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16 November 2009

 

2009-11-16

"Wikipedia Forever" fundraiser begins

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By Phoebe, Pretzels, Dragons flight and Austin Hair
Previous Articles
Fundraiser launches
Fundraiser 2005
21 February 2005
Fundraiser 2006
18 December 2006
Fundraiser 2007
22 October 2007
Fundraiser 2008
10 November 2008

Last week's launch of the annual Wikimedia Fundraiser had a rocky start. Originally scheduled to begin on Monday, November 9, the first sitenotice banners were put up across the global projects on Tuesday evening (PST), only to be taken down again in the early hours of Wednesday due to technical problems. Modified versions of the controversial banners were subsequently restored on Thursday evening, but only to Wikipedia projects.

Launch controversy

The Tuesday start had been delayed because of technical issues, including problems with the new in-house credit card processing mechanism. (All previous fundraisers have used PayPal for credit card processing.)

The campaign began with the "WIKIPEDIA FOREVER" banner displayed as a sitenotice on all projects. The banner had previously been criticized on Meta (see previous article), and after launch it immediately drew more controversy and complaints from Wikimedians, who felt that the campaign's problems included:

The original banner was controversial and ridiculed by some editors
  • The use and message of "Forever";
  • The all-caps text and large size of the banner;
  • The use of the Wikipedia logo on all projects' banners, and the donation page - including non-Wikipedia projects, such as Wiktionary, even though the project name was changed;
  • Some slogans appeared to result in awkward, ominous or threatening phrasing

Other controversies included the campaign's other messages, and whether the community should have been further consulted. In addition, some people objected to the amount of money being paid to the public relations company Fenton Communications to work on the Foundation's messaging. The current drive marks the beginning of an 11-month, $250,000 contract with Fenton to work on improving the Foundation's public relations and public image.

There was discussion on both the English Wikipedia and English Wikinews about removing the banners due to community displeasure with them; as a result of this, at noon (UTC) on Wednesday, English Wikipedia administrator RockMFR hid the central sitenotice on the English Wikipedia by altering Wikipedia's global CSS file. Durova awarded RockMFR a barnstar for this, which was signed by over 20 editors.

However, his action was reverted 15 minutes later by Erik Möller (User:Eloquence), Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, on the basis that "fundraiser sitenotices aren't subject to community consensus".

Technical problems and relaunch

Dutch editor B222 reported that the collapsed banner obscured the entire page in Internet Explorer 8

After two hours Möller himself disabled the sitenotices across all projects. This was due to technical mistakes in the banner code, which resulted in the banner links being unclickable in Internet Explorer, and blanking the entire page when dismissed. Users of custom CSS for underline links were also affected, as the banner code was overriding their settings. Möller said, "This is unacceptable and inexcusable, and I apologize on behalf of WMF for the bad start."

By Thursday morning, several fixes and modifications had been made by the Foundation fundraising team. Thursday's relaunch, to Wikipedia projects only, used four banners as sitenotices with the uppercase text changed to sentence case:

  • "Wikipedia Forever" (33%)
  • "Knowledge Forever, Ad-Free Forever, Wikipedia Forever" (33%)
  • "For your great, great, great, great granddaughter" (16%)
  • "For your great, great, great, great grandson" (16%)

The grandson / granddaughter slogans were discontinued during the first day. According to Head of Community Giving Rand Montoya, they were removed as they did not perform as well as the others. The remaining two slogans then received equal time.

Technical fixes were implemented for various browser compatibility problems and issues with the credit card form. Additionally, the landing pages for international chapters have been improved. Issues with geolocation, used to display the correct local chapter and appropriate currency, caused a good deal of difficulty in the first few days of the campaign; as of Tuesday geolocation was working. An issue with protecting the anonymity of donors was also addressed.

Fundraiser response

After all it's given me I thought I'd give something back.

— Ms. Eanna Kiely, donor[1]

This table shows the statistics for the first five days of the fundraiser, along with the equivalent data for the past two years. Donations to international chapters are excluded from these totals; although 50% of chapter revenue will be reinvested in the Foundation. Figures have been rounded to the nearest dollar.

A live feed of donor comments can be viewed here, and an overview of donations here.

