Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-07-05
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/In the media
Bugs, repairs, and internal operational news
Power outage
On the Wikimedia Techblog, Mark Bergsma explained the root of problems users encountered the morning of Monday, July 5:
| “ | Starting at 0:10 UTC on July 5th, the Wikimedia Foundation suffered from intermittent, partial power failures in the internal power network of one of its main data centers in Tampa, Florida. Due to the temporary unavailability of several critical systems and the large impact on the available systems capacity, all Wikimedia projects went down. The power situation stabilized at 1:12 UTC, and systems and services recovery has been taking place since. | ” |
Fortunately, the technicians managed to get everything back up and running shortly afterwards.
Brion Vibber on the future role of the WMF
Following a blog post by Phoebe about Wikimedia's future strategies, Brion Vibber left a detailed comment giving his thoughts. As a former Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and all-round maintainer of Wikimedia projects and the software behind them for a number of years – not to mention the namesake of this report – his thoughts provided a useful insight into the past, present and future of the Wikimedia Foundation's "tech" department:
| “ | Tech of course is the area I know best, and I can assure you that there will be plenty of work for [the projected] ~75 tech folks to do in 2015; even with the major expansion over the last couple years there’s still wayyy more stuff to do than time to do it. Purely on that end, there are a few rough tasks that need to get taken care of all the time:
... A strong “MediaWiki Labs” [as a parallel to Mozilla Labs] research program would be *extremely* awesome, and well worth the money spent, once the resources and organization are all in there to get all the basics past "we keep the site up" and "we’re fixing things we’ve known suck" into really future-focused areas too. From what I see and hear, Danese [Cooper, current CTO] is doing a smashing job at getting tech organized for its big-enough-to-need-real-management present and future, so as long as the rest of the system is working I feel pretty good about the next few years of Wikimedia tech. |
” |
The full comment is available here. Regular Signpost readers will be pleased to know that an interview with Danese Cooper – to whom Brion referred – should be available shortly.
Wikimania 2010 for Developers
Wikimania 2010, in Gdansk, Poland, opens on July 9. It is scheduled to include a number of talks, workshops and tutorials useful to developers. One session From WMF with love, expressly aimed at the technically minded, is scheduled for Sunday. Its programme comprises:
- "Wikimedia's mobile and offline initiatives",
- "Performance, scalability and security for extension developers" and
- "Wikimedia Germany's software and infrastructure projects".
The session For developers: free software, batch uploading, mobiles is set to include:
- "How we make Wiki use in mobiles friendly",
- "Free software for users" and
- "Batch uploading at Commons".
These are in addition to a wide range of other talks arranged for the long weekend, which is expected to be attended by hundreds of Wikimedians from around the globe.
In brief
Note: 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. Wikimedia sites now have their own "branch", meaning that it is no longer possible to say that they are running revision X; rather, they are running a mix of different revisions prioritised by importance.
- Bug #24167 has been fixed, preventing multiple "warn" edit filters from conflicting with each other and thus preventing an edit from getting through at all.
- The 'Languages' section of the sidebar, used for interwiki links, will now stay collapsed if so desired across pages (bug #24140).
- The "Peachy" bot framework for PHP moves into official beta mode, with PHP bot operators required to put it through its paces.
- The Vector skin went live to 83 WMF wikis (see previous Signpost coverage). One, the Ukrainian Wikipedia, went back to Monobook since the skin had not been sufficiently translated.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/Opinion
WMF expansion, community hires, award for MediaWiki, admin recall
Plans for major expansions of the WMF
The Wikimedia Foundation's 2010–11 annual plan has been approved by the Board and was publicly posted on June 29. The plan draws from the year-long strategic planning project that ran from July 2009 to July 2010, and "is markedly more ambitious than in previous years, [as] justified by the quality of data and analysis and discussion that underpin the new strategy."
This year, the Foundation is aiming to spend as much money as it raises (projected to be $20.4 million), in contrast with previous years, when it has always run a surplus. The graph shows both the secure financial position of the organization, and the significant rise in its expenditure, which has virtually doubled annually over the past two years.
As detailed in the plan, the Foundation plans to add 44 new positions to its staff within the next year (currently, it employs around 40 people). These new positions are discussed at length, among other topics, in the "Questions and answers" for the plan.
The votes on the Board resolution approving the plan mirrored those of the Board's approval of a preliminary version of the 2010–15 plan back in April (see last week's "News and notes"): All trustees voted in favor except two of the three community-elected members – Mindspillage abstained, and Sj opposed, arguing "that we should define crisply why a larger Foundation is important to the Projects, grow smoothly rather than surge and taper off, and prepare specifically for the internal and cultural stresses that can accompany rapid change, before doubling in a year".
In a discussion on Phoebe Ayer's blog involving several staff and Board members, Board member Jan-Bart demonstrated awareness for such concerns: "both Sue and the board share the understanding that we have a very ambitious annual plan for 2010–2011, but that we should continue to monitor all the aspects that influence this plan (questions such as: are we able to hire the right people?, are we not growing too fast?, are we not losing touch within the office with some of our roots?, are we able to raise enough funds? etc.)."
