus on helping Wikimedia grow and sustain an organizational culture consistent with its values."
- Three Chapter reports published: Three Wikimedia Chapter reports, for Hungary, for Argentina, and for Hong Kong, have been published. The Hungarian report covered the first ever "WikiCamp" (see earlier Signpost coverage), Conference organization, several grants, media and social media coverage, and contact with a group of librarians "who want to start an initiative to systematically improve Wikipedia content on the topics they find important." The Argentinian report covered several representative and board meetings (including one with representatives of Buenos Aires), the bicentennial of the start of the Argentine War of Independence, the third anniversary of Wikimedia Argentinia, media coverage, and other topics. The Hong Kong report covered the third annual Anniversary Conference, involvement in liberal studies, annual fundraising preparations, the Wikimedia Asia Conference, and the General Assembly.
- Wikimania Committee?: Discussions have begun on a possible Wikimania Committee, kick-started by Seddon. Active participants had "floated the notion" that there should be an oversight committee for several years; interest was reignited during the run-up to this year's Wikimania (see Signpost coverage).
- Gadget installation statistics have been published for the English Wikipedia.
- CGDO on India: The log for the August 31 IRC Office hours with Barry Newstead, the Wikimedia Foundation's Chief Global Development Officer, have been posted. A large part of the conversation related to the Foundation's plans in India, which Newstead is visiting this month to prepare the opening of the first Foundation office outside the US (see last week's "In the news").
- Movement roles workgroup: As reported in last week's "News and notes", the WMF Board (re)formed a Movement roles working group in its July meeting. The group is tasked with "clarifying the roles of different parts of the Wikimedia network and movement", with the goal of drafting a "Wikimedia Charter". It held its first conference call last week; a summary has been posted on Meta.
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Public Policy Initiative, Houellebecq plagiarism?, Article revisions as book
Colleges get serious about Wikipedia writing skills
An article in Inside Higher Ed ("Wikipedia for credit"), also published in USA Today ("Editing, enhancing Wikipedia becomes project at colleges") reported on the Wikimedia Foundation' Public Policy Initiative, which involves nine college professors across the US who have incorporated into coursework the use of their students' knowledge to make contributions to Wikipedia. (See earlier Signpost coverage: "Introducing the Public Policy Initiative", "Public policy initiative announces advisory board, starts training campus ambassadors", "Public policy initiative announces participating classes", or this week's piece about the project's experiments in assessing the quality of articles.) LiAnna Davis, a Wikimedia spokeswoman, says "we've known for a long time that students are the fuel of Wikipedia.... We feel that there is a place for Wikipedia in the classroom."
Inside Higher Ed quoted one of the participating professors, Rochelle Davis from Georgetown University: "I'm tired of my grad students saying, 'All we ever do is critique and discuss and deconstruct.' So I’m going to make them create something that's not just a thing for me to read; it’s going to go out into the community." She and several other people involved in the project were reported as saying that contributing to Wikipedia might prompt students to be more meticulous than if their work was to be read only by their instructor. The Wikimedia Foundation intends to recruit 15 more professors by the northern spring, and in the longer term to work towards widening the scope of the Initiative beyond the subject of public policy.
Houellebecq defends himself against charges of Wikipedia plagiarism
French writer Michel Houellebecq has reacted to a report by Slate.fr that charged him with plagiarizing Wikipedia in his new novel (see last week's "News and notes"). As reported by The Independent ("I stole from Wikipedia but it's not plagiarism, says Houellebecq"), he "does not deny that he copied technical descriptions from the anonymous compilers of Wikipedia", but defended it as an established literary technique that he had used influenced by authors Jorge Luis Borges and Georges Perec, and rejected the charges as a "skilled insult": "Using a big word like plagiarism... always causes some damage. It will always do lasting damage, like accusations of racism." Slate.fr defended its initial article, only conceding that it should not have put both plagiarism and Houellebecq in its title - two words whose capacity to generate controversy in the literary world it compared to Godwin's law. It also said that despite Houellebecq's apparent "admiration" for Wikipedia, he seemed not to have been aware of its NPOV principle, according to another passage in his novel about the French Wikipedia's article on TV presenter Jean-Pierre Pernaut.
