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20 February 2012

 

2012-02-20

The plight of the new page patrollers

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By Resident Mario

This week the Wikimedia Foundation reported the results of its New Page Patrol Survey, part of a project to increase understanding of editors who work on new page patrol (NPP). NPP is the first line of defense against articles that do not belong on Wikipedia, be they unsuitable pages, copyright violations, or attack pages.

New page patrolling has long been a prominent problem area for the Wikipedian community. While patrollers complain of being overworked, other editors have raised issues with the patrollers themselves, characterizing them as mostly young and inexperienced volunteers who lack clue, are ignorant of deletion rules, and often mis-tag new articles. The NPP Survey, first suggested by Kudpung, aimed to collect information on current patrollers to base improvements to the NPP process. The results: Most new page patrollers are over 18 years of age, most have at least an undergraduate degree, and most are very much clued into what they are doing. The report – while providing a better view of who the average page patroller is and what the average page patroller does – substantially refutes some stereotypes.

History of the process

Patrolled edits is a software feature that went live on Wikipedia in November 2007, after a proposal to re-enable anonymous page creation (see previous Signpost story). The feature draws on Special:NewPages, which lists newly created articles on Wikipedia, although it can be extended to any other page category by using a drop-down option. The interface lists recently created pages in descending order (the most recent first), allowing users to easily browse recently created pages. New pages are kept on the list for 30 days, after which they disappear from view.

A de facto new pages patrol group has existed since at least March 2004. Its members used the Special:NewPages page directly, a page that has been part of Wikipedia's infrastructure since the introduction of the Phase II software in January 2002; before then, the New topics page was used for this purpose. Problematic new articles were a large part of the votes for deletion process, the unified deletion process that covered all namespaces in earlier days of Wikipedia. (Today, there are separate discussions depending on the type of page to be deleted.)

The introduction of patrolled edits provided a better process for patrolling new pages. Unpatrolled new pages are highlighted in yellow, and patrollers can choose to browse just those unpatrolled new articles. Once viewed, any autoconfirmed editor can mark an article as patrolled by clicking the "[Mark this page as patrolled]" link at the bottom right corner of the page. If the patroller thinks the article is ready for mainspace, or they have added multiple maintenance tags or nominated it for deletion, the article can be marked as patrolled. Articles created by administrators were automatically marked as patrolled by the system; this was unbundled in June 2009 (or, rather, a system of whitelisting was formalised with the creation of the autopatrolled user right), so that now any prolific creator of valid articles can have this privilege. This keeps most of the articles created by established editors (familiar with inclusion criteria) out of the pool of those needing to be patrolled.

Because Special:NewPages only holds onto articles for 30 days, unpatrolled articles that survive that long drop off the list, making them exceedingly difficult to find later. The length of the queue of unpatrolled articles has oscillated for years, but there have been occasions at least as far back as 2009 when there were insufficient numbers to patrol all new articles. Due to the 30-day cutoff there is a constant pressure to keep up with the list, in the face of what many patrollers see as a shortage of reviewers. Coupled with the pressure to "get it right the first time" (because once an article is marked as reviewed, other patrollers no longer see it), the process has been characterized as stressful by some patrollers. The front of the queue can also be stressful if an individual patroller tries to keep pace with the flow of new articles.

The patrollers themselves have come under fire; critics contend that they "deal with new users inappropriately, scaring them off, that they have an unacceptably high error rate when tagging pages for deletion, and that they are more interested in using New Page Patrol as a route to gaining higher userrights [like adminship] than in actually patrolling productively and helping improve new articles" (NPP survey). Many critics consider the underlying issue to be that patrollers were overwhelmingly young and inexperienced editors, much more likely to act immaturely or without regard for new editors or new articles. Others believe that it is the stress of the process that drives the perceived errors among its users.

In response to perceived problems with new page patrolling, on April 3, 2011, a proposal was put forward to reduce the stress in the system by limiting article creation to autoconfirmed users. Snottywong summarized the reasons for this with an analysis that showed that only 17.5% of autoconfirmed users' articles were deleted, compared with 72.5% of new editors' contributions. A second proposal soon after established a "clear consensus for a six-month trial, followed by a one-month period of discussion to determine the trial's effects"; the specifics were finalized at Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial.



Articles created by autoconfirmed users: deleted versus kept.
Articles created by non-autoconfirmed users: deleted versus kept.
Note: The large jump in April was caused by bot activity.


The Zoom interface.

Yet when the technical solution was submitted for implementation on Bugzilla, it was shot down by the Wikimedia Foundation, being marked as a "RESOLVED WONTFIX". WMF deputy director Erik Möller said that "creating a restriction of this type is a strong a [sic] statement of exclusion, not inclusion, and that it will confuse and deter good faith editors."

Instead, the WMF proposed that there be improvements for the interface that managed the new page backlog, with one goal being to better welcome constructive editors into the community. The refusal to accept community consensus was extremely controversial; many editors considered it damaging to the relationship between the Foundation and Wikipedia's editors. The Foundation focused on a "New Page Triage", an initiative that Möller hoped would "reduce the work involved in patrolling new pages by simplifying and smoothing out the process ... a system that is self-explanatory for newer editors; someone who hasn't done New Page Patrol before can look at it and gain an instinctive understanding of what they're expected to do and how they should work."

The upshot of these developments was the new Zoom interface, a redesign of Special:NewPages. It has a dynamic construction that allows users to mark a page with any of several specific templates, both for maintenance and deletion, before saving their changes and continuing on to the next article. One other change that is currently under consideration by developers is the addition of a patroller user-right to control who can access the interface.

It was quickly found that there was no single way that patrollers did their work, and that they were using a variety of third-party software for their work. The lack of understanding page patrollers led to Kudpung creating a survey to find out more about what an average page patroller did, and who they were.

Survey results

[W]e can confirm that the common stereotype of patrollers as young, poorly educated and ignorant is almost entirely without basis. The vast majority of patrollers are over 18 and have undergraduate degrees or above – in some cases, actually exceeding the average for editors overall ... They are largely familiar with relevant policies, and greatly exceed the expectations set by the stereotype. Indeed, the only major difference between patrollers and any other editor is that patrollers choose to patrol.

Editors were identified as patrollers and surveyed based on three separate sources: 2,504 from a script by Snottywong, the 1,300 editors with a {{User wikipedia/NP Patrol}} template on their userpage, and those 133 with a {{User Newpages with Twinkle}} template. Of the editors asked to fill in the survey, 1,255 did so, but after removing surveys with incomplete answers, errors, and obviously fallacious data (e.g. 10-year-olds from Africa with doctorates), and making adjustments because a number of editors had been mistakenly asked to participate, the total included in the survey was reduced to 309 participants. To supplement the survey, an analysis was done on the top quartile of editors by number of patrol actions. A summary of the results follows.

Demographics


Demographically, New Page Patrollers were found to indeed be overwhelmingly North American and European, with these regions accounting for 85 percent of those surveyed. Only 8% identify as females, consistent with cross-wiki average found during the April 2011 Editor Survey.

More than 60 percent of patrollers have been editing since 2006 or earlier, the antithesis of the stereotype of inexperienced editors. But this creates a new concern: the absence of new editors, accentuating an emerging wikigeneration gulf and the recently highlighted new editor retention collapse, and strongly supporting the need for a more usable, intuitive interface.

Between 79 and 82 percent of responders were over the age of 18; more than 90 percent had completed secondary schooling, and 63 percent had an undergraduate degree or postgraduate qualifications. In short, new page patrollers are not much different from the rest of those who edit Wikipedia.

