Summary: With most TV shows on hiatus for the northern summer, attention has turned to movies, celebrity and sports. The dramatic events at the 2013 Confederations Cup drew massive attention, as did summer blockbusters like Man of Steel and World War Z. But the most searched event of the week was the tragic and unexpected death of popular actor James Gandolfini on June 19.
For the complete Top 25 report with analysis, see here.
For the week of June 16 to 22, the 10 most popular articles on Wikipedia, as determined from the report of the 5,000 most trafficked pages* were:
The sudden, unexpected death from a heart attack of this hugely popular actor on June 19 sent many shocked fans to his Wikipedia page for confirmation.
The corporation finalised its $1.1 billion purchase of the popular microblogging site Tumblr on June 20, increasing speculation on the implications for both it and the site. Yahoo! promises however, that Tumblr will remain independent.
The second attempt to rework the Superman mythos for modern cinema (after Bryan Singer's Superman Returns) has earned $255 million worldwide in its first week.
The oldest woman in history, who famously said, "I’ve never had but one wrinkle, and I'm sitting on it", was the topic of a popular TIL thread on Reddit.
FIFA's warmup to the Football World Cup in 2014 (which pits the winners of the various continental football confederation championships against each other) runs from 15 to 30 June 2013.
Brad Pitt's loose adaptation of Max Brooks's zombie apocalypse novel follows a now-well-worn precedent of the less-popular opening film generating many more hits on Wikipedia. Monsters University, despite winning the weekend, barely broke the top 100.
In a 25 June article entitled "How Wikimedia Commons became a massive amateur porn hub", the Daily Dot examined the perennial controversy over explicit or pornographic media on Commons. This latest salvo was touched off when Russavia uploaded a portrait of Jimmy Wales made by the artist Pricasso, who paints with his genitalia. The conflict between Wales—who declared that the image was "sexual harassment"—and Russavia (with other editors becoming involved along the way) has been brewing over the issue of pornographic material on Commons since 2010 and has intensified in recent months. Recent areas of conflict include the issue of model consent and the scope of Commons itself, which the author calls the "black sheep" of the Wikimedia projects.
Commons hosts a wide variety of media of drastically differing quality, and the categorization scheme means that explicit media is hosted in a variety of categories that may appear innocuous.
“
You can't walk down a street on the Commons without stumbling upon some dude's penis, or something equally explicit or shocking. Search for a "wheel," and you'll shortly discover a photo from a BDSM torture session. The same goes for "jumping ball," "bell tolling," or "electric toothbrush."
”
The Daily Dot says that Commons has an "exhibition culture … dominated by men", and cites the example of Hansy2's extensive upload log, including "at least 29" explicit pictures of his genitalia. When the images were all put up for deletion, all were kept because one penis picture exhibits a rare skin disorder and is used in the article on that disorder.
The author asked both Russavia and Pricasso if he commissioned the portrait, and both confirmed that Russavia had requested the portrait, though the latter claims that "there was no exchange of cash or quid pro quo involved"; Pricasso was quoted in the article as saying that the anonymous patron offered a Wikipedia article with him as the subject in exchange for the portrait, yet another controversy in the continuing paid-contribution saga. The debate over this portrait has included a massive deletion discussion at Commons (commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Jimmy Wales by Pricasso.jpg), where it was kept, many noticeboard debates, several discussions on User talk:Jimbo Wales, and two essays in the Signpost. The author concluded that the community's decision to keep the files was wrong, saying "And what better way, incidentally, to prove that Commons is ethically broken than for one of its top bureaucrats to employ the site in a harassment campaign against the cofounder of Wikipedia itself?"
Jimmy Wales accused of contravening policies in hunt for Snowden
The banned English Wikipedia user Gregory Kohs, who is also a member and frequent commentator on Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy, published an article on Examiner.com claiming that the "notorious" co-founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales (User:Jimbo Wales) had looked into whether the PRISM leaker and current fugitive Edward Snowden had ever edited on Wikipedia, due to his active online presence. The article goes on to chastise Wales for what Kohs claims was a violation of Wikipedia's policy against "outing" editors. The article, to which the Signpost cannot link because of the English Wikipedia's spam blacklist, states:
“
Certainly as the man who co-founded the Wikipedia project and who has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from speaking to assembled audiences about Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales should know better than to ask others to violate one of its community's most respected rules. But that does not appear to be the case.
”
After Wales’ initial comment on his talk page, a thread on the Administrators' Noticeboard was initiated by Wikipedia administrator Fram. The article quotes several Wikipedians' responses (without revealing their usernames in the article), commenting that editors "picked apart Jimbo with a precision only Wikipedians could exact":
“
the complaint has some merit. In the case Snowden is an editor, and could continue to edit, outing him seems a bad thing to do, just like for any other editor.
...I agree that Fram's concern has foundation, and I am concerned with Jimbo's removal [of talk] page posts, as well as his dismissal of them as 'trolling.'
...I disagree with Jimbo when he says that this isn't a case of 'outing'.
...I fully support Fram's concern here. Journalists are entititled (sic) to investigate whether Snowden had an account on Wikipedia (and if so; which account/s); Wikipedians are not entitled to speculate on Wikipedia about real-life identities.
...Jimbo, you send mixed messages when you encourage us to out a Wikipedia editor just because he's in the news.
”
The article then quotes Wales, who said that all editors except Fram are welcome to discuss the issue at his talk page, and finally goes on to harshly criticize Wales and Wikipedia in general.
Wales and Kohs later directly exchanged perspectives on the popular Q&A site Quora.
As to whether or not Wales actually did violate Wikipedia policy, views in the ANI thread were mixed. Fram, who started the thread, said, "Speculation on which accounts may be used by named (notable) persons, for the sake of curiosity, have no place on Wikipedia." Nick, who closed the thread, remarked in his closing comments, "BLP policy and our civility guidelines apply everywhere so if Edward does have any publicly acknowledged accounts, they need to be kept free from inappropriate comments and behaviour. The same care and attention will need to be lavished upon any accounts discussed in the press, regardless of whether they are confirmed to be Edward's accounts." Dennis Brown fell somewhere in the middle: "Jimmy, I don't think you were trying to out him directly, but your comments are what some might call a 'red flag' comment, an indication that a user is trying to connect dots. If you weren't 'Jimbo' and were instead a <5k editor, I would have given a polite notification and a pointer to WP:OUTING. The comments as they are might be seen as you encouraging or condoning others outting him, even if that isn't your intention."