Article revisions made into twelve-volume book set
As noted in The New York Times' "Bits" blog ("The Story Behind a Wikipedia Entry") and other media reports, James Bridle, who founded "Booktwo", a website dedicated to the future of literature and the publishing industry, has made the version history of the Wikipedia article Iraq War (12,000 revisions made between December 2004 and November 2009) into a set of physical books (twelve volume containing almost 7,000 pages). In a blog post ("On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography"), Bridle explained that the project was related to his recent talk at the "dConstruct 2010" design conference and said that
- [Wikipedia is] not only a resource for collating all human knowledge, but a framework for understanding how that knowledge came to be and to be understood; what was allowed to stand and what was not; what we agree on, and what we cannot. ...
- And for the first time in history, we’re building a system that, perhaps only for a brief time but certainly for the moment, is capable of recording every single one of those infinitely valuable pieces of information. Everything should have a history button.
In 2006, the web site Baghdadmuseum.org had published a set of three e-books consisting of over a thousand pages from Wikipedia discussions related to the article Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, see Signpost coverage.
Briefly
- Anthere (Florence Devouard), who in 2004 became one of the first elected Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation and served as its Chair from 2006 to 2008, was interviewed by blogger Haegwan Kim recently. Among other things, she remembered the early years of the organization ("It owned three servers, there was one bank account and I think we owned the domain name Wikipedia.org ... no staff, no office, nothing") and the decision to use fundraising instead of advertising to finance Wikimedia.
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Experiments with article assessment
- User:Sross (Public Policy) is Sage Ross, the Online Facilitator for the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative. As a volunteer, he edits as User:Ragesoss.
I've been working on Wikimedia's Public Policy Initiative team for a little over three months. The level of interest and enthusiasm we've seen from university professors and volunteers interested in the Wikipedia Ambassador Program has been gratifying, but we still have a long way to go before coming anywhere close to realizing the full potential of all the good will and interest among experts who don't (yet) contribute.
One of the great challenges of this project is assessment: how can we measure the degree to which the project is improving Wikipedia? We're working on three assessment projects within WikiProject United States Public Policy, each of which is relevant to the broader issue of content assessment in general on Wikipedia.
An optional new assessment system
First, our quality assessment system (WP:USPP/ASSESS). Like many other WikiProjects, the U.S. Public Policy project has implemented its own variation on the standard Wikipedia 1.0 assessment system (in which articles are rated as Stub, Start, C, B, GA, A, or FA-class). The basic idea of the new system is to use weighted numerical ratings for six different aspects of article quality: comprehensiveness, sourcing, neutrality, readability, formatting, and illustrations. The system's rubric defines the different scores and how they translate into the standard Wikipedia 1.0 classes. There are several advantages: (1) it contains a specific weighted rubric, (2) it offers more detail on the areas that need work, (3) it provides numerical data for quantitative analysis, and (4) it is backward-compatible with the standard system. We hope it will also prove easier to learn and produce more consistent ratings. The downside is that it's more complicated, and we have yet to reach a critical mass of active reviewers trialing it.
The Wikipedia 1.0 scheme, which was originally pioneered by WikiProject Chemistry, succeeds to a large degree because of its simplicity. Experienced Wikipedians develop a good feel for the stages of improvement articles typically go through, and the 1.0 scale codifies those stages. It provides a quick way to mark the quality of individual articles and a blunt measurement of how quality is changing over large groups of articles, and even across the whole of Wikipedia. However, the system is not easy or intuitive for newcomers to pick up. Although simple from an experienced editor's perspective, the system has nuanced definitions of what, for example, makes a B-class article different from a C-class article or a Good Article; these definitions can be bewildering for those who haven't absorbed Wikipedia's norms. Like our core policies and guidelines, the 1.0 assessment system squeezes a lot of Wikipedia culture into a small package. The goal of the public policy system is to unpack that culture, making more explicit what Wikipedians expect from high-quality articles. We believe this explicitness may reduce some of the inconsistency in the 1.0 system, as well.
Rating the ratings
A second and closely related effort is the plan by our research analyst, Amy Roth, to test how consistent Wikipedia's article ratings are. We are assembling a small team—a mixture of Wikipedians and non-Wikipedian public policy experts—to periodically rate and re-rate a random sample of public policy articles. Amy will measure how closely results from our system match the standard ratings, how much ratings vary from person to person, how well the ratings can account for changes in article quality, and whether outside experts' assessments differ significantly from those of Wikipedians. Amy's test may shed light on the inconsistency of assessments in the middle ranges of the standard scale, particularly Start, C, and B-class.
Recruiting for the assessment team has gone poorly so far, but we have plans to run a watchlist notice to attract more attention to assessment efforts (as well as potentially enlarging the group of Online Ambassadors to keep pace with the expanding number of students who will be participating in Wikipedia assignments).
