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2006-09-11

Carnildo resysopped

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By Ral315

After being desysopped by the Arbitration Committee in February for his actions in a wheel war, Carnildo was "provisionally sysopped" for two months, after a successful request for adminship. The high amount of opposition raised controversy among those who were opposed to his adminship.

During the course of a wheel war over a userbox indicating a user's status as a pedophile, Carnildo indefinitely blocked three established users for "hate speech". Carnildo was temporarily desysopped, along with four other admins, by Jimbo Wales while the Arbitration Committee decided appropriate remedies in the case. Three of the admins (El C, BorgHunter, and Ashibaka) had their adminship restored automatically within two weeks or less; Carnildo and Karmafist did not have their adminship restored.

Carnildo was nominated for adminship in March by Johnleemk; the request failed, garnering only 53.3% support. In his latest request, Carnildo received 61.2% support, still well below the usual 75% approval guideline that has been cited in many borderline RFAs. In a statement explaining their decision, bureaucrats Taxman, Danny and Rdsmith4 said:

Carnildo was an admin who was caught up in an unfortunate argument for which he was deadmined. Based on statements from members of the arbcom, we believe that this was meant as a temporary measure, a cooling off period, and in that time Carnildo has proved his loyalty and value to the project. While we recognize that there are many users who are opposed to his adminship, we believe that special consideration should be given to the extenuating circumstances of this case and that we should act in the spirit of forgiveness and reconcilliation which is integral to the success of our community. Carnildo has shown good will to the project despite his desysoping, and continues to contribute. We therefore reinstate Carnildo's adminship, on a probationary basis, for a period of two months, after which his activities will be reviewed by the arbcom.

According to a later comment by Rdsmith4, "this particular RFA contained several votes from users of questionable legitimacy, as well as votes from legitimate users which were themselves spurious, including some which admitted complete unfamiliarity with Carnildo with the exception of a brief skimming of his arbitration case." Phil Boswell also pointed out a proxy vote made by R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) on behalf of banned user Karmafist.

Oppose voters and others argued that consensus had not been met. Ligulem said "It seems like our voices are not needed here anymore. A pure waste of our time." Chacor, who voted in support of Carnildo, said "I voiced support for Carnildo, but to blatantly disregard many long-standing good-faith editors opposing with concerns just isn't right."

During discussion, many users noted that the "75% guideline" was first introduced by Cecropia, and that prior to this guideline, bureaucrats did not rely on percentages.

Carnildo will be re-evaluated in two months, at which time the Arbitration Committee can choose to allow him to keep his adminship, or to desysop him.



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2006-09-11

Report from the Hungarian Wikipedia

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By NCurse

Status and community news

As of Sunday, 10 September 2006, the Hungarian language Wikipedia contains about 39,378 articles, making it the 20th largest Wikipedia. Of these, 72 articles (approximately 1 in 550) are considered Kiemelt szócikk ("Featured article"). Hungarian Wikipedia has no equivalent of the good articles page of the English or the Lesenswerte Artikel of the German Wikipedia yet. In addition, in the Hungarian Wikipedia articles must go through another voting process to be featured on the Main Page.

The latest three additions to the list of featured articles are: Mamut (Mammoth), Antiochia (Antioch) and Carl Friedrich Gauss (Carl Friedrich Gauss).

As of 10 September, 2006, nine users of the Hungarian Wikipedia were administrators. All of them are male and the majority have a technical background. Sysops make 0.1% of users out of a total number of 8,411 registered users and about 14% of the very active (100 edits / month) contributors.

Since September 2005, when it had 16,000 articles, Hungarian Wikipedia's article growth index has been 250%.

A featured images page has been recently created. Selected noteworthy images from the Hungarian Wikipedia include:

  • Grand Market Hall, Budapest
    Grand Market Hall, Budapest
  • Parliament building in Budapest
    Parliament building in Budapest
  • Parliament building
    Parliament building
  • Szinva Terrace, Miskolc
    Szinva Terrace, Miskolc
  • Váci utca in Christmas decoration at Budapest
    Váci utca in Christmas decoration at Budapest
  • Park of Hungarian Turkish Friendship, Szigetvár
    Park of Hungarian Turkish Friendship, Szigetvár
  • City of Debrecen
    City of Debrecen
  • City of Sopron
    City of Sopron

Wiki Meeting

The Hungarian Wikipedia community held its fourth meeting on 11 February 2006 in the city of Debrecen. (Previous meetings were held in Miskolc and Budapest.) The two main outcomes were: the creation of the substub template (maintained by a bot) and the introduction of Maintenance Week, when we focus on specific backlogs.