Demographics: new page patrollers by...
Gender: 89% male.
WikiAge: 60 percent editing since 2006
Decade of birth: 79 to 82 percent are over 18


Editing activity

Patrolling distribution was found to have a prominent Long Tail-distribution, with 89% of the work done by 25 percent of the patrollers. The report states that "we clearly need to make involving more users, and involving patrollers to a greater degree, a priority". 64 percent of new page patrollers spend between 1 and 3 hours a day reading and editing Wikipedia. 46 percent of patrollers have made 10,000 edits or more; this is a marked difference from the Editor Survey 2011, in which only 20 percent of editors had reached this count, more evidence against the belief that many patroller problems come from inexperience. In terms of user rights, more than half of patrollers were rollbackers and reviewers, and more than 40 percent had autopatrol rights.

A question on non-patrolling activities found that patrollers did other things: 97 percent were active in anti-vandalism efforts in some form, and 95 percent were adding content to Wikipedia, by creating and editing new articles. As expected, Articles for Deletion, speedy deletion, and similar venues were tied in with the process, and many editors who patrolled new pages also participated in discussions there.

An analysis of tool usage found that a large percentage of page patrollers were aware of and use semi-automated tools like AutoWikiBrowser and especially Twinkle in their work.

Editing activity: new page patrollers...
Editors who are most active at Special:NewPages, showing a long tail type distribution
Editors by edit count, showing double the usual rate for users over 10,000 edits
Editors by user-right, with high numbers who are rollbackers, autopatrolled, and reviewers.


Patrolling

The vast majority of patrollers originally learned about New Page Patrol passively, for instance from a userbox on somebody's userpage that advertised New Page Patrol, or through seeing a new page at Special:RecentChanges and navigating to Special:NewPages from there. Most patrollers also give positive reasons for their motivation: they want to "keep vandalism and bad-faith pages out of Wikipedia" (83 percent) and "watch over the quality of new articles" (80 percent). 35 percent of patrollers were motivated because it "provides experience that may be valuable further down the road".

Activity is unevenly distributed, with almost 40% of patrollers spending 1 hour or less on New Page Patrol per week. How long it took to patrol an article was more evenly distributed, splitting half-and-half at the one-minute line. 28 percent of patrollers found that "trying to decide what should be deleted/if something should be deleted" was the most stressful part of the job, with the rest listing a slew of other reasons. An overwhelming majority have read the various relevant deletion guidelines, and very nearly 100 percent have read the speedy deletion guidelines. About 45 percent of editors reviewed from the front of the Special:NewPages buffer (the newest articles), just under 30% from the back, and 15% chose "Other."

New page patrolling habits
Hours per week spent patrolling.
Policy awareness—an overwhelming "yes."
Where new page patrollers patrol from


Improvements

By 53 percent to 45 percent, a majority of patrollers disagreed with the implementation of a patroller user-right. If the right were to be instituted, the largest group of respondents felt that it should be granted automatically at some point, with slightly less support for distribution through Requests for permission. Based on the results, the survey concludes that "it seems clear that some variation on 'X edits and Y months as an editor' is likely to be the most acceptable criteria, but ... any attempt to get firm consensus on this point, whether made by the community or by the Foundation, is likely to be drawn-out and gruelling." Finally, 60 percent of new page patrollers wanted to see technical changes implemented, while 20 percent wanted to see cultural and policy-based decisions. The remaining 20 percent did not comment, or felt that the current system basically works.

The future

What now? The results of the NPP Survey clearly refute many of the views held of patrollers by their critics; nonetheless, it is often the patrollers themselves that are clamoring most loudly for changes.

According to the survey's conclusion, "the next step for the Foundation is to use this data to continue developing the Zoom interface. We have already identified a representative sample of patrollers, and contacted them for detailed interviews and to provide "screencasts" of their patrolling work. With these, developers can examine the process of patrolling, get more details on precisely how patrollers do their work, and try to identify unnecessarily difficult areas that can be simplified to make patrolling easier."

The survey broke new ground by giving everyone a clearer view of a subset of Wikipedian editors; perhaps, in the future, similar surveys will provide detailed information about other specialized groups of editors.

The New Page Patrol survey was conducted by the Wikimedia Foundation's Oliver Keyes, with contributions from staffers Howie Fung and Dario Tarborelli and from Wikipedians Kudpung and Tom Morris. The raw data, sans gender and contact information (per policy), will be made available to anyone willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement (requests can be sent to okeyes@wikimedia.org).

Have a keen interest in or strong feelings on new page patrolling or another issue of relevance to the English Wikipedia community? The Signpost is recruiting reporters and soliciting opinion essay submissions; those interested should apply to wikipediasignpost@gmail.com, leave a note in the newsroom, or contact an editor directly.

Reader comments

2012-02-20

Fundraiser row continues, new director of engineering

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By Resident Mario, Skomorokh and Tilman Bayer

Fundraising row continues

In the wake of heated discussions concerning a possible restructuring of the way in which the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia chapters handle the raising and spending of donor funds (see Signpost special report), staff at the Foundation released a memo in an attempt to reiterate the argument for abandoning the current role of chapters in processing payments (and pocketing some of them) during the annual fundraiser, in favour of a central committee made up of an international group of volunteers. As with previous communications from the Foundation's board of trustees, the memo ignited much criticism, with many chapter-affiliated editors critiquing its factual accuracy and impartiality at length. The discussions took centre stage at the 2012 Finance meeting, which was held in Paris over the weekend and which is expected to further spur the ongoing debate.

Director of Features engineering hired

Terry Chay has been hired by the Wikimedia Foundation to fill the position of Director of Features Engineering. Chay holds an M.S. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and is a former member of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, and in that capacity helped in "implementing an A/B testing framework, improving the blog domain name registration process...[and] creating better support mechanisms for first-time users". Before that he was an engineering manager and software architect for several start-ups and tech companies between 1999 and 2009, such as Plaxo and Tagged. He has attended the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, contributing to the PHP talks there, and given over 25 public talks about web development.

As the new Director of Features Engineering, "Terry will be responsible for helping ensure the success of some of our key feature teams: the visual editor team, the editor engagement team (including the article feedback project), and the fundraising engineering team." His hiring also means that the current occupant of the position, Alolita Sharma, will be moving into another directorial role, although what this will entail exactly remains to be seen.

Brief notes

  • Wikimania update: Although deadlines for Wikimania 2012 travel scholarships passed on 16 February of this week, Wikimedia Poland has announced its own for the event. Ten scholarships will be administered for Poles and six to those from other countries, as long as they have a "lower income per capita than Poland." Wikimedia Poland is particularly interested in Wikimedians from former member countries of the Soviet bloc and from the Balkans, excluding Estonia, Greece, and Slovenia by the second consideration. Scholarships will cover travel, accommodation, and the conference fee; the deadline for submissions is March 9.
  • Outreach at Brazilian "Campus Party": Brazilian Wikimedians and employees of the Wikimedia Foundation attended the "Campus Party" technology festival in São Paulo, evangelizing for participation in Wikimedia projects and exploring the possibility of holding a MediaWiki hackathon in Brazil.
  • Wikimedia Highlights, now with translations: Translations of the Foundation's January 2012 monthly highlights, published alongside its January report, are now available in various language translations. A global delivery service has also been set up.
  • GLAMcamp goes to Washington: In the first summit to focus specifically on the GLAM initiatives of America, Wikimedians gathered in Washington DC over the weekend to network, discuss and provide an infrastructure for the nascent GLAM movement. Lori Phillips, the Foundation's US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator commented that "the most important result of GLAMcamp DC was the renewed solidarity and energy of US GLAM-Wiki volunteers, who are now looking to better connect cultural institutions in every state with the resources of GLAM-Wiki US and the broader GLAM-Wiki community".
  • New administrators: The Signpost welcomes our newest administrator, Fayenatic london.
  • Milestones: The following Wikimedia projects reached milestones this week: the Persian Wiktionary has reached 70,000 entries, the Latin Wikipedia has reached 70,000 articles, and the Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 6,000,000 page edits.