Fundraiser 2009 statistics in comparison to previous fundraisers[2]
Year Day Donations Money Raised (US$) Average Donation (US$) Max Donation (US$)
2007 1 1,738 46,651 29.58 500
2 1,444 40,168 26.84 1,500
3 1,038 27,832 27.82 513
4 1,120 28,882 26.81 1,000
5 963 27,942 29.02 312
2008 1 3,660 97,691 37.14 1,287
2 3,499 97,989 26.69 2,500
3 2,814 76,512 28.00 1,000
4 2,308 65,230 27.19 1,000
5 2,378 69,480 29.22 1,000
2009 1a 568 25,045 44.09 3,000
2b 0 0 0 0
3 984 112,900c 114.74c 25,000c
4 767 27,560 35.93 1,000
5 775 31,087 40.11 1,000

a November 11th data is for a partial day; banners were not visible for the entire period.

b There are no results for November 12th as the banners were disabled for technical fixes.

c According to Erik Möller the November 13th dollar amounts reported online are grossly incorrect due to a problem recording currency conversions with the new credit card processing form.

According to Montoya the fundraising team is working on better public reporting of donation statistics, and expect to have something up this week.

Campaign banners and themes

On Wednesday, Möller posted a page for alternative banners on Meta, which has drawn a number of suggestions. He also left a detailed explanation about the fundraiser and the "Wikipedia Forever" theme:

Möller also noted that at least some community-developed banners will be used, though it takes time to test new banners. He also addressed some of the criticisms of the campaign, and announced that customised banners for non-Wikipedia projects will be rolling out next week.

Early on 17 November (UTC), the banners were adjusted again and "Wikipedia Forever" was reduced to a 20% frequency. More traditional thermometer-style banners are now being shown, with the slogans "Wikipedia. Ad-free Forever" and "Wikipedia Is Powered by People Like You." A slogan from last year "Wikipedia is there when you need it — now it needs you" is also being used. Non-English Wikipedias are featuring "Wikipedia Forever" and two thermometer banners, one about the number of articles and one about the number of users. According to Montoya, the fundraising team will constantly test the effectiveness of different banners against each other and adjust the messages as the fundraiser progresses.

A proposed alternative banner

There are two current pages on Meta for feedback about the fundraiser:

On the English Wikipedia, there are two pages for discussion about the fundraiser:

Outside media coverage of the fundraiser so far includes:

Full story: In the news

And if you're looking to donate, the form is at wmf:Donate.

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2009-11-16

Bulgarian Wikipedia gets a prestigious award

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By Spiritia
Accepting the prize
After the ceremony
BG Site 2009 statuette, awarded to BG Wikipedia

On November 9 2009, the Bulgarian Wikipedia was awarded the special prize for overall contribution to Bulgarian web space by the jury of the competition "BG Site". This recognition comes in the year of the competition's tenth anniversary, and less than a month before Bulgarian Wikipedia's sixth anniversary on December 6 2009.

The prize was accepted on behalf of the Wikipedian community by Spiritia and SilentShout. It consists of a diploma and a statuette, created by the sculptor Ivo Arnaudov. This year, 16 prizes were awarded: 12 in the competition categories, 1 by Microsoft Bulgaria and 3 special awards by the jury. Along with the Bulgarian Wikipedia, a special prize for contribution to Bulgarian web space was awarded to Mr. Bogomil Shopov, a Bulgarian proponent of digital rights and free or open source software.

The founder of the "BG Site" competition, Mrs. Justine Toms, kindly agreed to answer to several questions for the Wikipedia Signpost.

  • What was the motivation of the Jury of BG Site to award this special prize to BG Wikipedia? Is there any connection with Jimmy Wales' visit to Bulgaria earlier this year?
The Jury of BG Site selecting special prize awards consists of 6 experts, well recognised and influential people. Each of them has the task to follow the Internet, to catch important events, websites, people. And a few days before the Awards giving night this experts meet together and everyone makes between 1 and 5 proposals - nominations. Then all proposals are voted and just 3 projects / people get an award. No, I don't think the nomination and the award had to do with Jimmy Wales' visit to Bulgaria. Sure it was so inspiring to have him here and all his lectures were very welcome. But the award for bg.wikipedia.org has much more to do with the great work done by the Bulgarian team of Wikipedia, with the everyday growing content in Bulgarian language, with all the work done pro-bono, the impact and importance of Wikipedia as such.
  • How long since you've been following the development of BG Wikipedia, and Wikipedia in general? What were your very first impressions from Wikipedia and how did they evolve with time?
I follow the development of Wikipedia since the beginning and I am really impressed with its fast development in so many countries, including Bulgaria. I also teach students at the University and very often students start their homework with Wikipedia quotations. Then I try to involve them as well to contribute and say - it is OK if you go to school and copy from Wikipedia, but when you go to the University it is now your time to write it. Not many of them are ready to write, but I am happy if at least few of them do it.
  • Have you edited Wikipedia by yourself and what was your personal experience? What is your advise or ideas for future development and improvement of the content, as well as the look and feel of the site?
Yes. What I do is - looking for missing important topics, such which I feel confident to write about, then I check them in English, surf to find more relevant sources and information and then - I write. For myself I have to go more into details as formatting and linking. The simple look of the site is very good for its purposes, so I don't think it should be changed.
  • What is your vision of how to make Wikipedia more popular and attract more voluntary contributors in future? How do you feel about the online voluntarism and freely licensed content?
I do believe in freely licensed content, as well as I do believe more people have to contribute and voluntary work for such projects. Wikipedia is popular enough. Just more people have to be invited to contribute. Eventually more partners at Universities have to be found - both students and professors. As well more media partners could help with placing banners, inviting more collaborators.

