Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-01-30/SPV
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| Volume 2, Issue 5 | 30 January 2006 | About the Signpost |
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U.S. congressional staffers' editing investigated
A number of Wikipedia editors began scrutinizing edits made from IP addresses associated with the United States Congress last week after staffers for Massachusetts Democrat Marty Meehan admitted having replaced Meehan's article with one they had written themselves.
Staff rewrite articles
The actions of Meehan's staff were first reported on Friday in his hometown newspaper, the Lowell Sun. As reported by the Sun, Meehan's staff decided to rewrite the article about their boss, which was done in a series of edits on 18 July 2005. In particular, news reports picked up on the fact that this removed references to Meehan's now-broken pledge when he first ran for office in 1992 to serve only four terms.
Meehan chief of staff Matt Vogel acknowledged the office's involvement, but defended it as having significantly expanded and improved the article. He said, "Let the outside world edit it. It seemed right to start with greater depth than a paragraph with incorrect data from the '80s." Implicitly, Vogel seemed to take the position that they didn't object to the term-limits pledge being discussed but felt no obligation to incorporate unflattering information in their own submission. Still, subsequent edits from the same IP address last month, on 27 December, severely trimmed the since-restored discussion of the pledge.
The resulting publicity apparently caused Meehan to regret this involvement, as he wrote a letter to the editor commenting, "It was a waste of energy and an error in judgment on the part of my staff to have allowed any time to be spent on updating my Wikipedia entry." A spokeswoman said that the office did not plan to change its rules about Internet use; general House policy reportedly allows "incidental" use by staffers.
The Associated Press also reported on Monday that the chief of staff for Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota admitted his staff had edited the article about Coleman. Chief of staff Erich Mische argued that the fact that anybody can edit Wikipedia serves to allow people to correct inaccurate information this way. However, some information about Coleman's voting record (that he voted with President Bush 98% of the time in 2003) was also removed. Mische conceded, "That probably should have stayed in there".
Checking for more cases
The incident prompted an investigation on the administrators' noticeboard to look for possible additional instances of Wikipedia editing by congressional staff. Rick Block searched the most recent 500 edits for articles about current members of Congress and turned up contributions from 28 IP addresses believed to be assigned either to the Senate or the House of Representatives. An analysis by Aaron indicated that about half of these made legitimate contributions, while the other half edited in bad faith (meaning involvement in major edit wars, severely biased editing, or outright vandalism). Most had made very few contributions, and the IP address that edited the Meehan article had by far the most. Its contributions went back before the Meehan edits to the creation, on 2 June 2005, of an article about the McEntire Joint National Guard Station in South Carolina. Many but certainly not all of the edits were to articles on political subjects.
The edits were almost certainly not all by the same person, either, as another contribution from this IP address showed. Someone identifying herself as the Communications Director for South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson posted his official biography to the talk page for the article, asking that it be considered for use in updating the article. Jimbo Wales confirmed that he had corresponded with her and suggested this particular course of action, commenting that this staffer's conduct was entirely proper: "Her actions were 100% perfect in every respect, treating us appropriately." Some more discussion took place in the context of a request for comment about the situation.
Although the Meehan article is apparently the first case where legislative staffers have openly admitted editing an article in which they have a professional stake, it is not the first time such efforts have come to light. The German Wikipedia had a similar incident last May in which some edits about the candidates in a regional election were traced to IP addresses for the Bundestag.
Still, involvement by political professionals need not be detrimental, as SimonP pointed out: "We've long been aware of edits coming from the Canadian House of Commons. Overall their edits were not much worse than any random group of anons." And Adam Carr, a long-time user and one of Wikipedia's most prolific editors, works for Michael Danby of the Australian House of Representatives.
Clerk's office begins work to assist Arbitrators
A chat with the elected Arbitrators
6 February 2006
Jimbo Wales appoints 11 arbitrators, increases committee size
23 January 2006
Arbitration Committee elections continue; ArbCom member resigns
16 January 2006
ArbCom candidates (part two)
9 January 2006
ArbCom candidates
2 January 2006
Straw poll closes
19 December 2005
Jimbo starts new poll regarding election
5 December 2005
Last chance to run for ArbCom
28 November 2005
ArbCom voting process
14 November 2005
ArbCom duties and requirements
7 November 2005
A closer look: the calls for reform of the ArbCom
31 October 2005
A look back: the 2004 ArbCom elections
24 October 2005
Current ArbCom members
17 October 2005
Criticism of the ArbCom
10 October 2005
About the Arbitration process
3 October 2005
The history of the Arbitration Committee
26 September 2005
Introduction to a special series: A look at the upcoming Arbitration Committee elections
19 September 2005
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A chat with the elected Arbitrators |
The Arbitration Committee's Clerk Office officially began work this week, following the appointment of a head clerk and several associate clerks. The clerks' duties are to assist Arbitrators and keep the Arbitration process running smoothly; tasks include opening cases and closing cases with enough votes, creating each case's subpage, summarizing evidence for each case, and assisting in writing decisions. Appointed clerks were Ryan Delaney, Tony Sidaway, Johnleemk, Phil Sandifer, and Tznkai; in addition, former Arbitrator Kelly Martin was appointed chair, a position which requires that the officeholder have been an Arbitrator.