Input from readers
The Public Policy Initiative will test a new Article Feedback Tool. Beginning 22 September, the feature will be enabled for most of the articles within WikiProject United States Public Policy (it will not be enabled on the most trafficked articles to avoid overtaxing the servers). Editors interested in seeing the extension in action on particular U.S. public-policy-related articles should ensure the articles are tagged with the project banner, {{WikiProject United States Public Policy}}, and assessed with the WikiProject's numerical system.
This pilot is also part of the Wikimedia Foundation's longer-term strategy to explore different mechanisms of quality assessment. The potential upside of reader ratings is straightforward: we may be able to get a large number of ratings, and with a largely external audience judging quality (as opposed to Wikipedians judging their own work). The potential downside is also clear: non-experts may submit low-quality ratings, or there may be attempts to game the system. The rating tool includes a small survey that will complement the collected data.
Together with the technology team, we will test the technology, analyze the data, and continue discussions about how a reader-focused rating and comment system might be used in the next academic term in the Public Policy Initiative, as well as on Wikipedia more broadly. I'm personally very excited about the possibility of creating a robust system for reader feedback, and I hope this test sparks serious discussion about what such a system should look like. A set of Questions and Answers regarding the feedback tool, as well as a general discussion page about it, will be available soon.
If you're interested in any of these assessment experiments, please join WikiProject United States Public Policy, or sign up for Amy's assessment testing team.
Reader comments
Update on the Death Anomalies collaboration
- WereSpielChequers is an editor on the English Wikipedia and occasionally elsewhere. He has been actively involved in various Biography related projects this year and collaborated with Bot writer Merlissimo to launch the Death Anomalies project.
Just over a month ago, The Signpost published a story on the Death Anomalies project, which identifies anomalies where different language Wikipedias disagree as to whether an individual is dead or alive. The Project was started in June, with initially just the German and English language Wikipedias extracting reports of anomalies. Since then, the Latin, Swedish, and Slovenian Wikipedias have joined in, and hundreds of errors have been resolved. When The Signpost covered the project, readers pitched in and the number of anomalies on enwiki was slashed from 447 to 190 in just over a week. EN wiki still has more than a 100 anomalies on Wikipedia:Database reports/Living people on EN wiki who are dead on other wikis, with new reports coming in daily. However, most of the backlog is down to differences in the way different projects treat missing people who (if alive) would be more than 100 years old, cross-wiki anomalies stemming from unreferenced articles showing a person as dead, and issues that probably require a native foreign-language speaker to resolve.
In July, only two projects were extracting data from the table, though it queried data from around 70. Subsequently these have been joined by the Swedish Wikipedia which rapidly reduced 94 anomalies to 16, and the Latin wikipedia, which has managed to reduce its anomalies to one. Earlier this month the Slovene Wikipedia became the fifth participating project, and went in a week from requesting a report to having cleared their backlog.
Biographies of living people (BLPs) inevitably need to be updated when the subject dies, so all these reports are expected to be ongoing maintenance tasks. Although the bot is processing data from millions of biographies across different Wikipedias, fewer than a thousand anomalies have been identified so far, relying on Interwiki links and categories that identify biographies as dead or living. Some projects are ineligible for the program because they don't organise their articles in such a way; for example, the Portuguese Wikipedia have lists of people who died in particular years (rather than categories).
In the future, the number of languages from which data is extracted and number of languages requesting reports will hopefully increase; we have 66 Wikipedia language versions including French, Spanish, Japanese, Polish and Russian for whom reports could be extracted almost immediately. Merlissimo (whom Jimbo Wales praised as a "rock star" for his work on the project) has a bot that updates the reports daily, and is willing to produce reports for other projects.