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2009-11-16

Arbitration Committee Election: Several candidates standing

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By Manning Bartlett

The annual Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) elections are now underway. Arbitration is the final stage of Wikipedia's dispute resolution process, and the members of ArbCom are typically experienced and respected project volunteers. The 2009 election will select as many as eight new arbitrators, who will begin their terms on 1 January 2010.

Meet the candidates

Candidate nomination page.

The election process has officially started and candidates can now nominate themselves. Nominations close on 24 November. Nomination is open to any editor in good standing who has at least 1000 mainspace edits as of 10 November 2009, and who is over the age of 18 and of legal age at the editor's place of residence. Candidates are not required to be administrators or to have any other special permissions.

At press time 12 candidates had nominated themselves for this year's election. A comprehensive overview of each of the candidates can be examined at the General Summary page.

Update - 7 new candidates

In the 24 hours since the original article was published a flurry of new candidates has emerged, taking the total to 19. As at 00:01 18 November 2009 (UTC) the new candidates are:

Here are the important dates for the 2009 ArbCom elections:

  • 10 November – Candidate nominations open and the question period commences
  • 24 November – Nominations close
  • 1 December – Voting begins
  • 14 December – Voting ends
  • by 21 December – results announced by Jimbo Wales (expected date)

Requests for comment (RFC)

A set of requests for comment are still underway, examining aspects of the overall ArbCom election process. All Wikipedia editors are warmly invited to participate in these discussions.

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2009-11-16

Kiswahili contest, new advisory board members, Foundation-l and more

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By Sj, Hiding, Austin Hair and Phoebe

Google sponsors a Kiswahili Wikipedia article-writing contest

An international outreach team at Google, in collaboration with the Swahili Wikipedia, is sponsoring a Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge. This is an article writing contest for university students, especially targeting universities in Kenya and Tanzania who have expressed interest in fielding student teams. Swahili Wikipedians involved include Mohammed George, Ndesanjo Macha, Oliver Stegen, and Samuel Klein.

The contest will run from November 25 until January 15, 2010. Participants receive points for new Swahili articles they created based on their quality. The top individuals and universities can win a laptop or a mobile phone, and participants who create at least 10 good articles will receive a certificate of participation. As of November 15, seven universities had registered to field official teams, and roughly 200 students had signed up to participate. University workshops introducing students and teachers to Wikipedia and the benefits of editing will be run this weekend in Nairobi (by Ndesanjo) and Dar es Salaam (by Ndesanjo and Mohammed). Individual registration will remain open for a while longer.

Craig Newmark, Domas Mituzas join WMF advisory board

Craig Newmark

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.org, joined the Foundation's advisory board this week. He was invited to be an advisor "because of his work as an innovator and evangelist and his understanding of Web-based communities".[3]

Former Wikimedia Trustee Domas Mituzas, a tech-team member and database engineer at Facebook, also joined the advisory board, bringing the total number of advisors to 17.

Foundation-l shut, re-opened

The mailing list for Wikimedia Foundation issues was closed to general discussion for nearly a week. Brion Vibber placed the list on emergency moderation after a discussion about the recent departure of a Foundation staffer devolved into an argument over acceptable use of the list, followed by a rapidly growing series of personal attacks.

List administrator Austin Hair announced his intent to leave the list on moderation, temporarily limiting posts to official announcements only, and renew the discussion on Meta about improving the quality and usability of the list.

Later that week, Austin and fellow administrator Ryan Lomonaco announced that the list would again be open to general discussion, with the following changes:

  • Individual moderation will be more readily used to enforce civil, productive discussion on the list. As deemed appropriate by the moderators, individuals will temporarily see their posts held for review before being sent to the list. Two posters, Thomas Dalton and Will Johnson, were put on moderation with the initial announcement.
  • A "soft" 30 message per month limit will be imposed, with those reaching the limit put on moderation; their posts will be reviewed and passed on at the administrators' discretion.

It is the hope of the list administrators that these changes will improve the signal:noise ratio of Foundation-l, making it a more productive forum than it has been recently.