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2012-02-20

Discussion on copyrighted files from non-US relation states

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By Whenaxis


Centralized
Discussions
  • RfC about the assessment of community understanding of article title decision practice.
  • RfC on the proposed cessation of selective delete (other than history merge fixes) and resulting changes to deletion policies, including the removal of a Revision Deletion criterion.
  • Invitation to comment on candidates standing for 2012 Audit Subcommittee appointment
Discussions covered in the main body of the discussion report are not listed here.

Discussion on copyrighted files from non-US relation states

A request for comment on how Wikipedia should handle copyrighted files from countries without official copyright relations with the United States was opened on February 12, by Dpmuk. The focus of discussion is a statement made by the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales which is paraphrased at WP:C: 'Regardless, according to Jimbo Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, Wikipedia contributors should respect the copyright law of other nations, even if these do not have official copyright relations with the United States.'

Editors discussed various proposals on how to tag these types of files, including naming the location where the file originates from and a disclosure that the file might not be in the public domain. A proposal presented by Buffs for a pair of tags was the most favorably received, with twelve participating supporting it.

Shortly after discussions began, the opinion of Wikimedia Foundation's legal team was sought. The legal team responded that according to United States copyright law, files from countries not in relations with the United States can be used as if they are in the public domain. However, the legal team did note that each editor is responsible for the usage of files according to their own country's copyright law, which may differ from the United States. Since their reply, postings have been relatively few. The discussion likely will be closed this week.

Discussion on interpreting image use policy

A request for comment was started on February 11, by FT2, discussing what to do when encountering a breach of non-free content policy #9. At the time of writing, policy criterion #9 states, "Non-free content is allowed only in articles (not disambiguation pages), and only in article namespace, subject to exemptions". The initiator of the discussion pointed out that the policy criterion is vague and moot with regard to editing out violations versus deleting all history pages where the violation is visible.

The initiator outlined some proposals concerning how to deal with images that are in breach of the policy, including removing the image from being displayed and/or deleting the revision where the image was embedded. Discussion has been slow on this topic, but the consensus appears to be in favour of merely removing the image from being displayed when it is found to be in breach of the policy.

In brief

2012-02-20

WikiProject Poland

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By Mabeenot
WikiProject news
News in brief
Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's WikiProject Desk.
Old and new juxtaposed in the financial centre of Warsaw
Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was from the Kingdom of Poland
Giewont in the High Tatras
The Tempel Synagogue in Kraków is one of the largest still functioning in Poland
Tomasz Stańko is a popular contemporary Polish jazz musician
The Vistula River in Modlin
Stanisław August Poniatowski was the last King of Poland
The granite outcrop Maiden Rocks at the Krkonoše Mountains
Chamber of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament
Wrocław is the largest city in southwestern Poland
A statue of Pope John Paul II in Częstochowa
Dunes in Słowiński National Park
A wisent in the Białowieża Forest
Polish physicist, chemist, and Nobel laureate Marie Curie
Książ Castle in Silesia
The Main Market Square in Kraków

When we approached the community at WikiProject Poland for an interview, we didn't expect a record-breaking 11 contributors to respond. Included below are members and non-members, native Poles and foreign friends, who come together at WikiProject Poland to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Polish history, politics, and culture. Some are excited by the project's accomplishments while others worry that an anti-Polish and anti-Eastern European bias still pervades Wikipedia.

The project's "ancient history" is best described by Piotrus: "WikiProject Poland was created in 2005 by Witkacy, a mysterious figure who after a period of high activity suddenly disappeared on us. At the same time, there were old WikiProjects (hailing to 2004) dedicated to the geography and history of Poland, with unfinished frameworks for restructuring and renaming articles. I became involved in finishing those tasks, trying to bring structure and standardized naming into Poland-themed articles. Over the years, those WikiProjects were retired as inactive, and merged with WikiProject Poland, channeling everybody interested in Poland issues. Around that time I decided to help with the maintenance of the project, and became more and more involved in it. In 2009, Poland-topics noticeboard was merged with the WikiProject talk, which finalized the process of merging all Poland-related discussion boards into one."

Today, the project is home to over 75,000 pages, including 14 pieces of Featured content, 6 A-class articles, and 53 Good Articles. The project keeps tabs on a watchlist, provides a variety of tools for improving articles, and welcomes discussions on its talk page. We interviewed Volunteer Marek, Xx236, Tymek, Nihil novi, Malik Shabazz, Piotrus, Kpalion, Vecrumba, Halibutt, Orczar, and Darwinek.

What motivated you to join WikiProject Poland?

Volunteer Marek: The How to deal with Poles essay. Just kidding. I just stumbled upon the project after making some minor edits (initially I edited only economics-related subjects) to articles that nobody else seem to care about. The turbulence, the drama, the conspiracies, the cabals, the uprisings and insurrections, as well as the reconstruction and the rebuilding, all that came later.
Xx236: Because I know many subjects and I didn't like the bias of several existing articles.
Tymek: Nothing in particular. A few years ago I came across Wikipedia, looking for some information. After noticing that more Poland-related articles were needed, I decided to share the little knowledge I have.
Nihil novi: I looked up some topics I was interested in; I learned from some articles, and I discovered that I could contribute to, or start, others. I had grown up bilingual and early began translating from Polish to English. In secondary school I realized that I was interested in everything generally, rather than in any one specific thing. At university I fantasized being able to audit whatever classes caught my interest, without having to bother about exams, credit-hours or grade-point averages (a little along the lines of what Steve Jobs practiced). Years later, it occurred to me that I might enjoy writing for, and helping edit, a general-interest magazine. More recently, all these inclinations found a venue for me at Wikipedia. And since I am fluent in the Polish language and have a general knowledge of Polish history and culture, I have been able to write, translate, edit, source and illustrate in the Wikipedia Polish project, among others.
Malik Shabazz: Although two of my grandparents were born in Poland, I really didn't know much about it except some generalities (a few of which, I learned, were quite wrong). After an acrimonious exchange with several members of the WikiProject over Polish-Jewish history, I decided to join to mend fences and learn more.
Piotrus: What made me became involved with the WikiProject in the first place? I guess I was looking for a place where some other editors interested in Poland-related issues would hang out, and the WikiProject was a natural place for it, in the Wikipedia-scheme of things.
Kpalion: I never did! Apparently, I'm listed as an "honorary member" – one who contributes to Poland-related content, but never bothered to actually join the WikiProject.
Vecrumba: The history of Eastern Europe is extraordinarily rich and complex as peoples and/or powers have waxed and waned over that territory. So, whether Poland-Lithuania or Poland annexed out of existence or Poland between the wars, Poland has always been a central figure to EE history over the ages.
Halibutt: I never did. Although listed as a honorary member, I never actually joined the project. I still contribute to Poland-related topics and to some extent I collaborate with WP:PL, but mostly through my agent! That is, I ping Piotrus and he often carries the matter forward to the WikiProject. Other than that, I'm on extended wiki-vacations.
Orczar: I started editing the Polish Wikipedia articles, then gradually English, where I almost exclusively work now. It seems that my time is put to better use this way, because a lot fewer people who have an interest in the history and affairs of Poland can do it in English than in Polish. Checking the WikiProject Poland talk page brings to my attention issues that I may be interested in. Most of my edits fall naturally in this subject area anyway.
Darwinek: General interest in Polish topics. Also I found out it is a great place to ask for help and discuss some unclear topics.

Do you speak Polish? Have you contributed to the Polish Wikipedia?