About substubs

Earlier a considerable part of the activity on the Hungarian VfD page consisted of voting on deletion of substub articles (mostly unanimously), which were not valid candidates for speedy deletion, but no-one really questioned their uselessness, either.

After some debate a major simplification of cleanup of this kind of page was introduced. Whenever an editor encounters a page which is considered a substub, it is marked with a special template. The articles marked with this template are collected every hour by a bot, which timestamps them and also lists them on a page sorted by date. In addition, the bot prepares another template, which sorts substubs in three groups: those which have been marked with the substub template for at least five days and thus can be deleted immediately, and those which will reach this state in one or two days, respectively.

Voting is avoided with the following reasoning. If an article is marked as a substub, there is obviously at least one editor voting to delete it. And if someone would vote against its deletion within five days, they would either improve it and remove the substub tag, or promote it to voting by replacing the substub tag with the VfD tag.

After several months of use, most sub-stubs are deleted without any debate, some are saved from deletion by their expansion, and only a few need to be voted on. As a consequence, polls on the VfD page have become less frequent and more meaningful.

In the media

Articles about Wikipedia have been featured in many prominent news outlets in Hungary, including one of the most popular web portals and newspapers.[1] It has become a common practice that relevant Wikipedia pages are quoted in news articles about different subjects such as religious sects, celebrities or political figures.

In a recent example the special issue of a popular Hungarian newspaper Népszabadság entitled "The 100 Most Influential Hungarians" copied a substantial section from a biographical article of a film director without acknowledging or referring to Wikipedia. Once notified, the editors of Népszabadság turned out to be cooperative in the matter, but after discussions on the Wikipedia village pump, the issue made it to the front page of Hungary's leading web portal.[2][3]

Recently, the news magazine HVG, "the Hungarian Economist" also featured an opinion piece in its online edition about the political debates among Hungarian Wikipedia editors on the discussion pages.[4]

Sister projects

Various sister projects also exist in Hungarian. The Hungarian version of Wikibooks is the 9th largest, with 950 articles; Hungarian Wiktionary is 10th, with 27200 articles; and Hungarian Wikiquote is 19th, with 400 collections. A Hungarian Wikisource has recently been created.

References

  1. ^ Origo.hu, Magyar Web 2.0 konferencia – „kúl” dolog az enciklopédia ("Web 2.0 Conference – Encyclopedias are cool") - 30 May, 2006.
  2. ^ Index.hu, Plágiumügybe keveredett a Népszabadság kiadványa ("Népszabadság accused of plagiarism") - 6 July, 2006.
  3. ^ Index.hu, A Népszabadság szerint nincs plágiumvita a Wikipediával ("Népszabadság says there's no debate about plagiarism") - 7 July, 2006.
  4. ^ HVG.hu, Politikai csatározások a magyar Wikipédiában ("Political quarrels in the Hungarian Wikipedia") - 25 August, 2006.



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2006-09-11

News and notes

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By Flcelloguy

Voting continues in Board elections

Voting in the Board of Trustees elections continue this week. The vote, which uses approval voting, will end on Thursday, 21 September. All active users who meet the suffrage requirements - over 400 edits on one Wikimedia project prior to 1 August, 2006 with at least one contribution 90 days before that date - are invited to vote. As of press time, approximately 1,800 users had voted.

Voting on new logos for Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiversity

Votes on a logo for Wikiversity, on a new logo for Wikibooks and on a new logo for Wiktionary are currently ongoing. They started on 7 September and will continue until 21 September.

Foundation hires networking coordinator

Wikimedia Foundation general counsel and interim executive director Brad Patrick announced on 31 August that the Foundation had hired Mark Bergsma as networking coordinator. Bergsma will only be working part-time because of his continuing studies; however, Patrick called Bergsma's "dedicated manpower" a "critical" part of the Foundation's technical team. Bergsma will be responsible for helping maintain the Foundation's infrastructure, including "network reliability [and] independence".

Danny's contest to re-open

This week, Danny Wool, an assistant to the Wikimedia Foundation, announced the start of his third contest. In the past, he has sponsored two previous competitions, each encouraging competition between Wikipedia editors in improving the project. The first contest, held in October of 2004, searched for the best new requested article, and the second contest, which took place in November of that same year, sought the article most improved from stub status. However, this third competition will now involve editing an "unsourced article" either "related to history" or included on the list of vital articles and carefully sourcing and improving that article. Citing the need to focus on improving existing articles rather than creating new ones, Wool also asked that the line of requested articles on the recent changes header instead be modified to articles that have been requested to be improved to featured article status.