The office was created after discussion by the newly-elected ArbCom and Jimbo Wales; all felt that the office was a good idea because of its potential to speed the process and take some of the workload off the Arbitrators.
"I support [the new positions]," commented Arbitrator Matthew Brown. "Wikipedia is getting bigger, and the number of ArbCom cases will inevitably increase. Help with the mechanical mechanisms of the ArbCom and in helping present evidence will improve the ArbCom's efficiency, which I think we all agree needs to be better." In addition, clerk Tony Sidaway also voiced his praise for the idea. "The Committee normally has many cases on its hands and is chronically short-staffed. It does not have the resources to undertake massive refactoring of ill-assorted evidence, and the quality of arbitration findings could suffer from this incapacity... Until now, purely mechanical tasks such as opening a case have been undertaken by arbitrators... Now the Committee has a dozen appointed clerks available to do it."
However, other users expressed hesitation at the idea. "I strongly disagree with the clerk's task of writing summaries of the evidence for the ArbCom from which they'll work," stated FeloniousMonk. "Summaries written by clerks is an all-too-tempting opportunity for the injection of personal view in a case to influence a particular outcome." Despite the fears, Arbitrators reassured people that the clerks would not influence their opinions. "I for one have no intention of solely following the clerks' opinions," said Arbitrator Sam Korn. "I only intend to use their summaries as a place to start research into a case."
The discussion also involved questions on whether or not the clerks should have access to the private Arbitration mailing list. Although the proposal had at first granted clerks full access to the list, after community discussion, it was changed to write-only access. Currently, though, none of the clerks except Kelly Martin, a former Arbitrator, have access to the list. (Former Arbitrators have traditionally retained access to the list.)
The clerks began work on the twenty plus cases the Arbitration Committee currently has; Template:ArbComOpenTasks was also modified to reflect the creation of the office.
Errors identified by Nature reportedly all fixed
The errors identified in the Wikipedia articles selected for last month's review published in Nature have all been addressed. The final corrections needed were made last week, according to Violetriga, one of the participants in a project responding to the study.
The original report, published 14 December 2005 (see archived story), covered 42 articles on scientific topics, comparing the number of mistakes in both Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica. 42 days later on 25 January, the effort on Wikipedia's part to address these errors was declared complete. Only 38 articles actually required changes, however, since Nature reviewers identified no errors in four of them.
Although Nature published the results of the study on 14 December, a detailed report of what errors were found was not initially available. More than a week later, supplementary information (PDF file) explaining the review process in greater detail and indicating the errors identified was posted on the journal's blog.
By this time, work was already underway to address the criticisms, as the articles with problems were tagged with Template:NatureDispute and most began being edited fairly heavily. As a case in point, Cambrian explosion, one of the more flawed articles at 11 errors, had already been the subject of a significant rewrite by Dragons flight. Based on a table used to keep track of progress at correcting the articles, at least 15 mistakes were already fixed before Nature was able to release information about the nature of the errors.
In some cases, the issues were partly traceable to difficulties with the information available. For example Dmitri Mendeleev, the article in which the most errors were found (19), had problems with the number of siblings in Mendeleev's family. He was apparently the last of 13 surviving children, or the last of 17 total. Britannica stated 17 without qualification; Wikipedia said 14 at the time, and some other reference sources give this or some other number. The New York Times reported that a book written by reviewer Michael Gordin actually contained the same number that he identified in Wikipedia as being incorrect. His response: "I believe that is a typographical error in my book."
As the two articles with the most errors, Cambrian explosion and Dmitri Mendeleev were also the last to be checked off. And, as is always the case on Wikipedia, work on any of these articles cannot exactly be considered "finished". As to Mendeleev, to cite one instance, Gordin's review called for more information about "his role as an economic thinker, his work on the theory and practice of protectionist trade, his work on agriculture, etc." The fact that Mendeleev worked in these fields is now mentioned, but without much explanation other than a laudatory quote from a Russian historian of science, so more could certainly be added.
In the news
Congressional editing
An article in the Massachusetts Lowell Sun ("Rewriting history under the dome") on January 27, followed by an Associated Press report on January 28, described how Massachusetts congressman Marty Meehan's staff deleted unflattering information from his article. The report quickly spread throughout the mediasphere and blogosphere (including stories at community sites Slashdot and digg), and is now being touched on in mainstream radio and television in Massachusetts.
- "Meehan's staff acknowledges editing broken pledge from online bio", Boston Globe
- "Meehan Staffers Alter Online Encyclopedia’s Pledge", CBS News
Wikipedians have since uncovered over a thousand other anonymous edits, many of them vandalism or childish libel, appearing to originate from House of Representatives staffers (see related story). Evan Lehmann, author of "Wikipedia target of House 'editors'" published by The Transcript, confirmed House ownership of the IP addresses in question, and spoke to some of the government officials involved.
