Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2010-11-08
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/From the editors Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/Traffic report Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/In the media
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
November Engineering Update published
The Foundation's November Engineering Update was this week published to the Wikimedia Techblog, and gives a brief overview of all technical operations in the last month. Developer Rob Lanphier (User:RobLa) gave an executive summary of the month:
| “ | October featured continued work on the Virginia data center migration, continued work on features such as ResourceLoader, Article Feedback and Upload Wizard, increased focus on code review, new testing infrastructure, many new job postings, and the Hack-A-Ton in Washington DC. | ” |
Additionally, a number of items had had their statuses updated since last month. For example, the Foundation noted that the establishment of the new Virginia data centre (originally planned to be online by January 1, 2011) had been delayed temporarily, but was happy with work done to the donation-handling infrastructure. In addition, the Foundation announced that it was "on track to deploy a new version of Pending Changes on November 16" and the release of the new Resource Loader was nearing, but that development of LiquidThreads had slowed due to lack of available personnel.
Likewise, regarding the new media upload wizard, the Tech team said that Neil Kandalgaonkar had finished development of a temporary storage system for media files that are missing required metadata like licensing or source information, and that Roan Kattouw has started the prep-work for deployment of this feature, scheduled for late November. Other developments included the news that developer Ryan Lane had started actively investigating OpenStack for open-source testing and that the Foundation were pleased with making some headway in code review (note the drop in unreviewed revisions of the MediaWiki software shown to the right of the chart), after allocating more resources to the task (see Signpost coverage: "More developers to review code"). In addition, the success of the Hack-a-Ton (cf. Signpost coverage) was noted, as was an intention to revamp Wikimedia's mobile sites.
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.
- The background color of the "You have new messages" box notifying users of changes to their user talk pages is being modified from orange to blue in the Vector skin (bug #25145, r76017).
{{fullurl:Special:Mytalk|diff=cur}}now works as expected (bug #25829).
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/Essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/Opinion
Second Wikipedian in Residence, citation needed for sanity
Second museum gets Wikipedian in Residence
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis (said to be the largest of its kind in the world) recently invited Wikimedians for a "backstage pass" tour, as described by Liam Wyatt (User:Witty lama) on his blog. It is currently hosting Lori Phillips (User:HstryQT) as a Wikipedian in Residence (see Wikipedia:GLAM/TCMI and Wyatt's guest post on the museum's blog), making it the second institution to use this concept, after the British Museum's pilot project earlier this year (see Signpost coverage).
Lori Phillips intends to "mine the museum" to discover good illustrations and material that could be used for Wikiprojects; they have already started photographing their collection for Commons along with compatible copyrights for Wikimedia's use. The Children's Museum is dedicated to the concept of "Family learning" and currently has no online catalog of their collection, but plans to have one soon. Lori Phillips is also helping the Museum Studies course run by IMA conservator Richard McCoy (User:RichardMcCoy) to write Wikipedia articles about notable artworks in the Indiana Statehouse.
Wyatt and Phillips talked with the staff about their concerns in working with Wikipedia. When asked by a staff member about Wikipedia's responsibility to minors, Liam Wyatt explained that Wikipedia is not censored for age-appropriateness, and there is ongoing work being done with issues related to controversial content. He also noted that there is "nowhere else on the unrestricted internet that is dedicated to making NSFW information as un-titillating as possible." In a staff-only presentation he pulled a Google result for "Sex" and chose Wikipedia's entry from the top results, he proceeded to show the article and the accompanying images - from human conception to an illustration of Sexual Dimorphism in a Pheasant. He mentioned that the staff was impressed with the educational and yet direct approach of Wikipedia.
See also Phillips' summary of a November 2 talk by Wyatt and Adrianne Wadewitz at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, "Wikipedia & GLAMs" (an interactive Prezi presentation by Wyatt), and last week's Signpost coverage of Liam Wyatt, Katie Filbert, Lori Phillips and Richard McCoy attending the "Museum Computer Network conference".