This story was widely covered in the international media, including ITPro, Softpedia, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Tech2. France24pointed out that usernames similar to TrueHOOHA, Snowden's username on sites like ArsTechnica, came under suspicion by Wales and others following an investigation into his other online activities. However, as of now, it has not been verified whether or not Snowden edited, nor under what name, had he edited. France24 noted that the outing policy is a "golden rule" of Wikipedia and reported Fram's criticism of the search for Snowden's username, as did Der Spiegel (Germany) and Der Standard (Austria). Both of these latter articles later had statements by Wales added to them. According to Der Spiegel, Wales told them it was the community that had asked questions about Snowden's activities on Wikipedia, while he himself had warned against an outing – a statement that seems hard to reconcile with the discussions that took place on his talk page and at the administrators' noticeboard. The article in Der Standard was updated after an an exchange of views on Twitter between Wales and Florian Hirzinger.
In brief
Doc Rivers' Wikipedia page hacked after news of Clippers trade: Larry Brown Sports reported on vandalism to Doc Rivers after the former Boston Celtics coach was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers, and declared the Clippers fans the "winners" of the vandalism back-and-forth.
Irate fan changes Kurtley Beale's Wikipedia page after penalty slip-up: Another article on sports vandalism came from the Score, who said that Kurtley Beale's article was vandalized to blame him for a loss in a rugby unioninternational match.
Wikipedia caught in German heat wave: Der Spiegelnoted that the recent heat wave in Germany had led to unusually high page views for the German article on air conditioning. The entry for banana peel, too, had experienced record page views of nearly 38,000 in a single day. The reason, it turned out, was that the German Wikipedia main page had hosted a DYK noting that more than 20 million tonnes of banana peel were generated each year, which could be used to clean waste water and treat arteriosclerosis. The Spiegel article also reviewed recent stories on the Wikipedia Live Monitor and the apparent relationship between Wikipedia traffic statistics and such economic variables as stock market developments, or box office takings of cinema releases.
Treat Wikipedia with respect: The Holmes Report, a website for PR professionals, featured a write-up of an interview with Jimmy Wales conducted at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the world's largest advertising festival. In the interview, Wales asked PR professionals to treat Wikipedia "with respect". He told the Holmes Report that "reputable, honest PR firms find it very easy to use Wikipedia. The issue comes when unethical, or more often, stupid people think that the right thing to do is to create a fake ID, argue with people in an unfair way and that just ends up embarrassing the client. You wouldn't hack into the New York Times' computers to change a story – you'd call them up to complain about something that's wrong. We'd ask to be treated with the same level of respect." Wales dismissed complaints from PR people that correcting errors in Wikipedia often turned out to be a laborious process: "It's very fast, it's very easy, I don't buy that argument at all. Obviously a PR firm has an interest in presenting their client in the best possible light, and we're certainly happy to run corrections or add perspective if they've published a response. But if you have unrealistic expectations that you can somehow go on Wikipedia and make something disappear that's a legitimate controversy, then of course you're going to be disappointed in the end." He urged PR professionals to be transparent about who they were, and said he could only think of rare cases where Wikipedians had "dropped the ball" and failed to respond adequately.
UK primary school teachers use Wikipedia to prepare themselves for RE lessons: An article in the Telegraph reported that according to a recent study, "[p]rimary school teachers know so little about religion that more than two thirds are now relying on websites like Wikipedia to plan their RE lessons." Parentdish.co.uk also covered the story.
Just edit it: Lexology.com, a web service for company law departments and law firms, posted an overview of how best to deal with "unfair, inaccurate, misleading or defamatory statements" in Wikipedia. Written by staff members of Heenan Blaikie, the article gave an overview of Wikipedia's policies and internal mechanisms and recommended a "self-help" approach: "Just edit it. Wikipedia is a 'wiki' which means that anyone can edit an unprotected page. Unlike most other sites with user-generated content (for example, online message boards), persons other than the poster or a site administrator can alter or remove existing content. The quickest and best solution when someone is posting unfair statements on an article will often be to just change it back and monitor the article. Such an edit can be justified if, say, the article contained an un-sourced personal attack, or if the cited source does not support the information. However, simple editing will not necessarily stop a determined user from re-posting defamatory content, nor will it necessarily be effective when the line between truth and fiction is not black and white. Wikipedia has internal mechanisms for dealing with these sorts of issues." The article advised against pursuing legal action, owing to the "cost of finding out who the proper defendants are".
¿Sabías que hay robots que escriben en la Wikipedia? [Did you know that robots write on Wikipedia?]: ABC Tecnología reported on the Swedish Wikipedia controversy over Lsjbot, a bot that writes articles. Sv.wikipedia recently reached the milestone of 1 million articles with the help of bots; this has generated debate over the value and quality of these articles (see Signpost coverage: "Swedish Wikipedia's millionth article leads to protests").
Alternativas a Wikipedia [Alternatives to Wikipedia]: Bitelia published an article on Spanish-language Wikipedia alternatives, including Wikilengua, Vikidia, Frikipedia, Encyclopedia Espasa, Kalipedia, Archiplanet, Wikitravel, and Ballotpedia.
La page Wikipedia en anglais d’el-Assir piratée [The English Wikipedia page on el-Assir hacked]: L’Orient-Le Jour reported on vandalism to Ahmed al-Assir.
A monthly overview of recent academic research about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, also published as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter.
"The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: a multilingual and geographical analysis"
Map of Conflict in Spanish Wikipedia. Each dot represents a geolocated article. Size and colour of dots are corresponding to the controversy measure according to Sumi et al. (2001)[1]. The map is taken from Yasseri, et al. (2013) [2].
A comparative work by T. Yasseri., A. Spoerri, M. Graham and J. Kertész on controversial topics in different language versions of Wikipedia has recently been posted on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) online scholarly archive [1]. The paper, which will appear as a chapter of an upcoming book titled "Global Wikipedia: International and cross-cultural issues in online collaboration", to be published by Scarecrow Press in 2014, and edited by Fichman P., and Hara N., looks at the 100 most controversial topics in 10
language versions of Wikipedia (results including 3 additional languages are reported in the blog of one of the authors), and tries to make sense of the similarities and differences in these lists. Several visualization methods are proposed, based on a Flash-based tool developed by the authors, called CrystalView. Controversiality is measured using a scalar metric which takes into account the total volume of pairwise mutual reverts among all contributors to a page. This metric was proposed by Sumi et al. (2011)[2], in a paper reviewed two years ago in this newsletter ("Edit wars and conflict metrics"). Topics related to politics, geographical locations, and religion are reported to be the most controversial across the board, and each language seems to feature specific, local controversies, which the authors further track down by grouping together languages with similar spheres of influences. Furthermore, the presence of latitude/longitude information (geocoordinates) in several of the Wikipedia articles in the sample analyzed in the study let the authors map the top controversial topics to a global world map, showing how each language
features both local and global issues as the most heated topics of debate.