Volunteer Marek: Yes and yes. My contributions to Polish Wikipedia are limited, however, mostly because if I install Polish language diacritics on my computer somehow it screws up the mathematical symbols I need for real life work. And since typing out the special Polish letters manually is a big pain, I don't contribute there all that much.
Xx236: Yes and yes.
Tymek: Polish is my native language. As far as Polish Wikipedia is concerned, I improved some soccer-related articles a few years ago, but nothing else.
Nihil novi: I have made a few contributions to the Polish Wikipedia. But while I am bilingual, English is the stronger of my languages, so I prefer to write in English.
Malik Shabazz: No and no.
Piotrus: Yes and yes. But I prefer to help out at en wiki – it is the international one, with best coverage of most issues. Not Polish, now, the country-specific issues are almost always better covered by national, local wikis – but we are working on fixing that!
Kpalion: Polish is my native language. I've never contributed to Polish Wikipedia except occasional minor fixes or adding interwiki links. Polish Wikipedia is doing great, being the sixth largest by article count; on the other hand, contributing to English Wikipedia means you can reach a much wider audience and spread the knowledge of Poland all around the world!
Vecrumba: No and no.
Halibutt: Yes, I do speak Polish. And yes, initially I tried my luck at Polish Wikipedia. However, I had trouble with both the style and scope of Polish wiki. Back then (2004!) its standards were really low and many articles were little but collections of gossip and hearsay, and written in unusually poor Polish language at that. I realised that, being a grammar Nazi, I could spend my whole life just correcting simple grammar and stripping articles of weasel terms and dubious statements. Instead, I decided to flee in terror and settled here, in English wiki.
Orczar: Yes and yes. In Poland related areas there is much more vacuum to be filled in English Wikipedia though. For the same reason, if I systematically edited in Polish I would probably want to cover foreign subjects.
Darwinek: Yes and partially yes.

Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured and Good Articles? Are there any unique challenges to improving articles about Poland?

Volunteer Marek: I have participated in some of the Featured Article Reviews and tried to improve/save some of the articles that were up for review. In some cases I was successful, in other, it was simply too much work. I have never written a Poland related FA "from scratch".
I have written a couple Poland related GAs however (Robinson Crusoes of Warsaw, Jan Mazurkiewicz, Hugo Steinhaus), and contributed to more than I can count.
The unique challenges revolve around three issues: obtaining in-depth sources isn't always easy. Lots of the subjects are actually covered pretty well in high quality academic sources but these have been published only in Polish, and even in Poland itself may be hard to find. Second, there is always a scarcity of editors. Over the years there have been quite a few but at any one time the number is low. This makes collaboration difficult and honestly, a lot of the articles are a product of effort by one or two editors. The other "unique challenge", which actually isn't all that unique on Wikipedia, is that, like other "Eastern and Central European topics", Poland-related articles can be quite controversial and this means battlegrounds and disputes and all that other fun. This can get in the way of just your basic content creating work. I should say though that the atmosphere has been much better lately.
Xx236: No – I'm not a perfectionist and my English is poor.
Tymek: To the best of my knowledge, I have not contributed to any Featured and Good Articles. I have written a number of DYKs, if it counts. I do not know of any unique challenges.
Nihil novi: I have contributed to many Featured and Good articles, as well as to every other class, and to many DYKs.
Malik Shabazz: My only contribution to Good Articles has been assistance in copy-editing. Some members of our WikiProject don't speak English as a first language, and the prose sometimes needs a little polishing.
Piotrus: Yes, although I'll note that in my experience (having written a good number of FAs and GAs), they are not really "project projects". They are written primarily by one editor, with others helping with prose cleanup and such. In fact, I think only the Warsaw Uprising article was a collaborative effort by several different editors, working more or less simultaneously. This is more exemplified by the failure of our Collaboration of the Month attempt – rarely anybody but the nominator was interested in that subject. This is nothing unique to Poland, mind you, it is the case throughout Wikipedia. Developed articles have usually only one principal author, and collaborative projects fail. Trying to get many Wikipedians to work on the same topic is like herding cats, really.
As for unique challenges, compared to most English-language subjects, lack of online sources comes to mind. Few books are scanned and available on Google Books, few Polish academic journals are online. A complimentary issue is the fact that Polish-language knowledge is highly useful for creation of articles. At the same time, English-language knowledge is of course necessary, and one of our major issues is the lack of English language prose copyeditors, who can improve the prose of articles created by ESLs such as myself. Neither of those are so much Poland-specific, really, as non-English specific.
Kpalion: I've written four Poland-related Good Articles and one Featured List, but I have yet to (co-)write a Featured Article. Reaching consensus may prove difficult where spheres of interest of more than one national wikiproject overlap and too often degenerates to POV edit wars or protracted naming disputes – including the now legendary Danzig/Gdańsk war. Other challenges, like lack of time or occasional demotivation, are hardly unique.
Vecrumba: I've been paying more attention of late to getting articles related to Eastern Europe promoted to GA and FA status. From that standpoint, Poland has the most content that is "almost there", so given my English language skills and knowledge of Eastern European history and critical eye, it's probably the best area for a positive contribution away from the endless bickering over portrayal of the Soviet legacy on WP, which won't change until Russia owns up to the USSR's role in starting WWII, invading and occupying the Baltic states, etc.
Halibutt: I don't really know as I'm not an active member of the WikiProject. I've written some Poland-related Good and Featured Articles, but they seem to be missing from the project's page. Anyway, I've known many of its members for quite some time now and often ask for their help or advice on articles I'm working on. So in a way I don't collaborate with WikiProject Poland, but I do collaborate with its members.
Orczar: I've written several GAs in the area of history of Poland, where I'm working on creating a sequence of comprehensive articles by a time period. There are many challenges. The number of editors with access to Polish language sources (often necessary) and writing in English is miniscule compared to the number of English speakers contributing to primarily English related articles. Many articles are basically unsourced. Adding references adds work and requires extra skills, many people just won't do it.

How well are Polish subjects covered by the English Wikipedia compared with subjects related to other European countries? Are there any topics or areas of Poland that are over-represented?

