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Volume 3, Issue 36 3 September 2007 About the Signpost
(← Prev) 2007 archives (Next →)
From the editor: Interview with Jimbo Wales
WikiScanner tool expands, poses public relations problems for Dutch royal family WikiWorld comic: "George P. Burdell"
News and notes: Fundraiser, Wikimania 2008, milestones Wikipedia in the news
Features and admins Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
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SPV

From the editor

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By Ral315

I'm proud to announce that the Signpost will be interviewing Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales this weekend. This is our second interview with Jimbo; the first interview was published in February 2006.

The interview will happen on Sunday, September 9, sometime around 22:00-23:00 UTC. The interview will be open for readers to watch, in the moderated #wikipedia-signpost channel on freenode. The interview will run in next week's Signpost.

We're currently soliciting questions for the interview on this article's talk page; your input is welcome. We will also accept anonymous questions, if desired, via e-mail.

One thing I'd like to note is that while I've been considering another interview of Jimbo for a while, a request by Raul654 for such an interview really helped get the wheels going on it. If you have any ideas for interviews or stories, please leave a note on our tip line.

Thanks for reading the Signpost.

— Ral315


SPV

WikiScanner tool expands, poses public relations problems for Dutch royal family

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By Neranei

In the weeks since the WikiScanner tool was first used, several “minor public relations disasters” have been created by its use. One of the most recent ones involved the Dutch prince and princess, Prince Friso and Princess Mabel. This information first came to light on the Administrator’s Noticeboard for Incidents (AN/I), in this discussion. The Prince and Princess removed a key part of a quote from the Dutch Prime Minister about the scandal surrounding their wedding. The word “false” was cut from a quote saying “…incomplete and false information”. The edit in question was made from Queen Beatrix’s royal palace.

Other salacious edits

An editor using a computer at the CIA was found to have edited the articles about Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Porter Goss (the head of the CIA), among others. The CIA did not admit to editing the articles in question. Also, a computer at the Vatican was used to remove a mention of Gerry Adams’s alleged involvement in a double murder, and an anonymous editor from the BBC changed George Walker Bush’s middle name to “wanker”. Some of these disruptive edits have resulted in blocks; the IP addresses of Netherlands Public Radio and Radio Netherlands Worldwide have been blocked for more than 70 unconstructive edits over a period of more than 2 years. Also, a computer at major U.S. military contractor SAIC was the source of changes to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) article, adding such things as “The ACLU's real mission is to create a Eugenicist Communist society based on principles of Anarchy against the will of the American people.” and “The ACLU is trying to destroy America.”

WikiScanner’s expansion into other languages

WikiScanner is continuing to expand; it has now been translated into three languages besides English: German, Japanese, and French. There are Wikipedia articles for WikiScanner on several Wikipedias, including Spanish, French, Italian, and Polish. The English article has continued to evolve. It has been edited about 11 times a day. Some major contributors to the article are Casey Abell and Hypnosadist.

Reaction

The general reaction to WikiScanner has remained largely positive. The Wikimedia Foundation’s reaction to its invention has been favorable with Jimmy Wales stating in a TechNewsWorld.com article, "It's awesome—I love it … It brings an additional level of transparency to what's going on at Wikipedia … [WikiScanner] uses information we've been making publicly available forever, hoping someone would do something like this." A spokesperson for the Foundation said in a Scotland Sunday Herald article that "We really value transparency and the scanner may prevent an organisation or individuals from editing articles that they're really not supposed to."


SPV

WikiWorld comic: "George P. Burdell"

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By Greg Williams

This week's WikiWorld comic uses text from "George P. Burdell". The comic is released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 license for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.


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SPV

News and notes

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By Ral315

Wikimedia fundraiser planned for fall 2007

Last month, Wikimedia consultant Sue Gardner announced that a fundraiser would be held sometime this fall, possibly from September 23 through November 22. The last Wikimedia fundraiser ended in January, and netted the Foundation over US$1,000,000 in one month. By comparison, over the 7 1/2 months since the end of the fundraiser, only about US$508,000 has been raised.