In summary, the study shows how valuable information about cross-cultural differences can be extracted from traces of Internet activity, though one obvious question is how the demographics of Wikipedia editors affect the representativeness of the results, an issue which the authors seem to be aware of, and which is probably going to play a role of increasing importance, as the field of cultural studies looks more and more at data generated by peer
production communities.
Non-virtual sockpuppets created by participants of RecentChangesCamp, as a humorous take on the sockpuppet phenomenon in online communities
Sockpuppet evidence from automated writing style analysis
"A Case Study of Sockpuppet Detection in Wikipedia"[3], presented at a "Workshop on Language in Social Media" this month, describes an automated method to analyze the writing style of users for the purpose of detecting or confirming sockpuppets. The abuse of multiple accounts (also known as "multi-aliasing" or sybil attacks in other contexts) is described as "a prevalent problem in Wikipedia, there were close to 2,700 unique suspected cases reported in 2012."
The authors' approach is based on existing authorship attribution research (cf. stylometry, writeprint). In a very brief overview of such research, the authors note that data from real-life cases is usually hard to come by, so that most papers are testing attribution methods on text that was collected for different purposes, and comes from authors that were not deliberately trying to evade detection. Whereas on Wikipedia "there is a real need to identify if the comments submitted by what appear to be different users belong to a sockpuppeteer".
Using the open-source machine learning tool Weka, the authors developed an algorithm that analyzes users' talk page comments by "239 features that capture stylistic, grammatical, and formatting preferences of the authors" - e.g. sentence lengths, or the frequency of happy emoticons (i.e. ":)" and ":-)"). Apart from features whose use is established in the literature, they add some of their own, e.g. counting errors in the usage of "a" and "an".
The paper examines 77 real-life sockpuppet cases from the English Wikipedia - 41 where the suspected use of sockpuppets was confirmed by "the administrator’s verdict" (presumably most of them based on Checkuser evidence), and 36 where it was rejected. For each case, the algorithm was first trained on talk page comments by the suspected sockpuppeteer (main account), and then tested on comments by the suspected sockpuppet (alternate account). On the average in each case less than 100 talk page messages were used to train or test the algorithm.
The system achieved an accuracy of 68.83% in the tested cases (for comparison, simply always confirming the suspected sockpuppet abuse would have achieved 53.24% accuracy on the same test cases). After adding features based on the user's edit frequency by time of day and day of the week, it achieved 84.04% confidence when tested on a smaller subset of the cases.
The authors remark in the introduction that "relying on IP addresses is not robust, as simple counter measures can fool the check users". In this reviewer's opinion, this probably underestimates the effort needed (for example, DSL or cable users simply resetting their modem to obtain a different dynamic IP most likely will not "fool" Checkusers). Still, a later part of the paper treats rejections of sockpuppet cases as definite proof that the accounts were not sockpuppets. Thus, they are possibly ignoring cases where a sockpuppeteer managed to avoid generating Checkuser evidence - in other words, some of results counted as false positives in this methodology might actually have been correct.
Looking forward, the authors write: "We are aiming to test our system on all the cases filed in the history of the English Wikipedia. Later on, it would be ideal to have a system like this running in the background and pro-actively scanning all active editors in Wikipedia, instead of running in a user triggered mode." If all the resulting similarity scores would be public, it would be doubtful that this would remain uncontroversial - many editors (especially on the German Wikipedia) are uncomfortable with the publication of aggregated analysis data about their editing behavior, even if it is based purely on information that is already public; compare the current RfC on Meta about X!'s Edit Counter.
The authors state that "to the best of our knowledge, we are the first to tackle [the problem of real sockpuppet cases in Wikipedia]" with this kind of stylometric analysis. This may only be accurate in an academic context. For example, in a high-profile sockpuppet investigation on the English Wikipedia in 2008, User:Alanyst applied the tf-idfsimilarity measure to the aggregated edit summaries of all users who had made between 500 and 3500 edits in 2007. (This measure compares the relative word frequencies in two texts.) The analysis confirmed the sockpuppet suspicion against two accounts A and B: Account B came out closest to A, and account A 188th closest to B (among the 11,377 tested accounts). For an overview of this and other methods developed by Wikipedians to evaluate the validity of sockpuppet suspicions, see the slides of this reviewer's talks at Wikimania 2008 and the Chaos Congress 2009.
Adjusting automatic quality flaw predictors by topic areas
Building on their earlier work on the feasibility of automatically assigning maintenance templates to articles (review: "Predicting quality flaws in Wikipedia articles"), three German researchers investigate[4] how an article's topic might inform the detecting of text that needs to be tagged for quality problems. In this paper, they focus on maintenance tags for neutrality (e.g. {{Advert}}, {{Weasel}}) or style (e.g. {{Tone}}), cataloguing them into "94 template clusters representing 60 style flaws and 34 neutrality flaws". As an example of a maintenance tag that is restricted to certain topic areas, they cite "the template in-universe... which should only be applied to articles about fiction." Differing standards between different WikiProjects are named as another possible reason for "topic bias" in maintenance tags. To make their classification algorithm more aware of article's topics when assigning maintenance templates, the researcher modify their previous approach by populating their "positive" and "negative" training sets by revision pairs from the same articles: The version where a (human) Wikipedian had inserted a maintenance tag first, and the later revisions of the same article when the tag is removed (assuming that the corresponding flaw has indeed been eliminated at that time). To evaluate the success of this approach, the authors introduce the notion of a "category frequency vector" assigned to a set of articles (counting, for each category on Wikipedia, how many articles from this category are contained in the set). The cosine of the vectors of two article sets measures how similar their topics are. They find that "topics of articles in the positive training sets are highly similar to the topics of the corresponding reliable negative articles while they show little similarity to the articles in the random set. This implies that the systematic bias introduced by the topical restriction has largely been eradicated by our approach." Sadly, this evaluation method does not seem to have yielded direct information about which quality flaws are prevalent in which topic areas.