New guidance on copying within Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia was tagged as a guideline on November 11 by User:ThaddeusB. The page offers guidance on how to attribute the original author when copying text from one Wikipedia page to another. The guidance was largely written by User:Moonriddengirl, User:Flatscan, User:FT2 and User:MLauba. The impetus came from a discussion between Flatscan and Moonriddengirl, with Flatscan asking whether "a page named something like WP:Copying within Wikipedia would be useful? It would isolate the editing action from the motivation (e.g. merging or splitting) and move discussion away from Help talk:Merging, which is only relevant sometimes."

The pair worked on the page in Flatscan's user space, before moving it to Project space on October 7. After the page was promoted to Guideline status, a number of users queried the status change on process grounds. TenOfAllTrades responded "the discussion had an open policy RfC tag for two weeks before the unanimous close: [4]. The draft was also announced here at about the same time: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 68#Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia."

Briefly

This week in history

2009-11-16

German lawsuit, Jimbo interview and more

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By Hiding

Germans file suit against Wikimedia Foundation

British broadsheet The Guardian and American paper the New York Times report that two German citizens, Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber, have filed a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation in a Hamburg court. The Guardian reports that the two men are convicted murderers who wish to regain anonymity, noting that "Germany's courts allow a criminal's name to be withheld in news reports once they have served a prison term and a set period has expired." This puts German law into conflict with US law, which allows a greater freedom of speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. While the German Wikipedia has already removed the names of the two men, the English Wikipedia still publishes their names in the article on the victim, Walter Sedlmayr. The New York Times reports that "Wikimedia questioned the relevance of any judgments in the German courts, since, it said, it has no operations in Germany and no assets there".

France 24 interview Jimmy Wales

On 13 November, France 24 published an interview with Jimmy Wales, in which Wales commented on the Usability Initiative, which he hoped would "attract more users", and the implementation of Flagged Revisions, which Wales was hopeful would "be implemented in December."

Fundraiser coverage

The launch of this year's fundraiser (see full story) has garnered online press coverage. TechCrunch reports that despite having a no ads policy, Wikipedia was displaying "house ads reiterating the policy that Wikipedia will never have ads. But they clearly are ads." A number of commentors on the story pointed out that the fundraiser was an annual event, and the article was amended accordingly. Venture Beat reported on the higher target the Foundation hoped to achieve this year, writing that "it's settings its sights higher this time, with a target of $7.5 million."

Softpedia quoted Wikimedia executive director Sue Gardner's words on how the money would be spent, which Gardner had posted to the Wikimedia blog: "That money will go towards technology and people — the servers and bandwidth required to operate the site, and the staff of 30 people who keep it running".

Briefly

2009-11-16

Wiktionary interview

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By OhanaUnited
God knows which logo will we be using...

This is an interview about Wikimedia Foundation sister projects. The aim is to help Wikipedia editors understand these projects, with the hopes that more will be interested in participating.

This week, the Signpost invited Dominic to explain Wiktionary.

Can you describe what is Wiktionary? What is its history?

Wiktionary is a dictionary, though it also includes material that might typically be found a thesaurus, a rhyme book, and other similar language-related references. Wiktionary is the first sister project, founded in 2002. Also, more languages have their own Wiktionary than any other sister project. Unusually, the highest article count among Wiktionaries is held by a non-English edition, the French Wiktionary. And, in terms of total content pages, both the French and English Wiktionaries are larger than all other projects besides the English Wikipedia. Both Wiktionaries are each quickly nearing 1.5 million total content pages. However, because Wiktionary pages can have any number of definitions in any number of languages on them, that measure does not actually mean all that much (it is estimated that the English Wiktionary actually outpaces the French one in terms of definition count). Also note, as a bit of trivia, that Wiktionary is the one content-oriented sister project that does not start with "wiki-".
One major development in Wiktionary history was when the projects switched from first-character capitalization to first-character case-sensitivity. The decapitalization of Wiktionary (or "decapitation," as some of its detractors called it) initially faced opposition on the English Wiktionary, and around 25 other projects had already voted for and implemented case-sensitivity before the English Wiktionary, in early 2005, voted in favor of case-sensitivity. This caused the need for considerable cleanup to put everything in the right place (like all of the things that are properly capitalized, and had been automatically decapitalized in the move). By now, all Wiktionaries are case-sensitive by default. The change was prompted by Wiktionary's unique need for precision in page titles, because of the linguistic implications for changes in letter case. The distinction between words like "analyse" and "Analyse" turns out to be rather important, especially in a multilingual dictionary where a language like German (which capitalizes nouns by convention) coexists with English. As well, even in English, it is common for capitalization to distinguish completely different words, especially proper nouns from common nouns (cf. "afghan" vs. "Afghan").
Precision also leads to another peculiarity of Wiktionary: the aversion to redirects. Page titles on Wiktionary are sacred, and not used to disambiguate words spelled the same but with different meanings, or in different languages. Instead, all senses of all words in all languages that share a particular spelling go on the same page, with different language and part of speech headings to separate them. And whereas on Wikipedia you would expect common alternative spellings and misspellings and different forms of words to redirect you to the article you want, on Wiktionary, generally these forms are either common enough (attestable) that they merit their own entry for that form, or not included at all. "color," "colour," "colors," and "colored" all have separate linguistic existences; similarly, "friend" and "freind" both have their own entry, despite the fact that one is commonly considered a misspelling for the other (the entry is marked as such, of course). In any case, many misspellings or word forms are also valid words in their own right, often in different languages, and a redirect at that page title would prevent the addition of those other meanings at that spelling. Capitalization is also an issue of proper spelling for words like "pH."