User responses
| “ | The Swedish Wikipedia is fertile ground for a project of this kind. After some years of rapid growth in the number articles, attention swung to quality and structure in 2008. Biographic articles were exhaustively categorized by gender in the [northern autumn] of 2008, revealing that there are four male biographies for each female one, and by years of birth and death in 2009. This is also when the category for living people and a WikiProject for living people were started. The "death anomalies" report was set up as a subpage to this WikiProject, named "possibly deceased" people.... The Swedish Wikipedia has also benefited from Check Wikipedia, a daily report of wiki-syntax errors, and would welcome similar projects. (LA2) | ” |
| “ | Although the Latin Wikipedia (la.wikipedia) uses a language with a long history, a large portion of its articles cover modern topics, including (of course) BLPs.... [Of] about 44,000 articles available in the Latin wikipedia today, about 4300 (roughly ten percent) are BLPs. The death anomalies table adds an extra level of reliability to BLPs on the [English, German, Swedish and Latin Wikipedias]. It is great to see more and more tools are available that permit semantic checks and analyses of information ... the future is not just isolated wikitext articles, but a flexible repository of semantic information. The death anomalies table shows a glimpse of what might be possible in the future, when we will have at our disposal not only (wiki)text but also rich, usefully structured information and data. (UV) | ” |
| “ | The Slovenian Wikipedia has a relatively large proportion of biographies, of which there are more than 8,000 in BLPs (almost 10% of total article count). Many of those articles have been added semi-automatically and we have a small community of active contributors. Consequently, [many articles] aren't regularly maintained, which is why this tool will certainly prove extremely useful for easing the burden of keeping the content up-to-date. This means less work when the focus shifts from adding content to improving the quality one day, and improved reliability of the work until then. (Yerpo) | ” |
| “ | The German Wikipedia has more than 340,000 articles about people that include machine-readable data usable by external projects. The local report covers all people (not only living people) and is forwarded to 150 WikiProjects filtered by subject area. The script runs on the toolserver and uses the sun grid engine for efficient resource handling. About 1.9 million interwiki relations are checked every day for creating reports on five Wikipedias. (Merl) | ” |
Reader comments
Getting the picture – an interview with the Graphic lab
- WikiProject Bhutan is looking for more editors to help expand and improve Bhutan-related articles.
- The Guild of Copyeditors September Backlog Drive is only 200 articles away from eliminating all copyedit tags from 2008. Help wipe out these old copyedit requests and earn a barnstar along the way.
- Valued pictures is looking for help reviewing nominated images.
This week we met up with five wikigraphists—members of of the Wikipedia Graphics Lab. We chatted with JovianEye, Begoon, Fallschirmjäger, Gringer and Orionist.
Unlike a conventional WikiProject, the Lab does not work with articles – only images, grouped into three "workshops": one for illustrations, one for photographs and one for maps. When the project started in 2006, requests were all grouped in one area, as the Graphics lab. Since then, the three separate workshops have been created, focusing people with relevant skills on the specific area they can work on rather than having to look through all requests. However, this sometimes means keeping watch on three different pages, each with a lower level of activity, as well as the sister project on Wikimedia Commons.
The project is in need of more people requesting improvements to photographs. However, there is a backlog at SVG creation requests, and a shortage of skilled editors in this field. With only a few regulars, notably veteran requester Chris, the Lab is only scratching the surface of the 7 million files on Commons alone. The addition of the 'Top 4' feature at the start of this year, a set of images requiring vectorisation at the top of the page that are changed every 48 hours, has helped in encouraging progress and getting through more files.
The project would also like to encourage beginners to become Wikigraphists by learning to use simple freeware applications, GIMP and Inkscape. Simple tasks such as cropping can be learned by just about anyone. They can try their hand at removing borders or captions of some of 80,000+ images donated to Wikimedia Commons by the Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives).
The graphists
Jovianeye made his first request at the illustration workshop in January this year, and describes himself as having a ‘basic skill level’. He has since also made contributions to the Photography workshop. For him, the main problem that the project has faced was when Fred the Oyster, a professional graphist who volunteered almost every day, was blocked indefinitely. Fred's contributions to Wikimedia Commons can be found here. Jovianeye was influenced to join the project because the requests at the Graphic lab did not need a long-term commitment and because they could “be handled by anybody with a beginner skill level.” Without a background in graphics, it's “merely an interest”; he grins and says that “even the word hobby is too strong!” Since joining the Graphic lab he has been inspired to learn the basics of open source vector graphics editor Inkscape.
Begoon became active about three months ago. He does a large number of SVG conversions for WikiProject Scouting, which, he says, can often be interesting because they have a huge number of images, in various conditions, from all around the world and different time periods. He enjoys learning about places and times as an offshoot from taking on these requests. Begoon is a programmer and web designer, so deals with graphics on a daily basis. He is more skilled in the programming aspect [of web designing] but being independent, has to do graphics work. The requests in the lab are often challenges that help him to develop new skills and techniques, while learning how others approach a task. He thinks it is a “good way to hone his skills”. The project suits his free time pattern, too, "because you can take on as many, or as few, requests as time permits”.
Fallschirmjäger started work in the project back in April 2008 (see the archives), although editing images is his main area of contribution since he joined in 2006. He works mainly in the Photography section of the lab, but often helps out around the Illustration and Map workshops. He has worked on many files in both Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. For him, the main problem is a lack of skilled editors, particularly in the Map Workshop. Although Fallschirmjäger did try to write articles when he first joined, he soon found that it wasn’t really for him, and turned instead to image editing, although he still contributes occasionally in writing and minor text-related edits. He has used Photoshop and other multimedia software for some time, and has also recently completed a degree relating to the field.