The contest will run through 7 October, and the winner will receive approximately US$100 worth in educational materials from Amazon, an online commerce company. It should be noted that Wool, while sponsoring the contests, is not acting officially from his position in the Wikimedia Foundation office.

Briefly



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2006-09-11

Features and admins

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By Ian Manka

Administrators

Three users were granted admin status last week: Luna Santin (nom), Oscarthecat (nom) and Hoopydink (nom).

Also of note was Everyking's request for re-adminship after being desysopped on an emergency basis by the Arbitration Committee (see previous article) last week. He was nominated by Haukur, and Everyking accepted the nomination on 10 September. Tony Sidaway closed the nomination after a little over ten hours on the grounds of the snowball clause, with the count at 11/32/5.

Featured Content

Sixteen articles were featured last week: Dr Pepper Ballpark (nom), Dürer's Rhinoceros (nom), Battle of Savo Island (nom), Palpatine (nom), Salvador Dalí (nom), Megatokyo (nom), Enzyme (nom), Ace Books (nom), Al-Kateb v Godwin (nom), 35 mm film (nom), Bhumibol Adulyadej (nom), Seabird (nom), Crushing by elephant (nom) (the 7th article to be de-featured, then re-promoted), Banff National Park (nom), Jaws (film) (nom) and Daniel Webster (nom).

Three articles were de-featured last week: Art competitions at the Olympic Games, Wario and Victoria of the United Kingdom.

No portals reached featured status last week.

One list reached featured list status last week: List of dinosaurs.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Emu, United States House of Representatives, Belton House, Hilary Putnam, Autostereogram, Simon Byrne and Actuary.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as the pictures of the day: Sarracenia, Hippopotamuses, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Cuban Missile Crisis, Melbourne Docklands, United States Declaration of Independence and Coal-fired thermal power station.

Six pictures reached featured picture status last week:

Six pictures were de-featured last week: Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Einstein (suspected copyright violation), Alphonse Mucha Dancel (deleted as copyright violation), Gliding, Moscow Metro and Gothic architecture.



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2006-09-11

Bugs, Repairs, and International Operational News

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By Streamwater, and Sugarpine

Last week in MediaWiki Software

Enhancements

  • Set default disabled values for DjVu render options
  • Added Xml::option() for generating <option>s easily
  • Localized page numbers in drop-down for DjVu page selection
  • Add --user, --comment, and --license options to importImages.php

Bugs

  • Monobook.js is used for site content, should not be localized (Brion Vibber)
  • PHP undefined offset on bad input to Special:Revisiondelete (Rotem Liss)
  • PHP error for call to getId() on bad input to Special:Revisiondelete (Rotem Liss)
  • PHP error for call to getTimestamp() on bad input to Special:Revisiondelete (Rotem Liss)
  • Use WfBaseName in place of basename() in more places (Brion Vibber)
  • Replace hard-coded empty message checks with wfEmptyMsg calls (Brion Vibber)
  • Remove some PHP 4 compat cruft (Brion Vibber)



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2006-09-11

The Report On Lengthy Litigation

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By Ral315

The Arbitration Committee opened two new cases this week, and closed four cases. Motions also passed in two prior cases.

Closed cases

  • Sathya Sai Baba: A case closed on Tuesday after nearly three months, involving Andries and SSS108's actions on the article Sathya Sai Baba. Both accused each other of "POV pushing", and violating Wikipedia's policy on original research. Arbitrators ruled that unsourced or poorly sourced information be removed from these articles, and a complete amnesty for Andries and SSS108 for any unreliable information they may have added in the past.
  • His excellency: A case closed on September 3 after over two months, involving the actions of His excellency on Islam-related talk pages. His excellency was banned for six months, and placed on probation for one year, and Timothy Usher was placed on probation for one year. An additional remedy permits the use of "traditional Muslim usages", such as "Salam, brother", so long as they do not create a hostile environment for non-Muslims.
  • CoolKatt number 99999: A case closed on September 3 after two months, involving the actions of CoolKatt number 99999 on WWOR-TV and related articles. CoolKatt has been banned from U.S. television articles for one year and placed on probation, and all of his user subpages not compliant with WP:USER can be deleted.
  • Heqong: A case closed on September 3 after two and a half months, involving the actions of Heqong (formerly Chiang Kai-shek) on China and Taiwan-related articles. Heqong was placed on personal attack parole and probation, and banned for one month for personal attacks.

New cases

  • Kosovo: A case involving the actions of editors on Kosovo, particularly the political status of Kosovo.