Apart from their own software, the researchers used the WikiHadoop software to analyze the entire revision history of the English Wikipedia, and the machine learning tool Weka to classify article text.
Briefly
High quality articles show benefit of WikiProjects, but low quality articles may be monitored too tightly: A bachelor's thesis in economics,[5] submitted last year to the University of Victoria, compares design principles of common-pool resource (CPR) institutions - developed among others by the late Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom - to Wikipedia, with particular attention to WikiProjects. Based on a sample of 120 articles and their talk pages, the paper investigates the statistical relationship of several variables, such as quality ratings (by Wikipedians), average pageviews, number of watchers, the amount of edits and reverts both by registered and anonymous users, and the number of Wikiprojects that regard the article as within their remit (per the templates on the talk page). As the main result, the author reports "that Wikiprojects play a significant role in high quality articles. This may be due to Wikiprojects ability to facilitate the creation of stylistic guidelines. By doing so, they clarify what constitutes desirable editing activity thereby decreasing the costs of reaching consensus and excluding members that do not conform to their guidelines." He also indicates that WikiProjects "play an important role in impeding reductions in quality caused by anonymous contributors. However, the allocation of too much effort to monitoring and exclusion activity in lower quality pages may decrease the potential benefits provided by anonymous users editing activity. The results show a negative impact of registered user deletions on an articles quality which suggests this may be the case."
Wikipedia as "social machine": A paper[6] presented at last month's WWW conference examines the development of Wikipedia as a "social machine", interpreting the relation between entities such as Nupedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia article editors or developers in terms of actor–network theory. This serves as an example to illustrate a new model proposed by the authors, called "HTP" (for Heterogeneous networks, Translation, Phases).
Arabic corpus from Wikisource: Three researchers from Constantine, Algeria and Valencia, Spain describe a method for "Building Arabic Corpora from Wikisource"[7] for the purpose of plagiarism detection. Discarding religious texts, poetry, legal texts and dictionaries, arriving at a corpus of 1008 documents by 114 authors. They remark that "Wikisource is the only resource that clearly provides Arabic content (with the [criterion that documents are book-like, having only one defined author]) without copyright."
Automatic recommendation of news sources:: A paper titled "Multi-step Classification Approaches to Cumulative Citation Recommendation"[8] promises a method to recommend suitable news sources to Wikipedia editors.
A semi-automated categorization system for Wikipedia articles: A technical report from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at University of Pennsylvania, [9] details a semi-automated categorization system that would let Wikipedia editors choose missing category links for articles, based on the current categorization of neighboring articles. The authors discuss the system implementation and an evaluation based on a sample of 100 articles. They conclude that the algorithm can work well only with articles that have received at least a categorization in 4 different classes.
Semantic similarity from the Wiki game: A poster presented at the 2013 edition of the World Wide Web conference (WWW'13) describes how relatedness can be computed from data of the Wiki game, a race game in which a reader, starting from a given entry, must reach a target entry in the least number of clicks (original rules here, xkcd comic).[10]
References
^Sumi, R., Yasseri, T., Rung, A., Kornai, A., and Kertész, J. (2011) Edit wars in Wikipedia. IEEE Third International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom), 9-11 October 2011, Boston, MA. pp. 724-727. Online preprint: ArXiv [stat.ML].
^Yasseri, T., Spoerri, A., Graham, M. and Kertész, J. (2014) The most controversial topics in Wikipedia: A multilingual and geographical analysis. In: P.Fichman and N.Hara (eds) Global Wikipedia: International and cross-cultural issues in online collaboration. Scarecrow Press http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2269392
^Thamar Solorio and Ragib Hasan and Mainul Mizan: A Case Study of Sockpuppet Detection in Wikipedia. Proceedings of the Workshop on Language in Social Media (LASM 2013), pages 59–68, Atlanta, Georgia, June 13 2013. Association for Computational Linguistics PDF
^Ramine Tinati, Leslie Carr, Susan Halford, Catherine Pope: The HTP Model: Understanding the Development of Social Machines. WWW ’13,May 13–17, 2013, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. PDF
Community-elected trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation Board ... the three successful candidates (red) and the eight unsuccessful (blue). Samuel Klein gained the support of 43.5% of the 1809 voters (y-axis). Top-right is the strongest direction, in which supports are high and opposes are low; bottom-left is the weakest direction, in which supports are low and opposes are high. Using the S/S O formula (x-axis), the rightmost three candidates were successful.
WMF election results
Samuel Klein, WMF trustee 2013–15Phoebe Ayers, WMF trustee 2013–15María Sefidari, WMF trustee 2013–15Delphine Ménard, elected member of the FDC, 2013–15Cristian Consonni, elected member of the FDC, 2013–15
Less than three days after the close of voting, the volunteer election committee posted the results on Meta. The worldwide Wikimedia movement has elected three WMF trustees for two-year terms on the 10-seat Board: Samuel Klein (supported by 43.5% of voters), Phoebe Ayers (38.3%), and María Sefidari (35.6%). The new trustees will take their seats at a critical time for the movement: one of the first tasks in their terms will be to help the Board to find and approve the new executive director to take up the top job when Sue Gardner departs.
Samuel Klein, from the United States, has expertise in digital libraries and participates in an internet research group. His academic qualifications are in physics, mathematics, algorithms and language. He has been closely involved in outreach and community content for the One Laptop per Child project. Samuel speaks intermediate-level German, Spanish, and French. He is just completing his second term as a WMF trustee.
Phoebe Ayers, also from the US, is a science and engineering librarian. She has experience in Wikimania coordination and administration, and is a co-author of the book How Wikipedia Works (2008). Phoebe served as a chapter-selected WMF trustee from 2010 to 2012.
María Sefidari (Raystorm), from Spain, has qualifications in psychology and was vice-president of Wikimedia Spain (2010–12). She speaks near-native-level English and intermediate-level French. María is the treasurer of the WMF's Affiliations Committee and has been a member of the IEG Committee.
The first two elected members of the Funds Dissemination Committee will be Delphine Ménard (notafish) and Cristian Consonni (CristianCantoro). The FDC recommends to the Board the funding it believes FDC-eligible Wikimedia affiliates should receive, based on applications made to it in two rounds each year.
Delphine Ménard, from France, studied in the US and Austria, and holds an undergraduate degree in political science and a postgraduate degree in international communication and marketing. She has worked as an event manager and has experience in managing budgets, and has near-native-level English, good German, and intermediate-level Spanish. Delphine is a board member of Wikimedia Germany and has worked for the WMF as chapters coordinator. Cristian Consonni has experience in the GNU/Linux and Free Software worlds, and is a member of the Board of Wikimedia Italy. He speaks intermediate-level English and French.