Volunteer Marek: Compared to countries of the "former Soviet bloc" Polish subjects are very well covered. Compared to British, French or German related subjects, Polish topics are pretty poorly covered. Compared to other Western European countries, I think we're doing pretty good, especially given the "unique challenges" presented above.
The sub-topic which is over covered within the area is basically history. Given Poland's past, history as a subject is very popular in Poland, in a way which I don't think people from countries with more "normal" (i.e. boring) histories can appreciate. So every Pole is an amateur (or more) historian. More modern topics on the other hand are fairly neglected. One exception – which I don't know all that much about – is Polish sports. Apparently some of the most viewed articles from WikiProject Poland are on Polish mixed-martial arts fighters. I have nothing to do with those.
Xx236: Polish subjects are poorly covered, because English language sources are obsolete or don't exists and/or quote German/Russian sources. The main opinion about Poles is that they are antisemitic. Polish editors are legally discriminated against in this project (as Eastern Europeans). I believe also that Poles from Poland aren't assertive enough to oppose other editors. "Articles which relate to Eastern Europe, broadly interpreted, are placed under discretionary sanctions. Any uninvolved administrator may levy restrictions as an arbitration enforcement action on users editing in this topic area, after an initial warning."
Tymek: Polish subjects look pretty good, which does not mean that the project is finished, as there is much more work to do.
Piotrus: We don't really have reliable data on that; I am not familiar with any academic study of country-specific coverage. I am gathering some at this page, but it is more for gauging how much Poland-topics we have covered (~6%?) for the missing articles estimate rather than to compare with other countries. I'd like to think that because of the relatively high activity of our project, higher than that for many other countries, our coverage is above average. But I have no data to prove that.
For area coverage within Poland subjects, I agree with VM that history is well covered, because many of us, myself included, are interested in it, and there are many sources for it. Overall, like for many other subjects, how well an area is covered really depends if we have an editor interested in it. For example, we have to GAs on cities, Białystok and Kraków, because we have (had) two editors who were very interested in improving the articles about cities they had some personal connection with. The fact that other Polish cities have articles of lesser quality is certainly not an indication of their lesser importance for the project – rather, it simply means that we don't have active editors who care enough about them to work on those. In other words, the importance and quality of Poland-themed articles are not strongly correlated with one another, neither is the quality significantly correlated with article's popularity – it is, however, strongly correlated to personal interests and hobbies of the small pool of our active editors.
Kpalion: Maintaining the Poland Portal offers a tremendous opportunity to get a good overview of Wikipedia's coverage of Poland. Almost all of this WikiProject's quality articles (GA or higher) are history articles, with the odd biography here and there. You may have noticed that, where other portals have "Selected article" section to showcase the projects best articles, the Poland one sports a "From Polish history" section. The reason is probably that most Polish contributors to English Wikipedia (including myself) are history buffs – and more generally, Poles as a nation are often described as being obsessed with history. The Poland of the past seems to have a much better coverage here than the Poland of today. For the amount of information Wikipedia has about Poland, there is surprisingly little about Poland's geography and economy.
Vecrumba: Generally, better covered than other Eastern European countries. One of the challenges is deletionism, particularly regarding articles about individuals significant to the history of culture or EE countries. There's still a strong Anglo-centric bias. As also mentioned, there is a mountain of uninformed anti-Eastern European bias out there that Wikipedia can address through well-written objective articles.
Halibutt: Generally, Polish-related topics are fairly well represented, at least when it comes to non-controversial or not history-related articles. Now those are a completely different matter. A couple of years ago we had a nasty all-out war against Polish Wikipedians waged by a number of groups. In the end many decent contributors withdrew from English Wikipedia altogether. I also decided that constant quarrels and slandering my good name are not what I volunteered for, and went on extended wiki-leave. This resulted in many articles being written entirely from Russian or Lithuanian perspective, as there was no one to check new edits and tone them down if their only source, for instance, was a book by well-known holocaust denial pseudo-historian. Or to add Polish perspective to articles on Polish history. As long as the book you are citing as a source is not in English, you are pretty much safe to add anything to Wikipedia after all, it all comes down to good will, or lack of it. Correcting such articles might be a difficult task, certainly one I'm not willing to take. But again, if you're not looking for information on WWII, Poles expelled from the east in the 1940's or the history of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth but rather for articles on towns in Lesser Poland or a castle somewhere in Masovia, you are likely to find what you are looking for.
Orczar: I don't know about over-represented, large areas are not properly covered. As is the case in Wikipedia in general, the development of a subject or article depends on the existence of an interested, willing and able editor, who makes a major effort. Countless many Poland-related topics are not yet properly covered and the same is true I'm sure in other foreign language expertise areas, so there is a lot of work to be done. Many editors have the tendency to push national myths that they grew up absorbing in their countries of origin, the Poles, needless to say, are no exception.
Darwinek: I think they are fairly well covered comparing to other European countries. Good examples include history and football. As with other countries, the under-represented topics are mostly the scientific ones or literary articles.

Describe the community at WikiProject Poland. Are most members residing in Poland or are they expatriates? What kinds of conversation most frequently occur on the project's talk page? Are there any go-to editors for questions about Poland-related articles?

Volunteer Marek: We're a fun bunch. No, really. I think there is a sense of community within the project, and I'd even to venture to say that some bad-faith people might say too much of it. But like I said already, sometimes the numbers get low and it's up to just two or three people to keep things going. Anyone familiar with WikiProject Poland, or actually, just Wikipedia itself, knows that Piotrus has been the driving force and the "go-to" guy of the project for ever since anyone can remember. He essentially build the project up and is responsible for its development, as well as the hundreds of high quality Poland-related articles that Wikipedia has.
I think project members tend to split pretty evenly between in-Poland and expatriates, though like I said, the numbers fluctuate.
Most conversations on project page actually revolve around technical matters. About a quarter of the posts or so involve people from outside the project raising Poland-related questions (requests for translations, clarifications, sources etc.) which we happily try to answer (and in the past these kinds of outside queries have led to the development of some under-appreciated areas of the project).
Xx236: I know very little about the community.
Tymek: Most of my encounters with members of WikiProject Poland have been positive. We try to help each other, yet we act independently, and everybody has their own opinion about Poland, its history, culture, etc.
Nihil novi: Over the years, Polish-subject participants have shown a broad range of knowledge, linguistic ability, and capacity for civil discourse. Until a year or two ago, much Polish-project energy was wasted by demagogy and skirmishing among chauvinists of various, mostly adjoining, countries. Some difficulties continue to be created by individuals whose self-assurance exceeds their objective knowledge, as when Polish and other speakers of English as a second language display a tin ear for the nuances of English and insist on their own awkward English renderings of Polish names, terms and toponyms. The most consistently productive and helpful project member is no doubt Piotrus.
Malik Shabazz: The members of the WikiProject are a great bunch of editors. I get the impression that we're about evenly split between people in Poland and expatriates. There is little question that our "go-to" guy is Piotrus.
Piotrus: The community is composed of several active editors. The project may boast dozens of members, but only a fraction of them participate in the discussions and other activities; I won't name them – they will probably post here anyway (or had already). Various people have their own expertise, being a go-to persons for various tasks. If I have a question about economics, I'll talk to VM, if about philosophy, to NN, if about Kresy, to Halibutt, and so on. Of course, outsiders cannot be expected to know who to ask – this is what our project talk page is for; they ask – we answer.
Kpalion: Piotrus is certainly not only an extremely prolific and dedicated Wikipedian, but also the one who keeps the whole WikiProject together. I wouldn't even know about this interview without him! He's also the only member of the WikiProject I've had the occasion to meet in person.
Vecrumba: Being in a position of being pro-Polish, pro-Lithuanian, et al., I have, on occasion, been able to bring some objectivity to the portrayal of intractable conflicts over history and who wronged whom, who wronged whom first, who wronged whom worse, etc. There is some Polish blood on my wife's side of the family.
Darwinek: The community consists of several quite active editors and many occasional contributors. The conversation on the project's talk page generally deals with some unclear issues, reporting of AfDs and some sort of general article troubleshooting.

Have you contributed to the project's portal? How difficult was it to achieve Featured Portal status? What are some lessons other country-specific projects can learn from WikiProject Poland for developing their portals?

Volunteer Marek: Nope, and so I don't know hard it was to get to Featured Portal status.
As far as lessons go, I realize that it's "Wikipedia correct" to hype collaboration and all that. But honestly, for a country-specific project to get off the ground and to persist (I have also been involved in some other Wiki Projects which seemed to have died a natural death) you really do need one or two individuals who are deeply committed to it and who can drive it forward. The folks who'll keep going even when the rest of the project goes limp. People who are both good editors but also good organizers and managers. Even if you look at something like WikiProject Military History, which is probably the most successful topic-specific WikiProject in existence, you'll see that back when it was started it was just one or two editors who turned it into what it is today. Same thing here. And yes, it's Piotrus who has kept it going through thick or thin.
Another lesson particular to country-specific projects is that country-specific topics will sooner or later end up embroiled in some controversy or dispute, simply because of history. At that point the thing to keep in mind is that all them battles and disagreements, while sometimes inevitable, are really a side show. The thing to do is to keep writing articles and keep contributing content. It keeps you anchored.
Oh yeah, also, try starting a secret mailing list. That works really well.
Piotrus: Portal:Poland is almost solely maintained by User:Kpalion, who has taken care of it for years. This just goes to show how much depends on one person, and how much can one editor achieve.
Kpalion: While I'm practically the only person to directly maintain the portal on a regular basis, I must say that many other members of the wikiproject contribute much more to it indirectly. There's no original content in the portal; its sole purpose is to showcase Wikipedia's coverage of Poland and that coverage is created by many a tireless wikipedian – least of all by myself. Getting a portal to featured status does require some work, creativity and patient maintenance, but at least you can leave sourcing and citations to the authors of actual articles! As for tips for other country portals, the trick is not to concentrate on what the country has to offer, but what Wikipedia has to offer on its topic. If the coverage of a given country is skewed to some particular area, you can create a section of the portal devoted to that area – be it history, sports or cuisine. Making use of random selection is helpful, but regular maintenance is also necessary. In the Poland portal, DYK is updated monthly, reusing Poland-related hooks from Main Page DYK. I also add news manually under criteria similar to the Main Page ones (only if an article is created or updated to reflect the news) rather than pulling them automatically from Wikinews.
Vecrumba: No, I haven't. Maintaining a portal is a thankless, but very visible, task for which I offer my thanks to the above! I did do a significant amount of work on initially filling out the Latvia portal, however, I have my own web sites to fulfill those impulses.