Gringer discovered the Graphic lab about a month or so before February 2009, although he admits he had been patching up a few images since January 2007, for instance File:Real grounds 1000.svg. He likes the split of the Graphic lab into different workshops, even though this is occasionally ignored by requesters who notice that particular categories have better turnaround times. More requesters are needed, he says; as each requester has a particular area of interest, and he feels that the project is not seeing a representative sample of graphics that need fixing. Gringer found that cleaning up images was something he could usually do quickly. He says he's very much a “hobby wikigraphist”, but tries to create his own images for presentations he makes. He often uses sources such as Wikimedia Commons and openclipart which give him practice with Inkscape.
Orionist took his first request in May. He first worked on photographs, but is now concentrating on illustrations, because there’s more need for his skills and the photography workshop is very well covered by editors. Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons have been an invaluable resource for his work, where he could get images that were not available on any stock photography website. He is still an active editor on Wikipedia, but finds that images require much less time than article editing, with his busy daily schedule.
Individuals' goals for the project
Fallschirmjäger wants to expand into the other two workshops. Currently, he works with bitmap images—his main area of expertise—but he would also like to help out with vector images. He thinks that a set of advice or tutorials would be a worthwhile undertaking to try to get more people involved in the project. He thinks other projects aren’t always too concerned by images in articles within their scope, yet they can add a lot of value to the text. He wants to see more activity in the project and more involvement with other editors and projects. One of Gringer’s goals is to try to find some free, up-to-date database of country/administrative region borders and an accompanying script, so people can generate SVG maps of any region in a few different projections. He has noticed there are a lot of variations in sources used for maps that in some cases have automatically dried up. When Orionist completes a request, he takes a look at its article and Wikimedia Commons category to see if there are any related images that need to be edited in the same way. Thus, some requests have evolved into personal projects.
What help is needed?
Jovianeye feels the Map Workshop needs more volunteers, to prevent requests from becoming stale. Both the Illustration and Photography workshops are doing well, he feels, however the participation of more Vector graphists is needed at times. The project does have highly skilled professional graphists, but they are not always on hand to deal with requests. Begoon tries to extend his involvement in the Graphic lab from Vector images to photographs as well, since he wants to gain expertise in a wide range of image editing skills. He agrees with Jovianeye that the Map Workshop needs more help and intends to explore the skill-set involved in Map editing soon. Fallschirmjäger also thinks the Map Workshop needs assistance. More work is done in the other two workshops because even the hardest of requests generally take no longer than a few hours. Working on maps requires a certain amount of research to ensure that the map’s labels and boundaries are correctly detailed. This is largely why there is a backlog of requests and a lack of willing volunteers. Gringer notes that it would be nice if librsvg had better SVG support, which is an issue with Wikimedia Commons, not the Graphic lab. Then volunteers wouldn’t have to spend so much time debugging SVG files so they look nice on Wikipedia. Fonts, he says, are “a frequent problem—Arial is pretty much the only one that works.” He says advocacy could help the project, both for more requests and for more wikigraphists. Orionist says more people need to be made aware of the lab’s existence. He points out that he has been on Wikipedia for four years but only recently found out about the lab. He suggests featuring it more prominently in help pages, running an ad on Wikipedia, or posting messages on talk pages of articles with retouched images ("This image has been retouched/made in the graphics lab!" or a similar phrase).
Volume
Each of the guys has altered many images while members of the project: Jovianeye has altered at least 50 images in the Illustration Workshop and at least 10 at the Photography Workshop. However, just like an edit count, this number can be meaningless. Certain requests require a great deal of effort and can easily be equivalent to doing 10 simple requests! Begoon's image edit count is somewhere between 150 and 200. Fallschirmjäger says he has made edits to hundreds, if not thousands of files. He also adds that since requests range from a simple crop or rotation to full-blown image manipulation and creation, the time spent to get each right can vary significantly.
Tips to requesters
Gringer says: “Requests are fulfilled in my own spare time, and I don't get paid for it. If I think something will take too long to do, then I won't do it, so anything you can do to make that process easier for me (e.g. finding good source images) can increase the chance of a successful conversion.”
Next week
Next week we'll inventory Wikipedia's rolling stock. Until then, board the next coach headed toward the archive.
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An image created by Blender which is used for the creation and editing of 3D images.