Susana Morais (Lusitana), from Portugal, speaks advanced-level English and German, and intermediate-level Spanish. Her interests lie in the arts and photography. Susana was appointed as the inaugural FDC ombudsperson last year. The FDC ombudsperson is charged with receiving and publicly documenting complaints about the FDC process, and providing feedback and recommendations to the WMF Board about how the FDC process can be improved.
One of the surprises of the election was that only 1809 members of the global community voted, just over half of the numbers who had their say in the election of community-elected trustees in 2011, against a much less marked shrinkage over that time in the number of active editors, from about 90,000 to about 80,000. In the so-called support–oppose electoral system—imported for the first time from the English Wikipedia's ArbCom elections against doubts expressed by several editors at the election talk page—voters faced three choices for each candidate: to support, to oppose, or to leave the setting at neutral.
Brief analysis of the vote
The scatter graph at the top of the page shows each candidate as a diamond point—red for the three successful candidates and blue for the eight unsuccessful candidates. By definition, the three rightmost candidates were successful, based on the S/S O formula, where supports are divided by supports plus opposes; this formula is represented by the x-axis. As a simple guide, all possible votes fall within a triangle bounded by theoretical lines representing zero supports, zero opposes, and zero neutrals (the top half of the triangle is not shown to produce a clearer display).
Faced with 11 candidates and three vacant seats, voters cast an average of 3.2 supports, 1.9 opposes, and 5.9 neutrals. Compared with the pure support votes on the y-axis, the use of the formula resulted in only two differences in the order of candidates: the inversions of Kat Walsh's and Michel Aaij's positions, and John Vandenberg's and Jeromy-Yu Chan's positions. The fact that the red–blue boundary between the successful and the unsuccessful remained untouched by these differences has avoided immediate debate about the operation of the formula.
The Signpost's attempts to locate the voter list for the last community-elected trustee positions in 2011 were unsuccessful—despite the apparent significance of the ability this would give to analyse the patterns of shrinkage in the active electorate throughout the world over this period.
FDC members and FDC ombudsperson
Seven candidates competed for the two FDC positions. Delphine Ménard gained the support of 45.7% of voters, and Cristian Consonni 32.0%. Voters cast an average of 1.8 supports, 1.1 opposes, and 4.1 neutrals; relative to the number of candidates for each body, this was a much higher proportion of neutrals. The two new members will join an FDC that is grappling with the need to streamline the process for applicants, while at the same time to deliver to the FDC and the staff the right type and level of detail to make its judgements fair and accurate.
The two candidates for ombudsperson gained 42.8% (Susana Morais) and 35.4% (Matt Bisanz). Voters cast an average of 0.8 supports for this single position, with 0.2 opposes and 1.0 neutrals.
Conclusions
As for previous elections, comments on this year's election are being gathered on a Meta post mortem page. While the results were released abnormally quickly, issues included a perceived difficulty on the voting page itself, which was extremely confusing to get to. In the words of one editor:
“
I think this statement is really nonsensible: Go to the wiki page "Special:SecurePoll" on one wiki you qualify to vote from. For example, if you are most active on the wiki meta.wikimedia.org, go to meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:SecurePoll. I cut and pasted Special:SecurePoll in the search box. It took me to what looked like the right place to vote. So I tried to vote. It said I was disqualified. After looking around for an hour and trying different things I realized I was going to a meta page. So I backed out to the main page and pasted it there. Then it took me to a place I could vote. You all really need to rethink how this voting process works. I'll bet there are lots of editors who give up in frustration.
”
However, in replying to this user, Risker (a member of the election committee and its principal public face) pointed out that a direct link to the poll page would allow readers to vote without seeing the candidates. The voting wiki was also rife with problems; MZMcBride pointed out several partway through the election. Translation of the election introduction and candidate statements was also slow to come in, a problem occasionally exacerbated by a need to clarify texts after they had already been translated.
Translations were also a major part of what was possibly the largest issue: the sudden delay of the election by one week at very nearly the literal last minute. The election committee gave as its reasons:
We have been unable to verify that the list of eligible voters is complete and that all voters meet the published criteria
We have been unable to verify that the SecurePoll setups for the election are properly functioning
The voter interfaces have not been translated and are not currently available in any language other than English, thus disadvantaging Wikimedians who do not read English.
The diamond points are candidates for the FDC—successful (red), and unsuccessful (blue). The two ombudsperson candidates are represented by the red and blue small bars.
In brief
Legal victory: The Wikimedia Foundation has prevailed in a defamation case brought against it by a former cabinet member of Italy.
New user group: The GLAM-Wiki community in the United States awoke on 26 June to find that their application to become an official Wikimedia user group was approved by the Affiliations Committee. The GLAM-Wiki U.S. Consortium will remain as a user group for a minimum of one year before it needs to reapply for that status.
First World War edit-a-thons: Given the upcoming centennials of events related to the First World War, several edit-a-thons are being organized for 29 June. Further information is on Meta.
CAPTCHA for each edit?: While the Portuguese Wikipedia voted to require a CAPTCHA before saving any edit from an anonymous or unconfirmed user, comments from the wider Wikimedia community on the resultant Bugzilla thread have been overwhelmingly negative.
Freedom of panorama: A legal intern with the Wikimedia Foundation has published an opinion that Wikimedia users "generally cannot use [freedom of panorama] as a reason to host an otherwise copyright-protected photo of a statue on Commons."
When humans disappear...: An intriguing blog post in Scientific American this week has explored how transcribing Wikipedia for a nascent population left after an apocalyptic event could (possibly) work. According to the post, doing this with the current size of Wikipedia, which is measured at approximately 1800 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, would require a significant number of pencils.
Chicks hatching. An editor has proposed marking the Article Incubator as historical or inactive.
This is mostly a list of Non-article page requests for comment believed to be active on 25 June 2013 linked from subpages of Wikipedia:RfC, and recent watchlist notices and SiteNotices. The latter two are in bold. Items that are new to this report are in italics even if they are not new discussions. If an item can be listed under more than one category it is usually listed once only in this report. Clarifications and corrections are appreciated; please leave them in this article's comment box at the bottom of the page.