Wikimania 2008 bids closed

New bids for Wikimania 2008 closed this week. Bids can be expanded and refined, but must be finalized by September 23; on that day, a public meeting will be held, and over the following two weeks, a question-and-answer period will help the judges with their final decision, currently scheduled for October 6. Six bids have been entered: Alexandria, Atlanta, Cape Town, Karlsruhe, London, and Toronto.

Briefly


SPV

In the news

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By Enochlau

Wales: collaboration fosters ideas

Wikipedia founder puts faith in many: Wales reinforces the idea that Wikipedia is a good starting point for research, instead of being the only point of reference. Companies can take on the idea of collaboration to allow ideas to come in from outside the company, and tools exist for allowing large numbers of people to work collaboratively, such as wikis. However, he cautions that just because a lot of people have looked at a something doesn't mean it's correct, but "It's certainly better than only one person looking at it". Wales reaffirms Wikipedia's volunteers' commitment to quality and openness.

Journalists' articles on Wikipedia

Stephen Glover on The Press: The author scrutinises Wikipedia entries on journalists and discovers that there is a wide discrepancy between the comprehensiveness of different articles, and concludes that some articles contain details that could only have been inserted by the subject of the article. His impression is that "some journalists think about little else than the on-line encyclopaedia". However, he notes that inclusion has its perils in the form of vandalism that can occur to your article.

Other mentions in the news

Other recent mentions of Wikipedia in the online press include:


SPV

Features and admins

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By Singularity

Administrators

Two users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: WODUP (nom) and Arkyan (nom).

Bots

Three bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Chris G Bot 2 (task request), ArbComBot (task request) and SkiersBot (task request).

Featured content

Seventeen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Oxidative phosphorylation (nom), 1981 Irish hunger strike (nom), Victoria Cross for New Zealand (nom), Hispanic Americans in World War II (nom), Development of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (nom), Dungeons & Dragons (nom), Harry S. Truman (nom), Tim Duncan (nom), Gregory of Nazianzus (nom), Renewable energy in Scotland (nom), Bupropion (nom), Aikido (nom), 1880 Republican National Convention (nom), Ramón Emeterio Betances (nom), Augustus (nom), Pilot (Smallville) (nom) and Ine of Wessex (nom).

Two articles were de-featured last week: Franks (nom) and Space elevator (nom).

Fifteen lists were promoted to featured status last week: Vezina Trophy (nom), Conn Smythe Trophy (nom), List of Aston Villa F.C. managers (nom), Manchester United F.C. seasons (nom), Natasha Bedingfield discography (nom), Frank J. Selke Trophy (nom), Eurovision Song Contest winners (nom), Lady Byng Memorial Trophy (nom), List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people/W-Z (nom), List of Bleach Soul Society: The Sneak Entry arc episodes (nom), List of counties in Nevada (nom), Lester B. Pearson Award (nom), Surviving veterans of World War I (nom), List of medical schools in the United Kingdom (nom) and List of tallest buildings in Philadelphia (nom).

One list was de-featured last week: List of The Batman episodes (nom)

No portals were promoted to featured status last week.

One topic was promoted to featured status last week: Lists of current World Wrestling Entertainment champions (nom).

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Moon, Archaeopteryx, Houston, Ulm Campaign, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, John Millington Synge, and Hamlet chicken processing plant fire.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Battle of Chancellorsville, Bryce Canyon, Guide on using a sextant, Sparrenburg Castle, Iapetus, Glossy Ibis, and Huaso.

Eight pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.


SPV

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By ais523

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.44.0-wmf.6 (d77bde6), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.

Fixed bugs

  • Recently, there were some major changes to the code that handled images (the display of the image's information in a table below the image was the most obvious effect). This fixed some bugs, and caused some more which have now been fixed:
    • When uploading an image so as to overwrite an existing image, the image showing a preview of the image now again shows correctly. (r25208, bug 11067)
    • Using the API to access information about old versions of an image now again gives the correct results. (r25212, bug 11072)
    • The 'file history' link at the top of an image description page for an image on Commons now links to the image's file history, which is now on the page (it wasn't there previously) (bug 7190; fixed by the image-code changes)
  • The "show preview on first edit" preference now shows a preview of the preloaded text when a link to edit a new page with preload text is used. (r25236, bug 11095)
  • When (due to a server problem or similar situation) the wiki has to be temporarily placed into read-only mode, the error message upon trying to edit now displays correctly. (r25293, bug 11114)
  • Anonymous users (and other users who aren't allowed to create pages, such as blocked users) now again get an error message and no edit form if they try to create a page. (r25374, bug 11140)

New features

Other technology news

Six Wikimedia wikis were closed recently:

Ongoing news

  • Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla or use Betawiki.