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"Magnificent" warthog not so cute, says featured picture judge
New administrator
The Signpost congratulates BigDom (nom) on his promotion to adminship. Hailing from Lancashire, UK, he has experience in copyright and fair use; the various deletion processes for articles, templates, categories and files; new-page patrolling; and speedy-deletion tags. He is a long-standing member of WikiProject Football.
Featured articles
- Trafford Park (nom), the world's first industrial estate, and still the largest in Europe. This former deer park became one of the most important engineering complexes in Britain. (nominated by Parrot of Doom and Malleus Fatuorum).
- Mesopropithecus (nom), an extinct lemur from Madagascar (Visionholder).
- USS Massachusetts (BB-2) (nom), the second "real" American battleship (Yoenit).
- SMS Westfalen (nom), one of Germany's first dreadnought battleships (Parsecboy).
- Ian Meckiff (nom), a retired Australian cricketer from the 1950s and 1960s (YellowMonkey).
- Armero tragedy (nom), the second-deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, in 1985, which caught nearby towns in Colombia unaware, despite warnings to the government some three months before (ceranthor).
- Shield nickel (nom), the first actual "nickel" (five-cent coin), struck from the same copper-nickel alloy used today. The design had a troubled 17-year life before its replacement (Wehwalt).
- Fridtjof Nansen (nom), described by nominator Brianboulton as "one of the most significant European figures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sportsman, scientist, explorer, diplomat, statesman, Nobel laureate – a giant of his times, a story well worth the telling." (Choice of the week, picture at right)
- Pig-faced women (nom). We leave readers to ponder this excerpt: "Once shaved, the drunken bear would be fitted with padded artificial breasts, and dressed in women's clothing and a wig" (iridescent) (picture at right).
- The Author's Farce (nom), the first theatrical success of English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding, in 1730 (NocturneNoir).
- Saxaul Sparrow (nom), a small bird from Central Asia (Innotata).
- Ambrose Rookwood (nom), somewhat showy individual, one of the conspirators in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. Nominator Parrot of Doom says the story deserves telling "if only to highlight how naive he was to have thought that it could ever have worked."
- Rivadavia class battleship (nom), two ships which were constantly entangled in drama before they were even put into service, but were quickly forgotten and made obsolete. (Ed).
- Honório Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná (nom), a Brazilian statesman of the early 19th century (Lecen).
- Suillus brevipes (nom), a slimey yet edible mushroom (Sasata).
- Battle of Gonzales (nom). Readers might at first be puzzled that "one side took time out from firing their weapons to eat watermelon. The other side were under orders not to fight and went home", according to nominator Karanacs' teaser.
- Wood Siding railway station (nom), another in the Buckinghamshire collection of railway articles by (Iridescent).
- Kent, Ohio (nom), a small city in the US (JonRidinger).
Choice of the week. The Signpost asked FA nominator and reviewer Hamiltonstone to select the best of the week:
| “ | What a challenge! This week presented a great distillation of biological scholarship (Mesopropithecus and Suillus brevipes); an infobox that is comprehensively researched and almost as long as the article itself (USS Massachusetts (BB-2)); gripping accounts of a great conflict at sea (SMS Westfalen) and an amusingly inconsequential one on land (Battle of Gonzales). Some beautiful illustrations (Saxaul Sparrow, Honório Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná); there's drama and sporting yarn (Ian Meckiff). It is good to see high-quality coverage of major topics that might not otherwise be well-known (Armero tragedy, a deadly volcanic eruption and Colombia's worst natural disaster). The surprisingly little text on the Kent State shootings in Kent, Ohio is an excellent example of ruthlessly applying summary style whilst ensuring comprehensive coverage of a geographical location.
My three finalists were all great: one comparatively well-known (Fridtjof Nansen), one comparatively obscure (Trafford Park), and one probably almost unknown in the Anglophone world, (Honório Carneiro Leão, Marquis of Paraná). In the end, while I laud the fabulous work casting light on those lesser-known stories, I chose the gripping telling and excellent illustration of Nansen's remarkable life. Plus he has a smouldering sexy look in the lead photo. |
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Two featured articles were delisted:
- Silverpit crater (nom) (sourcing and lack of updating)
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (nom) (sourcing and copyright)
Featured lists
- Lady Gaga discography (nom). As of August 2010, Lady Gaga has sold more than 51 million singles and 15 million albums worldwide (nominated by Chasewc91)
- Kesha discography (nom). Kesha's song "Tik Tok" topped music charts in 11 countries (L-l-CLK-l-l)
- Joan Gamper Trophy (nom) an annual Catalonian friendly football competition held in August. FC Barcelona has won 34 of the 45 competitions thus far (Sandman888 and Djln).