What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?

Volunteer Marek: Hmm, more content is always good. But also improving existing articles, which were written long time ago when standards where much lower but which deserve better treatment. A lot of this is a thankless task with little recognition outside the project. But that's actually what builds an encyclopedia. Sourcing a lot of older articles would be good. Simply having more bodies on the ground would help a lot.
One aspect which I have been thinking about, but have not brought up at the project talk page yet is that at this point the project has grown big enough that an internal categorization scheme would be useful. We already assess articles according to class and importance, but it would be good to also categorize them according to whether they have to do with Polish history, Polish sports, Polish politics (the three largest components), Polish architecture, Polish cuisine, etc., in a manner similar to the "task force" categorizations of the Military History project. I think carrying out something like that would enable us to highlight the areas which need more work. Sort of like an internal audit of the project. At this stage this is just an idea.
Tymek: WikiProject Poland needs more people. There are millions of Poles living all over the world. Yet there are so few people involved in the project.
Malik Shabazz: We have a backlog of articles waiting for B-class assessments. Any editor, even if they're not a subject expert, can help.
Piotrus: We have the same urgent need now as we had for the past years: we need more editors to take part in our discussions, and to occasionally help out with tasks like the B-class reviews. We have barely made a scratch on those, struggling to do a few B-class reviews per months (still the fact that we do them puts us in the top few per cent of the most active projects), and ambitious plans for A-class have are shelved for the future. Too many tasks rely on one person – I am the only one who monitors the new article feed, Kpalion is the only one maintains the portal, and so on. We need more people to help out to improve the redundancy with such tasks. If we were to lose two or three editors, the project would lapse into semi-activity or inactivity. A few more active editors would really help us a lot. Even if one would only comment in the discussions few times a month, do one or two B-class reviews per months, or such, it would help a lot. So if you are interested in Poland issues, please, watchlist our page, and join in. You could make a big difference.
Kpalion: The breadth of coverage is already impressive, especially in the history area. But there are few GA+ quality articles about Poland and not necessarily on the most important subjects. Identifying core topics for the WikiProject and working on improving them is probably the most urgent need.
Vecrumba: I'm focusing on article quality improvement.
Darwinek: I'd say newcomers should be able to create quality articles, countering system bias. They could also help with tagging existing articles with the WikiProject's banners, and by taking part in discussions on project's talk page.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Volunteer Marek: Yeah, don't edit Wikipedia unless you enjoy it. And a good part of that means being true to yourself and avoiding hypocrisy, even if that means either getting your ass blocked for speaking your mind, or (and this is a very important "or") admitting that sometimes you're wrong and made a mistake on some occasion.
Tymek: I really enjoy Wikipedia. I like to write articles in my broken English, I like to search for information, to search for new topics, which are not covered yet by the project. When I write a new article, I share my knowledge, but also I learn about a topic myself. I also want to thank all people involved in the project, especially Piotrus. If it wasn't for him, WikiProject Poland would not exist.
Malik Shabazz: No, except that Poles are not evil.
Piotrus: A tip to people interested in creating an active country-themed WikiProject (or a topic discussion board): merge those two! The most active projects, IMHO, are those which have eliminated a regional noticeboard (WP:RNB), and channeled editors into one discussion forum. We don't have enough people to maintain multiple discussion fora, it's as simple as that.
I'll also add that this WikiProject community is a major reason I am still contributing, despite few close calls with being burned out. We are a number of helpful and friendly people, who for years have worked to create and maintain a friendly editing environment. Helping out with a WikiProject and related tasks is no more hard work than most other tasks on Wikipedia, but it is much more rewarding. Perhaps this is because we are at heart a content-creation community, with little need or desire for conflict, drama and power-posturing. If you want to relieve some wiki stress with a friendly bunch of people, check us out (or another WikiProject you find interesting). Content-creation and content-discussion, with shared interests, bring people together much more than anything else I've seen around.
Vecrumba: I've interacted with a number of editors, including Polish, on WP that I would consider them to be real-life friends at this point. The pleasure of working with editors who are striving to bring Eastern Europe out of its half-century cloak of obscurity and still clouded in Nazi- and Soviet-era propaganda makes up for all the down-sides of being active on WP. The love of one's country and heritage is the best guarantee for superior content, regardless of the grossly insulting and demeaning prejudice that is exhibited every day that one's blood and surname determine whether an editor is objective, and that being third generation Irish American is an inoculation against the Eastern European genetic POV-affliction disease. Sorry for being blunt, but that has been the state of affairs for years, and continues to be so.
Orczar: I heard once on NPR or Chicago's WBEZ radio that Wikipedia's major problem is how to contain its growth. What nonsense. This is like saying that the major problem with human knowledge is how to contain its growth. To me Wikipedia is mostly empty space that needs to be filled! If you think I'm wrong, compare the Wikipedia of today (February 11, 2012) with what you'll see there twenty years from now (presuming its survival).
I just read above on the (excessive?) emphasis on Polish history. You could have gone to any of the presently defunct Border stores (or any of the major still existing brands) and easily find hundreds of books on the history of any of the larger West European nations or Russia, but nothing or nearly nothing on Poland. Apparently for the average Western mind we simply don't exist. So if Wikipedia can make up a little bit of this deficiency, so much for the better.
Nihil novi: Amen to above comment. Poland tends to be one of those countries that are invited to make a brief guest appearance only when they experience disasters (e.g., invasions and occupations) too great to ignore. I can think of some Polish national experiences whose contemplation could profit other countries today.


Next week, we'll try to separate fact from fiction. Until then, contemplate alternate history and dystopian futures in the archive.

Reader comments

2012-02-20

The best of the week

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By Mathew Townsend and Crisco 1492
This report covers content promoted from 12 to 18 February 2012.


Eight featured articles were promoted this week:

Hollywood actress Katharine Hepburn, pictured with co-star Humphrey Bogart, starred in The African Queen (1951). The image is from the new featured article on her life and work.
Hayton of Corycus presenting his report on the Mongols to Pope Clement V in 1307, from the new featured article Franco-Mongol alliance
The newly featured List of municipalities in the San Francisco Bay Area includes San Francisco, here shown with the Golden Gate Bridge.
This new featured picture, entitled Portrait of Sir Thomas More (1527), by the German artist Hans Holbein the Younger, is of Sir Thomas More (known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More), an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, noted Renaissance humanist, and an important councilor to Henry VIII of England.
  • George Andrew Davis, Jr. (nom) by Ed!. George Andrew Davis, Jr. (1920 – 1952) was a highly decorated flying ace of the United States Army in World War II, and later of the US Air Force during the Korean War. Davis rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in "MiG Alley" during the war. He was the only American flying ace to be killed in action in Korea. With a total of 21 victories, Davis is one of only seven US military pilots to become an ace in two wars, and one of only 31 to be credited with more than 20 victories. He was the fourth highest scoring ace of the Korean War.
  • Tricholoma pardinum (nom) by Casliber. Tricholoma pardinum, commonly known as the spotted tricholoma, tiger tricholoma, tigertop, leopard knight, or dirty trich, is a gilled mushroom widely distributed across North America and Europe, as well as parts of Asia. It is generally found in beech woodland in summer and autumn. First officially described by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon in 1801, Tricholoma pardinum has had a confusing taxonomic history that extends over two centuries. In 1762, German naturalist Jacob Christian Schäffer described the species Agaricus tigrinus with an illustration corresponding to what is thought to be T. pardinum, and consequently, the name Tricholoma tigrinum has been used erroneously in some European field guides.
  • Royal Opera, London (nom) by Tim riley. The Royal Opera is a company based in central London, resident at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Along with the English National Opera, it is one of the two principal opera companies in London. Founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Company, it was known by that title until 1968. It brought a long annual season and consistent management to a house that had previously hosted short seasons under a series of impresarios. When the company was formed, its policy was to perform all works in English, but since the late 1950s most operas have been given in the original language.
  • Tropical Storm Cindy (1993) (nom) by Hylian Auree. Tropical Storm Cindy was a weak but unusually wet Atlantic tropical cyclone that caused disastrous flooding across Martinique in August 1993. Cindy formed east of the island and became the season's third named storm on August 14. Due to unfavorable atmospheric conditions, Cindy remained disorganized while crossing the northeastern Caribbean Sea. After attaining maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 km/h), the storm began to weaken from interaction with the high terrain of Hispaniola. It made landfall in the Dominican Republic as a tropical depression on August 16, and dissipated over the territory the following day.
  • President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur (nom) by Hawkeye7. On 11 April 1951, US President Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands for making public statements that contradicted the administration's policies. MacArthur was a popular hero of World War II who later became commander of United Nations forces fighting in the Korean War, and his relief remains a controversial topic in the field of civil-military relations. In relieving MacArthur, Truman upheld a view of the President's role as pre-eminent, thereby triggering a constitutional crisis. The notion that the President had extraordinary or even absolute power came to be known as Imperial Presidency. Henceforth, all military officers were on notice that they could be relieved at will.
  • Mark Satin (nom) by Babel41. Mark Ivor Satin (born 1946) is an American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher. Although often referred to as a "draft dodger" or "draft resister", he is better known for contributing to the development and dissemination of three political perspectives – neopacifism in the 1960s, New Age politics in the 1970s and 1980s, and radical centrism in the 1990s and 2000s. Satin has launched a political newsletter and wrote an award-winning book, Radical Middle (2004); both projects criticized political partisanship and sought to promote mutual learning and innovative policy syntheses across social and cultural divides.
  • Katharine Hepburn (nom) by Lobo512. Katharine Houghton Hepburn (1907 – 2003) (right) was an American actress of film, stage, and television. Known for her headstrong independence and spirited personality, Hepburn's career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned more than 60 years. She cultivated a screen persona that matched this public image, and regularly played strong-willed, sophisticated women. Her work covered a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. In the 1940s she began an alliance with Spencer Tracy, a screen-partnership that spanned 25 years and produced nine movies.
  • Franco-Mongol alliance (nom) by Elonka. Franco-Mongol relations were established in the 13th century, as Christian Crusaders and the Mongol Empire attempted to form a Franco-Mongol alliance against the Muslims. The Mongols were sympathetic to Christianity, as there were influential Nestorian Christians in the Mongol court. The Franks were open to support from the East, owing to the legend of the mythical Prester John, an Eastern king in a magical kingdom whom many believed would come to the assistance of the Crusaders in the Holy Land. The Franks and Mongols also shared a common enemy in the Muslims, but despite many messages, gifts, and emissaries over the course of several decades, the often-proposed alliance never came to fruition.

Three featured lists were promoted this week:

  • List of Liverpool F.C. players (fewer than 25 appearances) (nom) by NapHit. Liverpool Football Club is an English association football club based in Liverpool, Merseyside. The club was formed in 1892. Since Liverpool's first competitive match, more than 800 players have made a competitive first-team appearance for the club. Many of these players spent only a short period of their career at Liverpool before seeking opportunities in other teams; some players had their careers cut short by injury, while others left for other reasons. The First and Second World Wars also disrupted the careers of footballers across the United Kingdom. As of 25 January 2012, 289 players have played fewer than 25 competitive matches for the club
  • John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (nom) by PresN. The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is an award given annually to the best new writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous calendar years. The prize is named in honor of science fiction editor and writer John W. Campbell, whose science fiction writing and role as editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact made him one of the most influential editors in the early history of science fiction. Criticism has been raised about the Campbell, stating that it honors writers that become well-known quickly, rather than necessarily the best or most influential authors from a historical perspective, because of its eligibility requirements.
  • List of municipalities in the San Francisco Bay Area (nom) by Kurykh). The San Francisco Bay Area (Golden Gate Bridge pictured at right), commonly known as the Bay Area, is a metropolitan region surrounding the San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay estuaries in Northern California. According to the 2010 United States Census, the region has over 7.1 million inhabitants and approximately 6,900 square miles (18,000 km2) of land. The Bay Area is home to three major cities: San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, and consists of nine counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma), 101 municipalities, and numerous other places.

Six featured pictures were promoted:

  • Portrait of Sir Thomas More; (nom; related article) from the painting by Hans Holbein the Younger; nominated by Crisco 1492. This 1527 oil painting on oak (right), by the German artist and printmaker Hans Holbein the Younger, was commissioned when Holbein lived in London. While there, he gained the friendship of the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, who recommended that he befriend Thomas More, then a powerful, knighted speaker at the English Parliament. Another version of this portrait was featured until 8 February, when it was delisted.
  • Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto; (nom; related article); created by Paolo Costa and nominated by Tomer T. Nathan Phillips Square is an urban plaza located at the intersection of Queen Street West and Bay Street in Toronto, Canada, that forms the forefront of the New City Hall. Named for a former mayor of the city, the Nathan Phillips Square contains numerous works of art and is used, among other things, for concerts, carnivals, and protests.
  • Australasian Grebe in Mulligan's Flat Nature Reserve; (nom; related article); created and nominated by JJ Harrison. The Australasian Grebe, which measures 25 to 27 centimetres (9.8 to 10.6 in) in length, is among the smallest grebes in the world. Native to Australia and several nearby countries, the grebes are excellent swimmers.
  • Black-fronted Dotterel (Elseyornis melanops); (nom; related article), created and nominated by JJ Harrison. Promoted for high quality, clear view of plumage, and good background separation. The Black-fronted Dotterel (Elseyornis melanops) is a small, slender plover, widespread throughout most of Australia, to which it is native and New Zealand, where it self-introduced in the 1950s. The birds maintain the same plumage year-round, allowing easier identification.
  • Deutsche Bank Twin Towers (nom; related article), created by Jürgen Matern and nominated by Julia W. This new featured panorama (above) was stitched from 5 images taken from a high angle, showing the entirety of the twin towers and their rounded bases with a flat projection. The Deutsche Bank Twin Towers, each 155 metres (509 ft) high, is the headquarters of Deutsche Bank Group, located in the banking district in Frankfurt, Germany. In the opinion of at least one reviewer, the buildings are quite phallic.
  • Mycena inclinata, Clustered Bonnet, UK (nom); related article), created and nominated by Stu Phillips. Mycena inclinata (below), commonly known as the clustered bonnet, is a species of mushroom in the Mycenaceae family. The mushroom, whose edibility is doubtful, has a reddish-brown bell-shaped cap up to 4.5 cm (1.8 in) in diameter. It is a widespread saprobic fungus, and has been found in Europe, North Africa, Asia, Australasia, and North America, where it grows in small groups or tufts on fallen logs and stumps, especially of oak.
Fortunate lighting made this cluster of Mycena inclinata mushrooms an ideal subject, one of the new featured pictures this week.


Reader comments

2012-02-20

Civility enforcement closed, proposed decision in TimidGuy, two cases remain open

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By Steven Zhang & Lord Roem

The Arbitration Committee opened no new cases this week, but closed one case, leaving two open.