What is the purpose of Wiktionary? Any aims and objectives?

Wiktionary is a multilingual dictionary, which means that each Wiktionary seeks to encompass all words in all languages, defined in that project's language. For example, the English Wiktionary will have an entry for all words in English, Azeri, Mapudungun, Zulu, and every other language, giving their definitions (or translations, if non-English), etymologies, pronunciations, synonyms, and so on, in English. The French Wiktionary also seeks to include all the same words, but by defining and describing them in French, and translating the non-French words into French.
In my opinion, Wiktionary is actually the most ambitious project currently envisioned by the Wikimedia Foundation, which may come as a surprise to Wikipedians. The "all words in all languages" mission is mind-boggling in its scope if you think about it. The Oxford English Dictionary contains over half a million words (counting the various listed derivatives and forms which don't get their own entries) supported by over two-and-a-half million quotations in 22,000 pages. Of course, the OED, while one of humanity's best attempts at a comprehensive dictionary of any language, is quite incomplete: favoring formal over informal language; British, especially English, regionalisms over other regions; well-established words over relatively new terms; print sources and language over electronic ones; in-use language over obsolete; and so on. While Wiktionary lacks many of the OED's entries, it manages to include many English terms that the OED lacks. Many authorities estimate the language has at least a million words. And Wiktionary's goal is not simply all of those, but all words in all languages. While it is likely all or most languages have fewer words than English, the principle that a substantial portion of each language's vocabulary remains undocumented holds true for all, especially for the many languages which lack a strong history of lexicography like English does. With between 5,000 and 10,000 languages in the world, that could mean over 100 million words in living languages alone (which Wiktionary does not limit itself to). And while we have a ways to go, a recent New York Times article noted that the OED adds around 1,000 new words every year, while we have just about doubled every year—meaning adding more than half a million pages in 2008 alone.

I see that Wikipedia often contains the definition of a word already. How is Wiktionary different from other projects?

If you look at a well-made Wiktionary entry, you will see major differences between how Wiktionary goes about defining words and how Wikipedia would. Wiktionary, as a dictionary, is concerned with linguistic information and relationships, not cultural ones. You might be surprised to see what you find at Tigger and Abraham Lincoln, for example.
One important consequence of this is that Wiktionary has no concept of notability. Officially, the mantra is "all words in all languages" (and by "words," we mean any idiomatic linguistic unit, even if it includes spaces or punctuation, like hot dog and live by the sword, die by the sword). The challenge is not determining the notability of a term, but whether it it is sufficiently used by the language's speakers to be recognized as a word of that language. This is what we call "attestation." This is the reason that Tigger at Wikipedia is about the fictional character, a notable encyclopedic concept, while Tigger is about the word, derived from the character, that entered the English language.
Another difference is the sort of evidence that a Wiktionary entry requires for proper citation. Typically, if a Wikipedia articles needs to define a word, it will simply cite the definition from other dictionaries; anything less would be original research. As a dictionary, though, it is Wiktionary's job to cite its definitions with actual examples of the words in the literature of the source language, not to rely on secondary works. In order to attest a sense of a word, Wiktionary typically requires three or more independent examples spanning more than a year of it being used (and not merely mentioned) in durably archived sources. Wiktionary might end up quibbling with other dictionaries about inclusion or definition because the sources point it in a different direction, and it also includes many, many terms that are not found in any other dictionaries—especially new, vernacular, vulgar, colloquial, and jargon terms. (See cum dumpster and whore's paint.)
For further differences, see above where I discussed case-sensitivity, disambiguation, and redirects.

What do you tend to do on Wiktionary?