SPV

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By David Mestel

The Arbitration Committee accepted five new cases this week, and closed four cases.

Closed cases

  • Great Irish Famine: A case initiated by SirFozzie, involving allegations including misuse of sources and harassment relating to Great Irish Famine and other Ireland/Northern Ireland articles. As a result of the case, the article was placed under the "mentorship" of three to five administrators, Sarah777's editing was restricted, and MarkThomas was placed on civility parole.
  • Attachment Therapy: A case initiated by Shotwell, who alleges that other editors have engaged in POV pushing and tendentious editing on attachment therapy and related articles. During the case, checkuser indicated that DPeterson had created at least four sockpuppets that were used to edit-war on these articles and create the appearance of consensus. As a result of the case, DPeterson was banned for one year, and the other parties were reminded to exercise care while editing articles as to which they may have a conflict of interest.
  • Armenia-Azerbaijan 2: A case alleging misconduct by various editors, some of whom were previously placed on revert parole in an earlier case, on articles relating to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and related matters. As a result of the case, those editors already subject to the revert parole were placed on probation (now sometimes referred to as "supervised editing") as well, and uninvolved administrators may impose identical remedies on any other editors who are identified as editing these articles aggressively and uncivilly.

New cases

  • The Troubles: A case involving a large number of editors on articles related to The Troubles. Some editors attempted to withdraw from the case when its scope was widened at the request of an arbitrator to cover the entire area rather than only the behaviour of Vintagekits, but in accordance with arbitration policy, these attempts, along with other changes to statements after the case opened, were reverted by the clerk.
  • SevenOfDiamonds: A case involving alleged abusive sockpuppetry and other misconduct by SevenOfDiamonds. SevenOfDiamonds vigorously denies the allegations, and alleges that MONGO has harassed him.
  • Digwuren: A case involving alleged POV-pushing and incivility by Digwuren and alleged sockpuppets.

Voting phase

  • Artaxerex: A case involving alleged POV-pushing, incivility and sockpuppetry by Artaxerex. Artaxerex denies the allegations, and alleges that Shervink and others are focusing on getting him blocked, and that certain editors push an Iranian nationalist POV.
  • Jmfangio-Chrisjnelson: A case involving alleged edit warring, hostility and incivility between Jmfangio and Chrisjnelson. A remedy restricting the editing of both parties has the support of two arbitrators.
  • Allegations of apartheid: This case concerns the conduct of various editors in connection with a group of articles whose titles include the words "Allegations of apartheid". It has been alleged that these articles were created in violation of Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point, after several deletion debates concerning Allegations of Israeli apartheid resulted in that article being kept. Issues have also been raised concerning comments made in deletion discussions and reviews. Several users who have created and edited the "Allegations of apartheid" articles have strongly denied any inappropriate conduct. Voting on most proposals is split, but an amnesty for past actions currently has a majority.
  • Catalonia: A case brought by Physchim62 involving alleged edit warring, possible sockpuppetry, and other misconduct by various editors on Catalonia, Valencian Community, and related articles. A proposal banning Maurice27 for thirty days has the support of three arbitrators, and one encouraging the parties to continue with the normal consensus-building procedure has five.
  • Boris Stomakhin: A case involving a dispute between Biophys and Vlad fedorov, involving alleged BLP and 3RR violations, block evasion, and edit-warring. A remedy banning Vlad federov for one year has the support of five arbitrators.
  • COFS: A case initiated by Durova based on a discussion at the community sanctions noticeboard. The case involves allegations of tendentious editing by various editors, sockpuppetry, conflicts of interest, and other user conduct issues on Scientology related articles. The proposed decision, which has the support of six to nine arbitrators, would ban COFS for 30 days for POV editing and require him to change his username and disclose any duties he may have to the Church of Scientology before resuming editing. A proposal banning Anynobody from harassing Justanother has the support of three arbitrators, and one placing Scientology articles on article probation has four.


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