A doorway at the Commission on Elections of the Philippines. Elections results for the WMF Board of Trustees, FDC, and FDC Ombudsperson have been announced
Blackness Castle in Scotland. This aerial photo, taken from a camera on a kite, is a new featured picture.
This Signpost Featured content report covers material promoted between 16 June and 22 June, 2013.
This week, the Signpost interviews Adam Cuerden, a Wikimedian who has been gathering featured pictures for years, and who constantly participates in what could be his favourite part of the project. Cuerden dedicates most of his time to scanning and restoring old, valuable illustrative works. He explains to us how the featured picture process works, its relation with other parts of the encyclopedia, and how pictures evolve before reaching featured status.
American presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln seen in a lithograph from 1860. The image was restored by Adam Cuerden.
On participating at FPC
Well ... it's sort of a moral issue. In the UK, with a strong culture of used books and well-stocked libraries, it's easy for me to come across amazing illustrations. But these illustrations can all too easily become inaccessible. It's all very well that I get to see them, but if I do the research, then hide it, or, worse, find some cheap old book in a charity shop that turns out to be an amazing treasure – which, because I got it, no one else will ever see – it just feels morally wrong. But with Wikipedia, sharing them, and making sure they get to the people who can use them becomes so much easier.
The thing to remember about Featured Pictures is that you don't have to nominate your own works, if you see, for example, a really good photograph by someone else, you can – and indeed, are encouraged – to nominate it for featured picture status. And I'm sure we'll come back to advice on how to do that later. I'm pretty sure my first featured picture was something along those lines. But I can remember my first successful restoration that got featured picture status. Bit of a story there, though.
On the relation between pictures and articles
I've kind of evolved in my Wikipedia focus: I used to be a featured article writer. and, alongside various collaborators, did a lot of the work setting up Gilbert and Sullivan-related articles as one of Wikipedia's strengths, with featured articles on W. S. Gilbert, Creatures of Impulse, Thespis (opera), H.M.S. Pinafore, and various others. Now, part of making a good featured article is finding good illustrations. If you have access to enough libraries, though – and I did – you'll find some. I began uploading scans of the illustrations, and, after a while, started to do the occasional minor edit to them. Then, one day, the edits stopped being so minor.
It was this illustration. And, if you check the edit history to that, you'll see increasing attempts to make an image that, while good, had some printing issues that drew all focus away from the main image, into something where the intent was maintained, but the problems making it awkward to use gradually disappear. And the best part is, one can always go back to the original scan, if the divisions between the woodblocks are important to the use someone wants it for.
Now, about that image. I don't find anything to be embarrassed about from it, but it makes a number of decisions I wouldn't make today. The biggest of which had to do with the crappy computer I had at the time. I literally couldn't do anything with the image unless it was near-monochrome. And I used Microsoft Paint to edit it. But, well, I was pretty much the first person on Wikipedia to really get to know engravings (Durova started around that time, but she focused on photographs and the occasional lithograph). Before Wikipedia, this sort of thing was highly specialised knowledge. Of course, there are downsides to this. Modern publishers don't always handle engravings well. I've seen expensive art books of Gustave Doré's work that were just awful. Hell, come to think of it...
An incomplete digitalisation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, painted by Gustave Doré. Adam Cuerden uploaded the picture, which is cropped at the left, in November 2008. He stopped working on this picture after realizing it was incomplete.
On the pre-nomination phases of a picture
This is from a 2007 edition that I started scanning in before realising it was utter crap and stopping. There's a few issues. First off, note the solid black areas. In the original, there's lots of details in those areas. The worst example was in one from this book I apparently never uploaded to Wikipedia (which is probably a good thing), in which a solid black area replaces a murderer hiding in the shadows. Secondly, look at the signature in the lower left. You may note it's signed "Doré".
The problem is that the original is signed "G. Dore", and the image continues left of the G. See, in the original printing, you had to turn the book on its side to see some of the images, such as this one, and, when you did, the caption was printed under the image after you turned the book on its side. In this reprint, they wanted all the captions to be in the same place, so just cut off the edges of the landscape-format images. They didn't even do it cleverly – they cut out nearly an entire person from the left hand side of this image but didn't crop anything from the right hand side.
We don't actually seem to have a good copy of this. Luckily, I have a horrible, god-awful beat up Victorian copy of the Inferno, but the engravings in it are fine, so I think I might make that my next featured picture attempt. Should've done this years ago, but, as was explained to me, if you made any attempt to be comprehensive, reviewer fatigue would set in, and they'd start opposing your images solely for being more of the same. Thankfully, Featured Pictures has moved on, so doing what I always wanted to do – completeness – is now encouraged.
On Commons FPC vs. English Wikipedia's
Commons FPC has very different rules. The one I dislike most is that Commons only allows two nominations by any individual at once, which really cuts down on the ability of active contributors to highlight the works of others. Commons also ignores encyclopedic value, and, while this has some advantages, it does mean that it ends up focused very heavily on photography – we have a lot of great photographers there, and, while that's almost always a good thing, it's far easier for a photographer to evaluate other photographs, and, well, as the number of supports is also based on the standard photographic nomination, it's harder for non-photographic images to pass on Commons' Featured Pictures.
Combined with the multilingual nature of Commons limiting the amount of comments you get, I tend to prefer English Wikipedia's Featured Pictures, but that's really a personal thing, based on my unusual focuses.
Featured articles
Air Vice Marshal Allan Leslie Walters of the Royal Australian Air Force
King Alexander of Greece, c. 1912–17
Barbadian recording artist Rihanna, singer of Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda at the World Economic Forum on Africa 2009
General Walter Krueger of the United States Army, seen here as a three star officer
Twelve featured articles were promoted this week.
Poitevin horse (nom) by Dana boomer. The Poitevin is a draft horse from the Poitou area of France, found in many solid coat colors, and the only one to be found in bay dun. Since early in its history, the Poitevin has been used extensively for the breeding of mules, and they have been recorded in the area since at least the 10th century.
Sunbeam Tiger (nom) by Dennis Brown and Eric Corbett. The Sunbeam Tiger is a high-performance V8 version of the British Sunbeam Alpine roadster, partially designed by Carroll Shelby. Two major versions of the Tiger were built: the Series I and Series II, and its production ended in 1967.
Allan Walters (nom) by Ian Rose. Walters (1905–1968) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force. He graduated from the Royal Military College and was considered one of the service's leading flying instructors and aerobatic pilots between the wars, and was appointed to his first squadron command in 1937. Walters was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1946, and retired from the RAAF in 1962.