I have dabbled in several areas. I don't consider myself particularly great at coming up with definitions, but I do enjoy adding new and interesting words, especially idioms, from scratch. The majority of my content edits are probably in adding Spanish entries and translations. Wiktionary is particularly in need of people with skills in languages outside of English, since the English language is only a small segment of the project's scope. Even common languages like Spanish still have lots of room for growth. I like to doing research, and so citing senses, especially ones that are challenged, can also be interesting.

Ok, I'm the new kid in Wiktionary. What are some of the things that a newcomer can do easily?

There is a tutorial for newcomers. The English Wiktionary's two guiding content policies are the criteria for inclusion (CFI) and entry layout. There is a information desk for asking questions.
Wiktionary can be a good fit for the accomplished word nerd and the mere dabbler alike. It particularly attracts pedants, the linguistics-inclined, polyglots, and coders.
What you do depends completely on your interest. First, remember that even if you are an experienced Wikipedian, there is no shame in asking for help when you are unsure. There always seem to be idioms even in English, especially regional English, that are missing, and so these are often the easiest places to try your hand at creating new entries from scratch. Many people who have a non-English native language should, of course, consider joining that language's Wiktionary, but if you do edit the English Wiktionary, you may find that you can fill your days relatively easily adding new entries and translations. (Foreign-language entries are some of the simplest, since the basic form is just needs the English translation of the word on the definition line, rather than coming up with a definition as English words require.)
There is also room for more new page/vandalism/spam patrollers, of course, if you are that type of person. We get considerably less abuse than Wikipedia, but we also have essentially no automated tools and few regular patrollers.

What's the big fuss about the logo change? It seems like a perennial discussion that just never go away...

Original logo, used by en.wikt and others.

Wiktionary's original logo design (the one currently used on the English Wiktionary), has been a chronic source of controversy. In a way, the concept is clever, since the logo is itself a mock dictionary entry, and so it actually describes the project, while many other attempts to represent a dictionary end up just looking like a clip-art open book (when it's a website). On the other hand, this represents several problems, the main ones being that because it is entirely words, it is not easily transferable or identifiable. When you want to adopt the logo to a new project, you cannot just slap on a shared image; the entire thing has to be translated, creating no single logo image. The English Wiktionary, and the majority of Wiktionaries by number (though not necessarily by content), use this logo, which is the default for new projects.

New logo, used by fr.wikt and others.

As a result, there was an effort to create an improved logo, culminating in the 2006 vote that selected the scrabble tile logo used on the French Wiktionary and several other projects. This logo has the advantage of being more easily adaptable to all the languages, as well as a favicon that is different from Wikipedia. Unfortunately, this effort only compounded the problem by creating a confusing situation in which some Wiktionaries chose to adopt the new logo and others ignored the vote. The new logo turned out to be much less popular with the Wiktionarians, who were expected to use it, than with the people who had designed and supported it on meta, many of whom were not Wiktionary editors. For many Wiktionarians, particularly on the English one, the original logo is bad and the tile logo is worse.

Recently, there has been a renewed effort to fix the logo problem. Many new logo proposals were submitted and a vote is currently envisioned to pick a global Wiktionary logo. It remains to be seen how, if at all, such a vote would occur and if it can avoid the problems of the previous attempt without making it worse.

On Wikipedia we have "Featured Article" to show its best selection of articles. Is there similar scheme for Wiktionary?

Wiktionary has a "Word of the Day" section on its main page that features English words that are considered exotic while still being useful. There is also currently a plan to test a foreign-language word of the day on the expected redesigned main page. However, while a word of the day must meet some basic requirements, it is not the same as a featured article which has been vetted and determined to be the highest quality. Wiktionary entries tend to be more basic than encyclopedia articles. At the same time, no English-language entry has ever really been finished, despite some valiant efforts (like "water"'s multi-gazillion translations, "time"'s 373 derived terms, "stick"'s 56 senses), considering the scope of the project. I am not aware of any real effort, despite occasional proposals, ever to create a process similar to Wikipedia's featured articles, and I am not sure if there ever will be one.

Is there a way that I recognize the best works of Wiktionary?

One way to measure quality of Wiktionary entries is their citations. A good definition will have at least three primary source quotations that demonstrate the word being used in real literature (e.g.: feed a cold). This is, of course, most important for less common words or meanings of words, especially idioms and colloquialisms. As an alternative, particularly for words unlikely to be in dispute, example sentences help differentiate senses and demonstrate usage (e.g. it). Another desirable quality is ample non-definitional data, like pronunciations, etymology, derived and related terms, synonyms and antonyms, translations, and so on.Wiktionary does not have a formal approval or vetting process, though any word can be challenged to verification at requests for verification, and will be removed if not attested properly.