- List of Commando raids on the Atlantic wall (nom) conducted mostly by the armed forces of Britain and the Commonwealth. The largest raid involved 10,500 men (Jim Sweeney) (Choice of the week; picture at right).
- Plymouth Argyle F.C. Player of the Year (nom), voted for annually by the association football club's supporters. Carl Fletcher is the most recent recipient (Argyle 4 Life).
- List of Seattle Mariners first-round draft picks (nom). Of the 40 players selected in the first round by the Mariners, 16 have been pitchers, the most of any position (Courcelles).
Choice of the week. We asked FL nominator and reviewer Sandman888 for their choice of the best (disregarding their own, of course):
| “ | "I picked List of Commando raids on the Atlantic wall as my choice of the week. Not only does it tell an interesting story of World War II and how the British Commandos had a string of operations in France and Norway, but its gallery of live shots enhances the visual appeal. | ” |
One featured list was delisted:
- List of birds of Cuba (nom: referencing and lead section)
Featured pictures
- Maggie Roswell (nom). Maggie Roswell is an American film and television actress and voice artist, best known for her voice work on the Fox network's animated television series The Simpsons (created by Tommy Collier of Empire).
- Les dernières cartouches (1873) (nom), one of the most famous paintings depicting the Franco–Prussian war; iconic in France (created by Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville).
- Qianlong in ceremonial armour (nom), ink and colour on silk depicting Qianlong Emperor of China in ceremonial armour on horseback, 1739 or 1758 (created by Giuseppe Castiglione). (picture below)
- Siberian War: Blagoveshchensk (nom). Nominator Adam Cuerden said, "a fine illustration of a largely forgotten aspect of the Russian Revolution: the attempt to stop it. I also like seeing Japanese work of this period, [probably] period where their art is most affected by Western styles." He noted the dynamism of the slightly off-kilter angles, and its bright, luxuriant colours (created by Shobido & Co, Tokyo).
- Lycoperdon pyriforme (nom), a common saprobic species of fungus that grows on decomposing wood (created by Sasata).
- Rubber-tree seeds (nom), seeds of one of the few of more than 12,000 latex-yielding plant species that is suitable for commercial use (created by Luis Fernández García).
- General Colley just before he was killed (nom), an engraving based on on-the-spot reporting of the Boer War by the Illustrated London News, published in 1881 (created by Melton Prior, restored by Adam Cuerden).
- Round up on the Cimarron, Colorado 1898 (nom), an extremely high-resolution photochrom of a round-up, scanned from the original in the Library of Congress and restored by Adam Cuerden (created by Detroit Photographic Co).
- Ngorongoro Panorama (nom). The crater, the animals, safari vehicles and terrain, in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, East Africa (created by Muhammad Mahdi Karim).
- Ego Likeness (nom), a publicity shot of an American darkwave/industrial rock band, created by Kyle Cassidy who according to nominator J Milburn would "love for me to nominate it here. If you're interested to know what they sound like (and it may not be to everyone's taste) they have a a load of videos on YouTube".
- Intricate aerial naval exercise (nom), a spectacular aerial shot of an intricate naval manoeuvre (created by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Miguel Angel Contreras of the US Navy).
- Holbein's The Ambassadors (nom), which holds an important place in the history of portrait painting (created by Hans Holbein the Younger).
- Warthog in East Africa (nom), A wild Warthog in Tarangire National Park; reviewer Muhammad said, "I have never seen one this close" (created by Ikiwaner).
- The Arnolfini Portrait (nom). This famous portrait is much debated and discussed by art historians (created by Jan van Eyck).
- Hawaii: satellite image (nom), a quality demonstration of the macro climate patterns of the archipelago (created by NASA).
- Women in Gondi village, India (nom), Gondi people in the Umari district of India (created by Yann). (picture below)
- Nefertiti bust (nom), a bust of Nefertiti, notable for exemplifying the understanding Ancient Egyptians had regarding realistic facial proportions (created by Xenon77).
- Christy Mathewson, (nom). Christy Mathewson, photographed in 1910 while he was with the New York Giants, was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball.
- Samurai with sword (nom), of a Japanese samurai with sword, ca. 1860, was praised by reviewers for its rarity and encyclopedica value (created by Felice Beato).