Alexander of Greece (nom) by DrKiernan. Alexander (1893–1920) governed Greece for three years until his death, from the effects of a monkey bite, in October 1920. He was the second son of Constantine I, and succeeded him in the midst of World War I.
Gather Together in My Name (nom) by Figureskatingfan. Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. It is the second volume of a series of seven, all autobiographies. The book, released in 1974, received positive reviews and continues with the plot started on her previous release, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded (nom) by Tomica and Status. Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded is the reissue of barbadian singer Rihanna's third studio album Good Girl Gone Bad. Released in June 2008, it commemorated the first anniversary of the set, and included newly recorded material. The re-release received generally positive reviews from music critics, and featured four commercially successful singles.
Millennium Force (nom) by Astros4477. The Millennium Force is a steel roller coaster built by Intamin Worldwide at the Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. It was the fourteenth roller coaster to be built at the park, and became the biggest investment in the park's history at the time of its construction. The Millennium Force was the first complete circuit roller coaster to exceed 300 feet (91 m) high in the world.
Deadalive (nom) by Gen. Quon. "Deadalive" is the fifteenth episode of the eighth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. It became a story milestone for the series, re-introducing Duchovny after his abduction by aliens planning to colonize Earth in the seventh-season finale. The episode received a Nielsen household rating of 7.3 and was watched by 12.4 million viewers.
Paul Kagame (nom) by Amakuru. Kagame is the sixth and current President of Rwanda. He ascended to office after the resignation of his predecessor Pasteur Bizimungu, who held the post since 1994. Kagame also commanded the rebel force that ended the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, and was considered Rwanda's de facto leader during the governorship of his predecessor.
Walter Krueger (nom) by Hawkeye7. Krueger (1881–1967) was an American soldier and general officer best known for his command of the Sixth United States Army in the South West Pacific Area during World War II. Krueger served in a number of command and staff positions, and attended the Naval War College before assuming command of the Third Army in 1941. He was then sent to command the Sixth Army and Alamo Force, which he led in a series of victorious campaigns against the Japanese.
Gospel of the Ebionites (nom) by Ignocrates. The Gospel of the Ebionites is the name scholars give to an apocryphal gospel that supposedly belonged to a sect known as the Ebionites. It consists of seven short quotations discovered in a heresiology known as the Panarion, written by Epiphanius of Salamis, and its original title remains unknown. The text is a gospel harmony composed in Greek, and is believed to have been written during the middle of the 2nd century.
Pisco Sour (nom) by MarshalN20. The Pisco Sour is a cocktail whose name is a combination of the word pisco, which is its base liquor, and the term sour, in reference to sour citrus juice. It originated in Lima, Peru, and was invented by American bartender Victor Vaughn Morris in the early 1920s. The cocktail is recognized as the national drink in both Chile and Peru, with the latter celebrating a yearly public holiday in its honor.
Featured pictures
The painting Ophelia by John Everett Millais.
Six featured pictures were promoted this week.
Blackness Castle (nom) created by Dr John Wells and nominated by Nev1. Blackness Castle in Scotland was built in the 1440s on a promontory projecting north into the Firth of Forth. It has been used as a prison, artillery fortification, and ammunition depot at various times in its history. It is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument cared for by the government agency Historic Scotland. The photo was taken with a camera suspended from a kite line.
Caridoid escape reaction (nom) created by Uwe Kils and nominated by Dllu. The caridoid escape reaction is a complex escape mechanism of crustaceans such as lobsters and krill. It helps the crustacean to escape from predators.
Common Blackbird (nom) created by Andreas Trepte and nominated by Nikhilb239. The Common Blackbird (Turdus merula) is a thrush. It is unrelated to the New World Blackbird. The Common Blackbird may be found in many parts of the world including Europe, North Africa, Australia, Asia, and New Zealand. It has a number of subspecies.
Ophelia by Millais (nom) created by British artist Sir John Everett Millais (1829–96) and nominated by Cowtowner. Ophelia is part of the Tate Britain art gallery collection. The painting depicts the fictional character from William Shakespeare's well-known play Hamlet. Although criticized in Millais' time, it has since been praised by surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and Japanese author Natsume Sōseki. The painting is popular in Japan and has twice been exhibited in Tokyo.
Abraham Lincoln 1860 (nom) created by Thomas Hicks (artist) and Leopold Grozelier, restored and nominated by Adam Cuerden. Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) was the 16th President of the United States. According to the Library of Congress, "Thomas Hicks painted a portrait of Lincoln at his office in Springfield specifically for this lithograph." The painting is held by the Chicago Historical Society.
Tunnel View (nom) created and nominated by Diliff. Tunnel View in Yosemite National Park, California, United States, is a viewpoint on State Route 41. It is a popular tourist attraction. The photo was taken on 16 May 2013.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Fashion? Do you tend to focus more on current trends or historical fashions?
Johnbod: I really only cover historical fashions, and my interest came as a by-product of my interest in art history, and the very fine historical series by User:PKM and others.
Daniel Case: After reading Lauren Weisberger's novel The Devil Wears Prada, in about two days, I created the article in about the same amount of time (this was six or so years ago). From there I went to starting the article on the (then-upcoming) film version, and then decided that our article on Anna Wintour needed some improvement. That turned out to be a two-week task, during which I learned of the fashion project's recent creation. I was probably the first male editor to join that project (I do find fashion interesting, although you'd never know it from the way I dress). So I did a lot of work assessing articles and creating categories and navboxes, and have remained involved since then.
PKM: i focus on historical fashion, which has always been an interest of mine, and I was motivated to join the project when I saw some of the skimpy coverage we had five or six years ago. I think "hey, I can fix this!" Is a great motivator.
Are some time periods or elements of fashion better represented on Wikipedia than others? What can be done to improve coverage of neglected fashion topics?
Johnbod: Generally I think we cover historical fashion, and worldwide traditional costume, better than contemporary fashion, plus there's no WP:COI issues to worry about, thank heavens. We need more good editors interested in the subject.
Daniel Case: 1 to Johnbod on his first answer—and he should know, he's done a lot of the work there. As for improving coverage, it depends on the subject area. Bios of contemporary figures are easy to write; historical ones not as much. A lot of research material that would make for good articles about say, articles of clothing is not readily available online, and not everyone can get to the libraries that would have it offline.