Closed cases

Civility enforcement

On 20 February, a motion to close reached four net votes, triggering the closure of the Civility enforcement case. This case was initially opened due to the actions of several administrators in relation to an editor who was blocked over perceived incivility. That editor, Malleus Fatuorum, will be subject to an RFA talk page ban. Specifically, he is banned from "any page whose prefix begins with Wikipedia talk:Requests for Adminship", but is not prevented from !voting on RFAs, according to the Arbitration Committee's proposed decision. Further, arbitrators voted to admonish him over "repeatedly personalizing disputes and engaging in uncivil conduct, personal attacks, and disruptive conduct". In approving this sanction, the Committee rejected a proposal to ban him on a 2–8 vote.

The decision includes a provision to desysop Hawkeye7. The basis for this is the finding that Hawkeye7 has engaged in "wheel warring and conduct unbecoming of an administrator". The Committee also voted to admonish administrators Thumperward "for conduct unbecoming an administrator, and for failing to adequately explain his actions when requested by the community and Arbitration Committee" and John for "reversing another administrator's actions while said actions were under review through community discussion."

A general reminder to all editors was passed "to engage in discussion in a way that will neither disrupt nor lower the quality of such discourse. Personal attacks, profanity, inappropriate use of humour, and other uncivil conduct that leads to a breakdown in discussion can prevent the formation of a valid consensus. Blocks or other restrictions may be used to address repeated or particularly severe disruption of this nature, in order to foster a collaborative environment within the community as a whole."

This warning is directed at conduct that deteriorates the quality of discussions, reminding all editors that uncivil conduct can be a factor in the breaking down of consensus forming, and that blocks or other restrictions may be used in the event of repeated disruption to ensure the collaborative environment of Wikipedia is maintained.

Open cases

TimidGuy ban appeal (Week 10)

This case was brought to the Committee by an editor to appeal a ban that was imposed by Jimbo Wales. The proposed decision was posted today by drafter Roger Davies. Proposals range from vacating TimidGuy's site ban to the desysop and ban of the accusing administrator. A great deal of the proposals discuss the Conflict of Interest guideline and its interaction with anti-harassment policies. Committee voting on these proposals is expected to continue into the week.

Article titles and capitalization (Week 4)

This case was opened to review alleged disruptive editing on the Manual of Style and other pages to do with article naming. Today, the workshop phase closed with a total of eight submissions from involved parties. Suggestions ranged from guidance on Wikipedia policies to claims of specific incidents of disruptive editing. Arbitrators AGK, David Fuchs, and Casliber will draft a proposed decision which is due to be posted by next Sunday (26 February).

Other requests and committee action



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2012-02-20

Major strands of development cycle coalesce as 1.19 is deployed to first wikis

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By Jarry1250

1.19 deployment runs into trouble almost immediately

Version 1.19 of the MediaWiki software that powers Wikimedia wikis went live to its first twelve wikis this week.

Over three days in the middle of the week, MediaWiki 1.19 went live to its first twelve (Wikimedia) wikis (a spread of different types of project including Wikisources, two Wikipedias, a Wikiquote, a Wikiversity and Meta). As expected, the deployments shed light on a number of issues with the release, including the appearance of a number of bugs that needed fixing before the planned rollout to Wikimedia Commons on February 21 (an up-to-date list of such bugs and their statuses is available).

For example, developers are currently wrestling with a number of JavaScript-related issues, including a problem (filed as bug #34409) which resulted in certain core variables not being defined. Since other scripts relied upon these variables (mw.user.options and mw.user.tokens), end users quickly reported problems with their watchlists and user gadgets. The problems were exacerbated by a fault with the deprecated secure.wikimedia.org server (wikitech-l mailing list), which caused some scripts to fail simply of their own accord and by the kind of dependency problem developers were already expecting (example). Although developers looking at the issue were initially puzzled by the intermittent nature of the main problem, there is now a growing consensus that most of the problems will resolve themselves as various caches get invalidated. Unfortunately, problems with the release were not confined to user scripting; indeed, quite a number of short-term fixes were needed to stop the update crashing servers due to its unexpectedly high memory footprint, whilst bugs relating to merging accounts and the recent changes IRC feed are still outstanding (also wikitech-l: 1, 2, 3)

Nonetheless, the deployment team is still expected to be able to keep to the original deployment timetable, which sees the final Wikimedia wikis upgraded during the early hours of March 2. Indeed, there are significant incentives to make sure that it does: the main Git switchover has already been scheduled to begin on March 3 (see below), making any overrun inherently problematic.

Main Git switchover confirmed for March 3–4

WMF developers confirmed this week that the canonical repository for the core MediaWiki software will be changed from the current Subversion repository to a new Git repository over the course of March 3–4 (wikitech-l mailing list). The long awaited move will therefore immediately follow the deployment of MediaWiki 1.19 to Wikimedia wikis, but precede its full release to external wikis.

The relatively tight schedule will head-off the risk that code review is allowed to get out of hand between the deployment (for which the number of unreviewed revisions was driven down to zero) and the switchover (for which the number of unreviewed revisions needs to be at zero). It also prevents the potential for any overlap between old-style "post-commit" review and new style "pre-commit" review, and hence the possibility of the same code being reviewed twice. Staff took the opportunity this week to explain the reasoning behind the switchover on the Wikimedia blog, and on the wikitech-l mailing list there was a discussion of the elements of the new system most likely to take developers by surprise, including references to several bugs. A separate thread discussed instructions for those who did not develop MediaWiki, but were still reliant on the old repository for keeping their installations of MediaWiki on the bleeding edge.

Extensions running on Wikimedia wikis will be transferred to Git immediately after the core MediaWiki code. Non-WMF extensions in the shared Wikimedia.org SVN repository can either take up the offer of a transfer, or elect to sort out their own hosting arrangements. Developers suggest that extension maintainers are likely to have around 12 months to make the decision before the old repository goes read-only.

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.

A racial slur found its way into the posts of WMF accounts on microblogging services Identi.ca (pictured) and Twitter this week.
  • Swift support stutters: Very shortly after the Signpost went to press last week, problems with the transfer of thumbnail functionality to a new, more extensible Swift-based system, came to the fore. Contrary to last week's report that only "minimal disruption" had been caused by the transfer, it transpired that the system was actually significantly slower than expected, delaying some page load times by as much as ten seconds. Fortunately, the problems with the new system could be quickly resolved; at the time of writing, all thumbnails were once again being processed via a Swift-based backend.
  • IRC meeting to discuss ResourceLoader: The next MediaWiki Workshop (aimed at both volunteer and staff developers) will focus on the ResourceLoader, and will be held on February 23 at 21:00 UTC in the #wikimedia-dev connect IRC channel. Developer Gregory Varnum, in introducing the project, described it as "an opportunity to learn more about utilizing MediaWiki's ResourceLoader [and] to ask questions about developing MediaWiki extensions" (wikitech-l mailing list). Further development work on the ResourceLoader, which was introduced in MediaWiki 1.17 as a way of speeding up page load times, will go live as part of the MediaWiki 1.19 release.
  • Racial slur tweeted by official account: Users following the official @wikimediatech Twitter and Identi.ca accounts were surprised this week to read two "problematic" tweets emanating from the accounts, one of which included a "racial slur" (wikitech-l). A quick investigation traced the source of the tweets to corresponding malicious server admin log entries, which were themselves prompted by the actions of an IRC troll (all log entries are automatically tweeted by the @wikimediatech account without pre-post moderation).
  • Adjustments to bot approval process: Several discussions were started on the talk page of the English Wikipedia's Bot Approvals Group to discuss whether any changes in procedure were required. The debate follows recent suggestions that the group, which is responsible for approving or declining requests to run bots on the grounds of community consensus and quality of implementation, may need to rethink its policy to place greater emphasis on the history of the operator requesting the task.

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