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Choice of the week. Muhammad Mahdi Karim, whose specialty is digital photography—especially macro photography and panoramas—is a regular reviewer and nominator at featured picture candidates. We asked him to disregard his own promotion last week in this judgement. He told The Signpost:
| “ | When I watched the Lion King films, Pumbaa the warthog looked quite cute; but little did I know that in reality a warthog was so hairy and intimidating. I was surprised to learn that a female can inflict mortal wounds to a lion to defend her piglets. I had recently been to the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania and I understand the difficulty of taking a picture like this one. Holding a 1.4 kg lens attached to a heavy SLR and taking a sharp, well-focused picture from the rooftop of a safari vehicle is a real feat. The sharply focused animal adds encyclopedic value by showing the typical surroundings of the animal. The slightly out-of-focus background and foreground elements also draw the reader's eyes to the magnificent beast. I have seen very few pictures of this kind, and so it is my choice of the week. [picture at top] | ” |
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Tricky and Lengthy Dispute Resolution
The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases, leaving one open.
Open case
Climate change (Week 14)
This case resulted from the merging of several Arbitration requests on the same topic into a single case, and the failure of a related request for comment to make headway. Innovations have been introduced for this case, including special rules of conduct that were put in place at the start. However, the handling of the case has been criticized by some participants; for example, although the evidence and workshop pages were closed for an extended period, no proposals were posted on the proposed decision page and participants were prevented from further discussing their case on the case pages (see earlier Signpost coverage).
The proposed decision, drafted by Newyorkbrad, Risker, and Rlevse, sparked a large quantity of unstructured discussion, much of it comprising concerns about the proposed decision (see earlier Signpost coverage). A number of users, including participants and arbitrator Carcharoth, made the discussion more structured, but the quantity of discussion has continued to increase significantly. Rlevse had said that arbitrators were trying to complete the proposed decision before last week but it was later made clear that he will no longer be voting on this decision. This week, arbitrators, particularly Shell Kinney, made further additions to the proposed decision and further attempts to manage the quantity of discussion.
Closed cases
Transcendental Meditation movement
Late yesterday, a request for clarification was filed in relation to the enforcement of this case - in particular, how discretionary sanctions should be enforced against editors. The filer, Littleolive oil, has also requested that the revert restriction that was imposed on her by Future Perfect at Sunrise be overturned by the Committee.
Eastern European mailing list
A request was filed two days ago to reimpose an Eastern European topic ban on Radeksz. The proposed topic ban was originally imposed at the conclusion of the case, but was lifted three months ago by the Committee. Skäpperöd, the filer, alleges that Radeksz has "returned to aggressive editing and battleground behaviour". Radeskz responded with an allegation that the filer, Skäpperöd, "regularly...resorts to attempts to have those who disagree with him banned rather than working on resolving the [content] dispute".
Race and intelligence
A request was filed three days ago to impose a topic ban on Ferahgo the Assassin from race and intelligence related articles. The filer, Wapondaponda, alleges that Ferahgo the Assasin is acting as a proxy or sockpuppet for Captain Occam - who was topic banned from the articles. Ferahgo the Assasin denied the allegation and has alleged that her contributions to the articles have been positive, while Captain Occam alleged that Wapondaponda is "drama-mongering".
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Google Summer of Code: Sanyam Goyal
We continue a series of articles about this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with Indian student Sanyam Goyal, who describes his attempt to overhaul the JavaScript component of the "Semantic" series of extensions, along with the core product itself, the "Semantic MediaWiki" extension. The extensions aim to realise the goals of the Semantic Web, where meaning is overlaid on top of content, allowing machines to more easily interpret it, but have not yet been approved for use on Wikimedia projects. Whilst somewhat controversial, the idea of a Semantic Web is considered by some including Tim Berners-Lee to be the future of the Web.
| “ | I aimed to improve and extend the Javascript for Extension:Semantic MediaWiki and some of its spinoff extensions including Extension:Semantic Result Formats, Extension:Semantic Form Inputs, Extension:Semantic Drilldown and most notably Extension:Semantic Forms. This includes transferring over much of the Javascript to use the jQuery JavaScript library, which is now becoming a MediaWiki standard.
In terms of what was accomplished:
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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.
- It is now impossible to commit changes to the Wikimedia/MediaWiki SVN repository without providing a description on those changes (bug #25025).
- The Wikimedia "Office IT" team, responsible for "things like fixing the printers, getting new workstations online, as well as just making sure the internet stays up", have begun to blog on the Wikimedia Techblog.
- Alolita Sharma, Features Engineering Program Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation has confirmed the transition of the remaining 689 mostly smaller wikis to the new "Vector" skin (Wikimedia techblog).
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