PKM: i think our coverage of niche items is good in many cases, but we're less successful with the basics. Polonaise_(clothing) is a great example of many informed editors working through the evidence together - check out the Talk page. But basic articles like Trousers are actually very hard to get right. Everyone knows what trousers are, right? And everyone adds what they know. It's hard to find a good balance among historic coverage, contemporary trends, styles, and component parts. Similarly, we have focus articles on the history of fashion by century through the Medieval period, but no general survey of Medieval clothing.
Does the project deal with many marketers trying to influence articles about their brands? What can be done to protect the neutrality of Wikipedia's fashion articles?
Johnbod: I think so, in articles on brands and designers. It's a lot of work for the normal AFC/AFD processes, which I think do a decent job.
Daniel Case: Perhaps the generally low quality of the articles works in our favor here—those would use Wikipedia to promote their fashion lines know it's a not good source, not widely read for that kind of information, so I don't see much effort to influence it in a promotional way. What there is does get dealt with through the usual channels, as John notes.
Calliopejen1: I've seen a lot of articles about marginally notable designers and models created as a part of apparent PR efforts. I really haven't seen much promotional activity with more established brands, however.
How closely does Wikipedia's fashion coverage overlap with coverage of pop culture? Are there any art or entertainment projects that could collaborate with WikiProject Fashion?
Johnbod: Eerrr... dunno. There's a fair bit of an overlap with my main project, Visual arts, on the historical side, as with User:PKM and others. Also Textiles, certainly.
Daniel Case: In the early days it seemed like we and WikiProject Textile Arts might find a fair amount of common ground. There's a jewelry project, too. As for the pop-culture connections, it's largely because of the work on those projects that we have some quality articles for ours about people for whom fashion is a side thing like Gwen Stefani.
Johnbod: Unfortunately Wikipedia:WikiProject Gemology and Jewelry seems mainly focused on individual gemstones & the like. Our coverage of historical, let alone archaeological, jewellery is very thin indeed.
Has it been easy to find reliable sources for articles about fashion? What kinds of fashion books, magazines, television programs, and websites are useful for Wikipedia articles?
Daniel Case: As I said above, it depends. For contemporary subjects, there's plenty of reliable sources—all the fashion magazines like the various Vogues, TV shows (Style with Elsa Klensch was always the best), websites like Style.com. Older subjects, or less people-oriented ones, not as much online, or in English.
Johnbod: There's tons on the web, but I think WP:RS for contemporary fashion are rather problemmatic, since we know there's a lot of advertorial. This may be one reason why not many good editors work in this area (not that I can claim much knowlege of our coverage). For historical & traditional fashion the situation is not bad.
Calliopejen1: I think that finding reliable sources for contemporary fashion is relatively difficult, even setting aside the issue of advertorial content. The various Vogue magazines (which recycle a good deal of content among themselves), for example, generally have relatively few profiles of designers and such. Much content in the Vogue magazines is more lifestyle-related; they also tend to profile various individuals outside the world of fashion. Style.com does put out reviews of most major fashion shows, but it's hard to get a broad view given collection-by-collection articles. There are relatively few sources that write "what everyone knows" about contemporary designers and their aesthetics more broadly.
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?
Daniel Case: A larger community of involved editors. Anything a new contributor can find to do within the very broad framework of this project would be welcome. Ideally I'd love for the fashion project to have the sort of fashionista/o you rarely find: both with an intricate knowledge of the topic and the ability to write about it encyclopedically.
Johnbod: Agree with that. I'm not sure the to-do list on the project page represents our top priorities frankly.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Calliopejen1: Wikipedia's fashion coverage is often somewhat of an embarrassment in my opinion, and I think the problem is closely related to Wikipedia's demographic slant and lack of female contributors. For example, the article Rouge (cosmetics) contained a photo of a lipstick palette rather than rouge from 2006 to 2011 (!). If more women were involved in Wikipedia, we wouldn't see issues like this, and I believe our fashion articles would be much better-developed. (A special thanks, of course, to all the men who do help out in this arena!)
In the case, brought by Lecen, an editor was accused of systematically skewing several articles involving former Argentine president Juan Manuel de Rosas to portray a brutal dictator as a democratic leader, in keeping with the political motives of Argentine "nationalists" or "revisionists".
The committee was unanimous in passing findings that 1) the locus of the dispute involved allegations of POV-pushing in Juan Manuel de Rosas and other articles related to the history of Latin America, that 2) Cambalachero "has edited in a manner inconsistent with the neutral point of view policy" including the citation of a source "whose reliability they themselves have disavowed", and that 3) MarshalN20 engaged in "tendentious editing and battleground conduct." Also passing 5 to 3, with 1 abstention, was a finding that Lecen "has not always conducted himself with an appropriate level of decorum".
The committee unanimously passed remedies that Cambalachero and MarshalN20 be topic banned "indefinitely from all articles, discussions, and other content related to the history of Latin America". A remedy that Lecen is "reminded to conduct himself in accordance with Wikipedia's behavioral guidelines" passed 5 to 3, with 1 abstention.
The Race and politics case, brought by UseTheCommandLine and dealing with sourcing methods in articles pertaining to race and politics, has been suspended, after one of the editors central to the case withdrew from editing. The case will remain open for two months from the May 26, 2013 passage of the motion to suspend; if by that time the editor has not returned to editing, the case will be closed and a topic ban will be imposed.
This case involving an American political group, brought by KillerChihuahua, was suspended until the end of June, pending a moderated discussion. Pages related to the Tea Party movement are placed under discretionary sanctions. The case, along with any progress towards resolution, is to be reevaluated on 1 July 2013.
Other requests and committee action
Amendment request: Doncram: A request by Nyttend to amend the Doncram arbitration case to add a prohibition against Doncram commenting on contributors was declined, with the statement that the language of the existing remedy already contains sufficient flexibility.
Clarification request: Senkaku Islands: A request by User:Oda Mari to clarify the naming conventions for "Senkaku" and "Diaoyui" islands similar to the conventions for the Sea of Japan was withdrawn, after noting that the arbitration committee does not handle decisions about naming islands.
Postponed actions: discretionary sanctions: Three requests involving discretionary sanctions remain postponed. The discretionary sanctions portion involving notices and warnings of a request filed by NewsAndEventsGuy was moved elsewhere to solicit community comment. A request for clarification of several issues relating to arbitration enforcement brought by Gatoclasswas archived with the comment that a review of the issues of arbitration enforcement and discretionary sanctions was scheduled for May 2013. A request to clarify the appeal process for discretionary sanctions warnings filed by Sandstein was scheduled for May of 2013.
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