Evidence phase

No other cases are in the evidence phase.

Voting phase

  • Ackoz: A case involving the actions and community ban of Ackoz, and his later account, Azmoc. The user previously contributed to Wikipedia under the name Ackoz. He admits to "some trolling" after a three-day block, which led to his ban. However, he has stated that were he unbanned, he would cease his disruptive behaviour, and would be prepared to undergo mentorship. Fred Bauder has introduced remedies, which have not yet been voted on, to unblock Ackoz and place him on probation for one year, leaving open the possibility for a renewed community ban should Ackoz "revert to his previous pattern of sustained trolling".
  • Marudubshinki: A case involving the actions of Marudubshinki. Snottygobble, I@n and others allege that Marudubshinki has operated an unauthorised bot, and misused his sysop powers by unblocking himself and allowing his bot to delete pages. A remedy to desysop Marudubshinki has the support of two arbitrators.
  • MONGO: A case involving the actions of MONGO, rootology, and others. The case centers around Encyclopædia damatica, and an article posted on the site portraying MONGO in a negative light. Remedies proposed by Fred Bauder include indefinitely banning PrivateEditor, as well as other remedies that have not yet been voted on by other arbitrators.
  • Ed Poor 2: A case involving Ed Poor. JoshuaZ and Consumed Crustacean have accused Poor of POV pushing and disruption; Poor has not introduced evidence in the case. Ed Poor was party to two prior cases; the first was closed after Poor resigned his status as a bureaucrat, and the second resulted in his desysopping. Fred Bauder has proposed a remedy placing him on probation, but no other arbitrators have yet commented.
  • Pat8722: A case involving the actions of Pat8722. BorgHunter has accused Pat8722 of edit-warring. Pat8722 has requested that the ArbCom stay the case while he pursues 6 pro se cases in the American courts, and has agreed not to edit Wikipedia in the interim. A motion establishing the principle of a "continuance", and a remedy extending this to Pat8722, are supported by two arbitrators; a separate motion to place Pat8722 on probation has also been raised.
  • Kehrli: A case involving the actions of Nick Y and Kherli on Mass-to-charge ratio and related articles. Both protagonists accuse each other of POV pushing, adding unsourced information, and adding dispute tags without reason. Proposed remedies banning Kehrli from articles relating to M/z for either one or two years, and from changing the notation m/z where found to any other notation, are being considered.
  • Israel-Lebanon: A case involving the actions of AdamKesher, Tasc and others on 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. AdamKesher accuses Tasc of removing relevant external links which satisfy WP:EL, and he denies the allegation. In response, Denis Diderot accuses Kesher of "using Wikipedia as a tool to promote his POV". Proposed remedies to affirm the possibility of using blogs containing "contemporary opinion and observations" about current events have the support of two arbitrators.
  • Deir Yassin massacre: A case involving the actions of KimvdLinde and Guy Montag on Deir Yassin massacre. KimvdLinde alleges that Montag has violated his probation by rewriting the article, unilaterally moving it to "Battle of Deir Yassin", violating copyright and votestacking. In return, Montag refuses "to participate in any of these proceedings", and alleges that KimvdLinde has abused her admin tools by exercising them in a dispute in which she is involved. Proposed remedies banning Guy Montag from articles relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, extending his probation for another year, and encouraging users to enforce Montag's probation have the support of five to six arbitrators.
  • Warren Kinsella: A case involving the actions of Arthur Ellis, Pete Peters and others on the Warren Kinsella article. Both users accuse the other of disruptive edits on the page, and Peters and others accuse Ellis of sockpuppetry using anon accounts, while Ellis alleges that administrators dealt inequitably with him and Peters. Proposed remedies banning Ellis from the article indefinitely and limiting Ellis to one account have the support of four to five arbitrators, and an additional remedy placing the article on probation is being considered.

Motion to close

  • Intangible: A case involving the actions of Intangible. Cberlet alleges that Intangible has used an "aggressive and confrontational" editing style to push his POV (partly through the wholesale deletion of the term "far right" from numerous pages), making sweeping edits and reverts with little or no discussion, and being "contentious and confrontational" in talk page discussions. Intangible vigorously denies the allegations. If closed, Intangible and AaronS would be placed on probation.

Motions in prior cases

  • Aucaman: With the support of six arbitrators, and no opposition, Khoikhoi's probation, enacted in May, was rescinded, "in view of good behavior". Dmcdevit, who proposed the motion, noted that Khoikhoi had contributed to a recent featured article, and gave "no signs of the edit warring that caused him to be included in the ruling."



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