Media corrections to German Wikipedia story
The Associated Press printed a correction to the largely mistaken story it distributed last week on the "closure" of the German Wikipedia. ("Correction: Germany-Wikipedia story", Jan 27). Jimbo's explanation of the errors was reprinted in the HyperOrg blog: "The Media Gets Wikipedia Wrong Again".
Main page
The Korea Times discussed the featuring of the StarCraft article on the main page, noting that Wikipedia had paid special attention to the video game's popularity in Korea ("Wikipedia Features StarCraft Story", Jan 26). Of articles that have been featured on the front page, the StarCraft article was one of the most heavily edited, with over 300 edits during its day in the sun.
Opinions
News and notes
German Wikipedia to go to print
Zenodot, a sister firm to Directmedia Publishing, the company that previously produced the German Wikipedia on DVD, has announced that it intends to print the German Wikipedia in book form. This printing is planned to reach 100 volumes of roughly 800 pages each, with production beginning in 2007. Two volumes are supposed to be released each month and sold for €14.90 per volume to subscribers or €18.50 to the general public, so it will take about four years to print the complete encyclopedia.
If you can read German, take a look at the official announcement.
Briefly
- The Thai Wikipedia has reached 7,000 articles.
- The Romanian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 registered users.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 90,000 articles.
- The Polish Wikipedia has reached 200,000 articles.
- The Basque Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Serbian Wikipedia has reached 25,000 articles.
- The Portuguese Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles.
- The Slovenian Wikipedia has reached 2,000 registered users.
- The Dutch Wikipedia has reached 125,000 articles.
Features and admins
Administrators
Five users were granted admin status this week: Chairboy (nom), RexNL (nom), Vegaswikian (nom), Peruvianllama (nom) and Ilmari Karonen (nom).
Featured content
One portal reached featured status this week: War.
A record eighteen articles were featured last week: Kerala, Indo-Greek Kingdom, Shielded metal arc welding, Electrical engineering, Music of Athens, Georgia, Adriaen van der Donck, Médecins Sans Frontières, Krazy Kat, Sino-German cooperation (1911-1941), Military career of Hugo Chávez, Michigan State Capitol, History of New Jersey, HTTP cookie, Political integration of India, Flag of Australia, Cheers, Raney nickel and Bob McEwen.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: Planetary habitability, Claudius, Kalimpong, StarCraft, €2 commemorative coins, Imperial Japanese Navy and Prostate cancer.
Featured articles that recently lost their status include Erich von Manstein and Simon and Garfunkel.
Four lists reached featured list status last week: List of U.S. states by date of statehood, List of South Park episodes, Counties of Lithuania and List of European Union member states by accession.
Two pictures reached featured picture status last week:
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
In the first week since the new Arbitration Committee took office, three cases were closed.
Webcomics
A case involving voters on webcomic deletion requests was closed on Wednesday. As a result, all parties were "cautioned to remain civil", and Aaron Brenneman was also admonished to respect consensus. The dispute centered around these deletion requests, which often resulted in incivility and tension between parties in favor of keeping the articles and those wishing to delete them.
AndriyK
A case brought against AndriyK was closed on Friday. As a result, AndriyK was banned for one month for deliberately creating irreversible page moves. He was also banned from unilaterally making page moves, or changing articles, regarding Ukrainian names. Ghirlandajo was warned regarding incivility and personal attacks. Finally, Andrew Alexander, MaryMaidan and AndriyK were warned regarding copyright violations. The dispute involved the usage of Ukrainian names and places, as opposed to other spellings.
Gibraltarian
A case brought against Gibraltarian was closed on Monday. As a result, the Arbitration Committee did not take any action in support of, or against, an indefinite block placed against Gibraltarian in mid-December 2005. Gibraltarian was placed on personal attack parole, probation, and general probation. If he is unblocked, which the Arbitration Committee suggested should not be done in the absence of a promise to obey the remedies imposed in this case, then these remedies would apply. Gibraltarian was accused of editing with an aggressive point of view, making personal attacks against other users, and using numerous sockpuppets to continue editing after his block.
Other cases
Cases were accepted this week involving users IronDuke and Gnetwerker, Zeq (user page), Leyasu (user page), Instantnood (user page), Boothy443 (user page), Dyslexic agnostic (user page), Tommstein (user page), KDRGibby (user page), Ruy Lopez (user page), and Beckjord (user page).
Other cases involving VeryVerily (user page) and editors on WebEx and Min Zhu are in the Evidence phase.
Cases involving editors on Rajput, Xed (user page), Freestylefrappe (user page), EffK (user page), Firebug (user page), Sortan (user page), Benjamin Gatti (user page), Carl Hewitt (user page), Reddi (user page), Deeceevoice (user page), numerous editors on Neuro-linguistic programming, and Johnski (user page) are in the Voting phase.
Motions to close are on the table in cases involving a series of editors on Winter Soldier, Robert I (user page), and Copperchair (user page)