New Community Department to hire community members
As The Signpost reported last month, the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Department has been formed to combine Fundraising, Reader relations, Public outreach and volunteer coordination under the incoming Chief Community Officer Zack Exley. The Department has now announced that it "will be hiring for a series of key positions". Specific job descriptions are not yet available, but informal applications are already invited from:
| “ |
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Authored by Exley, the invitation seems to aim at recruiting for analytical work: candidates should be "creative non-linear thinkers" who "have their own opinions and theories on various problems and opportunities facing Wikimedia and other online communities" and are "equally strong dealing with qualitative and quantitative knowledge".
Apparently as a test of candidates' familiarity with Wikimedia projects (or their ability to gain it quickly), the form asks applicants to "describe the process in which users are approved to become administrators on [the] English Wikipedia".
Also last week, it was announced that two members of the fundraising team (which is part of the Community Department) will be leaving the Foundation: Rand Montoya, Head of Community Giving since July 2008, will leave on September 30 ([1]), and Anya Shyrokova, Stewardship Associate, will leave at the end of July to take up graduate studies ([2]).
USENIX award for MediaWiki software
At the USENIX association's recent Annual Technical Conference in Boston, USA, the MediaWiki software and the Wikimedia Foundation were the recipients of the STUG (Software Tools User Group) award. The announcement said:
| “ | [We] know that this wonderful piece of code did not just appear. The ideas behind them were not new, but a few people had to come forward to implement a wiki that could underlie a real scalable, worldwide service. That service was MediaWiki. It took a community to collaborate, putting in many many hours of work to make the idea great and make it lasting. We recognize Magnus Manske, Lee Crocker, Brion Vibber, and Tim Starling as the major contributors to MediaWiki, but we all realize that their work has been refined and improved by many others. MediaWiki is a wonderful example of a software tool that changed our world. | ” |
Admin recalled
Discussions about a possible mandatory recall process for administrators have been going on for some time – one possibility that received majority support in a November 2009 poll was made into a policy proposal that then failed to gain consensus in a March 2010 RfC.
A focal point for the debate was recently provided when an administrator, Herostratus, voluntarily submitted to a recall process in the form of an RFA. The result of the RFA was unsuccessful, and led to Herostratus's resignation from adminship. The recall process was initiated when he posted a survey on his talk page soliciting input with respect to users' complaints. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Herostratus 2 was opened by the candidate once his criteria for initiating recall (mostly taken from this sample process) were satisfied. This RFA was a significant event, with discussion ranging over many noticeboards ([1], [2]), including "Some philosophical thoughts" from Jimbo. At one point, the recall RFA was closed as "out of process"; however, the closure was reverted three hours later with the comment "if this is to be closed, dubious reasons should not be used" ([3]).
Opposition to Herostratus centered around what were perceived as disparaging comments about living people on an AFD debate and for inappropriate humor. Supporters pointed out that his use of the admin tools themselves was exemplary; but the idea that administrators should follow a higher level of decorum carried the RFA through and the final tally was 78/48/21, a ratio at which a standard RFA would have probably failed. Herostratus then requested removal of his admin rights at meta "under a cloud". In his final statement on the matter, Herostratus stated: "The system worked and worked fine, notwithstanding that I don't agree with the result."
Briefly
- On his blog, User:Witty lama (Liam Wyatt) looked back at his month-long stay at the British Museum as "Wikipedian in residence" (see previous story). He will present results of the stay at Wikimania.
- In a post titled Skillshare – The Slightly Different Open Content Event on the Foundation's blog, an organizer of a conference that gathered more than 150 Wikipedians in Germany last month described the event. She noted its novel funding model – while the German, Austrian and Swiss Wikimedia chapters offered some financial means, "local businesses and associations contributed the bulk of the funds." A separate organization (Skillshare e.V.) was set up to organize the event.
- Wikimania 2010 begins this week in Gdańsk, Poland; see the special story in this week's Signpost.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/In focus
Arbitration Report
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving two open.
Open cases
- Climate change (Week 4): The case resulted from several Arbitration requests on the same topic matter being merged into one case, and a related request for comment on the matter failing to make headway. Special rules of conduct were put in place for this arbitration and a brief extension was granted earlier this week to submit last-minute evidence, but this phase has now closed. Currently in the workshop phase.
- Race and intelligence (Week 5): This case concerns accusations of incivility, disruptive editing, and tag-teaming to control the content on articles related to race and intelligence. As reported in last week's Signpost, a proposed decision was expected by the end of June, but the drafting arbitrator failed to meet this expectation. More delays are expected as another arbitrator is now expected to ask the parties questions while the evidence phase has not been closed. Still in the evidence/workshop phase.
Motions
- Eastern European mailing list: A motion was passed – the case remedy that banned Biruitorul from editing the Eastern Europe topic is no longer in force.
- Tothwolf: A motion was passed to impose an enforceable 6-month civility restriction on JBsupreme – this replaces the earlier case remedy that warned him about incivility.
- Pseudoscience: A motion was passed to remove the effect of the words "Time Cube" from this 2006 decision that was drafted by Fred Bauder. A successful argument was made that other than being unnecessary in the relevant principle and finding of fact, such "throwaway remarks" foreclosed any discussion concerning "whether or not Time Cube is pseudoscience".
Other
- Community voting in the immediate options poll appears to have come to a halt in the review into CheckUser and Oversight selection. As reported earlier, this review was opened after the Arbitration Committee declared that the outcome of the May 2010 CheckUser and Oversight elections was "not satisfactory".
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-07-05/Humour