Does the project have any plans to promote itself or recruit more members?

I'm trying! :-)
If you are interested in getting involved, feel free to talk to me or ask on the information desk (the equivalent of the help desk) for any guidance or personal mentorship you would like. Volunteers wanted and appreciated!

What are some challenges that Wiktionary faced?

Wiktionary struggles with writing a dictionary in software that was originally, and actively continues to be, designed for an encyclopedia. In terms of software, one of the most important differences between the two types of references in the structure.
As a simple example, "bat" has several meanings in English. The Spanish word "murciélago" (one of my favorite Spanish words) corresponds to only one of those English meanings—the mammal. However, as you will see at murciélago, no mechanism exists for linking a specific sense to another specific sense; rather links go the tops of pages or sections. The English Wiktionary is forced to compensate by trying to ensure that a manual gloss "(winged mammal)" accompanies all translations. The Spanish Wiktionary solves a similar problem by using the numbers of the senses to designate the meanings intended by particular translations (as in "es:cambio"). The result is that any addition or removal of a sense requires taking care not to break the numbering scheme in the translation section and have translations suddenly point to the wrong meaning.
Another symptom of the same problem is the software's inability to recognize things like language and part of speech section headers as data about the entry. All Wiktionary entries are organized into top-level sections according to the language, but despite this universal organization, it is impossible to allow readers to, say, only look at English or only Romanian, and, before a recent Toolserver hack allowing the reader to choose a language, hitting "random page" would usually just give you a Spanish or Italian verb form, rather than the English lemma forms most readers wanted.
If you would like to help with Wiktionary development, please let us know at the grease pit (which is like the technical Village Pump) or visit #wiktionary on IRC.

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2009-11-16

Discussion report for this week

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By Dank, Hiding and Backslash Forwardslash

Experimenting with new pages to prove a point?

The experiment to see how new users who create viable new articles are treated (see last issue), has been criticised after allegations that a participant was using the trial to disrupt Wikipedia and prove a point. Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Newbie treatment at CSD followed Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556's issues with the creation of articles Magic pen (software) & Huntsville (game). During the discussion it was noted that the experiment was driving some participants away from doing new pages patrol, although Angr noted being inspired to become a patroller on the strength of it. Most participants in the debate agreed that there were lessons to be learnt from the experiment, but that it was now time to review and discuss the data collected to date. The initiator of the experiment, ϢereSpielChequers proposed to:

pause the creation of new articles whilst we discuss some of the implications, any safeguards that users might suggest, and of course the data collected so far.

Policy report

There was vigorous discussion this week on how to classify policy pages at the Policies and guidelines talk page. In this discussion, Dank suggested that, over time, three things happen on most (but not all) policy pages: they eventually supersede other pages on the same topic, they lose material that doesn't have broad support, and they gain material that is helpful and informative. Dmcq distinguished "general principles" (such as WP:5P) from policies ("fairly specific but still based on principles") and guidelines ("very down to earth").

In the previous section, Kotniski would like to see less emphasis on ArbCom and enforceability in the analysis, and points out that pages generally get marked as policy because they contain some very important principle, even if not every statement on the page inherits this importance. WhatamIdoing thinks that "What would ArbCom do?" isn't a useful way to think about the content policies, since ArbCom avoids content issues. Blueboar adds that some pages that are currently marked as policy probably shouldn't be and points to WP:The rules are principles as a good essay on understanding policies and guidelines. Ohms law is "completely on board", but believes the discussion is still too "theoretical". Camelbinky stresses that policies are not always preemptive; that is, if somehow a clear consensus against current policy develops in discussions elsewhere, such as the village pump, then policy should be changed, no matter how fundamental the change.

New Proposals

New process launched

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations has been launched as "a process intended to identify users who have repeatedly introduced copyright violations into many articles, typically over a long period of time, and to systematically remove this infringing material." The process was the idea of User:Moonriddengirl, who noted that "Wikipedia has several processes in place for dealing with limited copyright concerns--single articles or files, even a small grouping of these--but no workable process for dealing with massive multiple point infringement." The process opened on November 12, adopting many of the cases from the now superseded Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup/Contributor surveys.

Polls

  • ArbCom are seeking responses in a discussion regarding the recent Audit Subcommittee election.

Deletion round-up

Requests for comment

Thirty-two Requests for comment have been made in the week of 9 November to 15 November:



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2009-11-16

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Four editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Bellhalla (nom), Franamax (nom), Fribbulus Xax (nom) and Amorymeltzer (nom).