[citation needed] for sanity
The October 30 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C. (a gathering of an estimated 215,000 people to protest extremes in US media and to promote reasoned political discourse) featured numerous demonstrators ([3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]) bearing signs adapted from Wikipedia's "citation needed" template, among them Wikipedian (and Wikimedia Board member) User:Mindspillage (Kat Walsh), whose website shows some amusing juxtapositions with other signs at the rally. References to the template in popular culture date back at least to the July 2007 "Wikipedian protester" cartoon by webcomic xkcd (tooltip comment: "SEMI-PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION"), which has since been used in turn on Wikipedia:Citation needed to illustrate the concept, and had inspired earlier such demonstration signs. In 2008, Boing Boing reported on an artist who had printed little "citation needed" stickers for a "culture jamming" project, to mark dubious claims on public ads and signs.
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"Citation needed" sign at the D.C. rally -
Combined with a sign saying "Wikipedia is a valid source" -
Chance meet of two {{citation needed}} signs at the rally -
xkcd's "Wikipedian protester" cartoon
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Briefly
- Illustrated licensing tutorial: On the Wikimedia Foundation's blog, Guillaume Paumier has announced the availability of an illustrated licensing tutorial for Wikimedia Commons, commissioned from a freelance illustrator as part of the Multimedia usability project. Within three days, Wikimedia translators have already produced about 20 translations and about a dozen localized SVG versions.
- Research consultant: Dario Taraborelli has been hired by the Wikimedia Foundation as a Research Consultant. He will be advising on and supporting strategic research projects for the foundation.[11]
- "A bad first date?": A draft schedule for the GLAM-WIKI conference on November 26/27 in London has been announced. Alongside keynote presentations by Sue Gardner and Cory Doctorow it includes a talk by Tom Morgan, Head of Rights and Reproductions at the London's National Portrait Gallery, titled "Wikipedia and the National Portrait Gallery - A bad first date? A perspective on the developing relationship between Wikipedia and cultural heritage organizations" - in reference last year's legal issues (see Signpost coverage: "UK public gallery threatens Wikimedian" and the article National Portrait Gallery copyright conflicts; it is not publicly known whether they have been resolved yet).
- Citizendium's finances running low: After the free collaborative online encyclopedia project Citizendium adopted a governance charter in September (see Signpost coverage), its newly elected "Management Council" took over leadership of the project from the outgoing editor-in-chief, its sole founder Larry Sanger. During this process "it has come to light that the financial situation of the project is not as sound as we had thought it to be", according to a November 6 announcement from the Council on the Citizendium forums. An earlier thread on the forums, titled "Finances running dry by the end of the year", was apparently publicly visible by accident and removed from public view soon, but not before having been captured, discussed and summarized at RationalWiki (its existence was later acknowledged by Citizendium's Managing Editor). It quoted an internal email from Sanger, where he warned that "we have just $1800 in the account and our hosting costs $700/month. ... It turns out that CZ's main benefactor ... is no longer interested in supporting CZ." Earlier this year, Sanger had told the Times Higher Education that he was considering "handing the reins to a university or a scholarly press" to ensure Citizendium's future (see Signpost coverage).
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/Serendipity Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/Op-ed Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/In focus
No cases this week; Date delinking sanctions reduced for one party; History ban extended
The Arbitration Committee opened no cases this week, leaving none open.
Closed cases
Date delinking (Week 2)
Ohconfucius requested that an amendment be made to relax the restriction which prohibited him from using any automation in the article space.
At the time of writing, only arbitrators had commented on this request. Two arbitrators said they were "impressed with the quality of [Ohconfucius'] contributions since the Date delinking case, and with the tone and substance of [his] comments", and suggested terminating the automation restriction entirely. The Committee followed their suggestion and adopted a motion which terminates the restriction and permits Ohconfucius to use automation subject to community guidelines. Ohconfucius is still indefinitely limited to editing with a single account. Additionally, he is still topic-banned from style and editing guidelines relating to the linking or unlinking of dates, and related discussions.
Following the 30 March 2010 renewal of his ban on editing articles relating to medieval or ancient history for a period of one year imposed on 14 March 2008, User:Per Honor et Gloria filed an amendment on Tuesday for the topic ban to be lifted. It was decided by unanimous vote of six Arbitrators on 8 November 2010 that the ban be extended indefinitely. PHG's participation is limited to talk pages, subject to civil interaction with fellow editors. The discussion is here.
Ban Appeals Subcommittee appointment
Arbitrator Mailer diablo was appointed by the Arbitration Committee on 7 November to fill the vacancy on the Ban Appeals Subcommittee at least until the end of this year. All subcommittee memberships will be reviewed after the December Arbcom elections. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-08/Humour