Seven articles were promoted to featured status this week: Upper and Lower Table Rock (nom), Control (Janet Jackson album) (nom), Upper Pine Bottom State Park (nom), The Beatles: Rock Band (nom), Richard Gavin Reid (nom), William of Tyre (nom) and Shojo Beat (nom).

Ten lists were promoted to featured status this week: Major League Baseball Comeback Player of the Year Award (nom), Timeline of the 1987 Atlantic hurricane season (nom), List of 125cc Motorcycle World Champions (nom), Ashley Tisdale discography (nom), World Series Most Valuable Player Award (nom), Luton Town F.C. league record by opponent (nom), Premier League Manager of the Month (nom), List of Louisville Colonels managers (nom), List of Governors of Delaware (nom) and List of India women ODI cricketers (nom).

No topics were promoted to featured status this week.

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: Millennium '73, Battle of Arras (1917), Grim Fandango, "I Don't Remember", William III of England, Zelda Fitzgerald and Trial by Jury.

Three articles were delisted this week: Isambard Kingdom Brunel (nom), The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (nom) and TARDIS (nom).

No lists were delisted this week.

No topics were delisted this week.

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Ase o fuku onna, Turkish treches from WWI, Sydney, Great White Pelican, Man entering "colored" section of theatre, during racial segregation in the US, one of the Dartmoor crosses and Oriental latrine fly.

No featured sounds were promoted this week.

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Ten pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.



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2009-11-16

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By Kirill Lokshin

The Arbitration Committee opened two cases this week, and did not close any, leaving five cases open.

Open cases

Tothwolf

The Tothwolf case was opened this week. The case, which concerns a long-standing dispute between Tothwolf and several other editors, was filed by third party Jehochman. A draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Wizardman, is expected by 6 December.

Ottava Rima restrictions

The Ottava Rima restrictions was also opened this week. The case was filed by Ottava Rima to appeal an editing restriction imposed following a community discussion on the administrators' noticeboard. A number of proposals have already been made on the workshop page; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrators Wizardman and Rlevse, is expected by 1 December.

Socionics

The Socionics case has entered its sixth week of deliberations. The case was filed by rmcnew, who alleged that Tcaudilllg has engaged in edit-warring and personal attacks. Tcaudilllg has denied the allegations, calling them "ad hominem attacks on [his] character". No significant drafting has yet taken place; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Carcharoth, was expected by 14 November.

Asmahan

The Asmahan case has entered its ninth week of deliberations. The filing editor, Supreme Deliciousness, alleges that Arab Cowboy has engaged in a variety of disruptive behavior on the "Asmahan" article; Arab Cowboy denies the allegations, and claims that Supreme Deliciousness is pursuing a disruptive agenda of his own. The drafting arbitrator, John Vandenberg, has posed a number of questions to the parties, and has drafted a number of proposals on the case workshop. A draft decision in the case is expected by 19 November.

Eastern European mailing list

The Eastern European mailing list case has entered its ninth week of deliberations, and its fifth week of voting. The case concerns a set of leaked mailing list archives which are alleged to show an extensive history of collusion among numerous editors of Eastern European topics. Standard workshop procedures have been suspended for the case, so normal drafting of proposals by the parties and other editors has not taken place.

The proposed decision, written by arbitrator Coren, would strip Piotrus of his administrator status, ban him for three months, and place him under a topic ban for one year; ban Digwuren and Martintg for three months and also place them under year-long topic bans; and issue a number of admonishments and reminders, as well as an amnesty for all participants of the mailing list not otherwise sanctioned. Additional proposals made by other arbitrators include bans for Tymek, Jacurek, and Radeksz, as well as more nuanced topic bans for Piotrus and Digwuren. Voting on the proposals is divided.

Other announcements

This week, the Committee announced the results of the Audit Subcommittee elections. The top three candidates (Dominic, Jredmond, and Tznkai) were each appointed to the subcommittee. Unexpectedly, the Committee also appointed the fourth-place candidate, MBisanz, as an "alternate member", citing the unusual closeness of the vote. Community reaction to the announcement was mixed.

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2009-11-16

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Aude

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.4 (a8dd895), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Bots approved

One new bot task has been approved:

Bug fixes

  • action=edit in the API no longer allows creating invalid titles that look like interwiki titles. (r58649, bug 20967)

New features

  • The Global usage extension has been enabled on Wikimedia Commons, to show where files are being used across multiple language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects.
  • The $wgUseInstantCommons setting has been added to allow easy enabling of Commons as a remote image repository for 3rd party wikis. (r58652)
  • The ability to protect files without protecting the file (image description) pages has been added. (r58537, bug 6579)

Other news

  • Wikipedia was down for approximately 15 minutes on November 16, when a software update was being pushed live that caused a memcache failure and database overload. [5]

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