Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2005-12-26
Semi-protection policy enabled
A new layer of protection, labeled "semi-protection", has been enabled. The protection, meant to stop vandalism from IP addresses and newly created accounts, has met wide usage.
Last week, the semi-protection policy became official policy, after a nearly unanimous straw poll, and the approval of Jimbo Wales (see archived story). On 22 December, brion enabled semi-protection, and installed a new protection interface (left).
When a page is semi-protected, it cannot be edited by IP addresses, or by accounts younger than about 4 days old. As a result, semi-protection has proved very popular on high-visibility pages, including George W. Bush and John Kerry, where it was immediately applied to test the effectiveness of semi-protection on highly-vandalized articles. There was significantly less vandalism on the articles, though some editors worried about whether the trend would continue long-term.
About 30 articles are currently semi-protected. Woohookitty, an administrator who supported the policy, said that the number of semi-protected articles would likely stabilize at around 40.
Community planning starts on ArbCom elections
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 |
This week, only one new candidate joined the Arbitration Committee elections: Ronline (statement). No candidates withdrew.
With no updates from Jimbo Wales, the community began discussion on the process. The discussion included a set of rules drafted by E Pluribus Anthony, which was met with both laudations and criticism. Other users also debated on how to conduct the elections and when the elections should run. Most users supported having the elections near the beginning or middle of January.
It is unclear when the elections will actually begin.
Steward elections continue
The election for stewards continued this week, with several users joining the race and two withdrawing from the race. Raul654, Jon Harald Søby, Suisui, and Rdsmith4 all announced candidacies, while Evilphoenix withdrew after opposition. Brian0918 entered the race this week, but also withdrew. In addition, it was announced that the voting rules from last year's elections would be used: anyone with a meta account and three months' participation in a Wikimedia project would be enfranchised.
Wikimedia board member Anthere also commented on the elections this week, urging that only people active on meta run. "Note that I consider that someone inactive on meta should not become a steward, since the steward by definition should follow what is going on in terms of requests," she said. "[Other voters and myself will most likely] vote against those inactive on meta. No matter how trusted these editors might be on their own project, if they do not help answering requests, they are not useful so should not be given [steward] status." In addition, Anthere also expressed her concerns about the lack of understanding regarding the new CheckUser policy adopted by the board. "I am concerned... that accessing [the] steward status will give them freedom to use check user status," she stated. "I see no evidence [that] these editors are aware of our privacy policy, nor that they are aware of current rules for using this tool." She concluded by saying, "I hope voters will take these points into account."
The vote continues until 10 January.
Wiki tools make editing easier
A series of new editing tools have made the editing experience easier.
AutoWikiBrowser
Bluemoose created the AutoWikiBrowser, a tool used for large-scale changes. The tool can use find-and-replace to change text across multiple articles. For anti-vandalism purposes, the tool is limited to administrators, and other editors approved by Bluemoose or another administrator. The tool runs only on computers with Microsoft Windows and .NET framework version 2.0.
Searching with auto-suggest
Kolossos created a search engine for Wikimedia projects with an auto-suggest function. The engine allows a user to type in the first few letters of an article, and receive all articles starting with the prefix given.
Category Tree
Now, categories can be viewed in a nested, "tree" format. The Category Tree searches for sub-categories, and displays them when a link is clicked.
Cat Scan
Categories also can be quickly scanned for templates and sub-categories with Cat Scan. For example, a user can select Category:Cities in New York and highlight articles using certain templates within that category. [1]
News and notes
Fundraiser continues
A Wikimedia Foundation fundraising drive began Friday. The fundraiser, which will last for three weeks, ends on 6 January. At press time, nearly US$115,000 had been raised. Although no specific goal has been set, Daniel Mayer, Wikimedia CFO, indicated he hoped it could raise at least US$500,000.
Wikipedia daily traffic rank rises to 24
Alexa data shows that Wikipedia's traffic rank has risen to 24th. At press time, Wikipedia was ranked higher than CNN, the BBC, Google UK, and Go.com. Wikipedia's three-month rank is still 34th.
Briefly
- The Arabic Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
- The Russian Wikipedia has reached 50,000 articles.
- The Malay Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Chinese Wikipedia has reached 150,000 pages in all, including over 50,000 articles.
- The Polish Wikipedia has reached 150,000 articles.
- The Greek Wikipedia has reached 7,000 articles.
- The Luxembourgish Wikipedia has reached 7,000 articles.
- The Portuguese Wikipedia has reached 90,000 articles.
- The number of registered users at the Vietnamese Wikipedia has surpassed the article count.
In the news
Jimmy Wales edits own Wikipedia biography
Wikipedia user, Rogers Cadenhead reported on his blog that the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, edits his own biography on Wikipedia, contrary to Wikipedia's own guidelines against autobiographies. His actions have been seen as especially controversial because it is widely believed that some of his edits, such as this one, have not been NPOV. Various media outlets then picked up the story:
- Wired Magazine, "Wikipedia Founder Edits Own Bio" [2]
- The Times, "Wikipedia founder edits himself" [3]
- The Inquirer, "Wikipedia founder's biography edited" [4]
- New York Times, "Insider Editing at Wikipedia" [5] - also recaps Seigenthaler, Nature and Digital Universe stories
Follow-ups on Seigenthaler and Nature
Multiple mainstream news outlets continued to pickup the story and offered their own editorial comments:
- Financial Times, "Wikipedia to restrict access to encyclopaedia" [6]
- Forbes, "Wikipedia to bar user editing in 'stable' version of online reference - report" [7]
- The Toronto Star, "Wikipedia a blank slate for Web vandals" [8] as well as "Wikipedia, Britannica. Spot the difference" [9]
- The Inquirer, "Wikipedia tightens up security" [10]
- The Boston Globe, "The Wiki effect" [11]
- Wall Street Journal, "Wikipedia's Woes" [12]
- PC Magazine, "How Dangerous Is Wikipedia?" [13] offers an opinion on Wikipedia's accuracy: "I spent hours crawling through Wikipedia this week looking for glaring errors. I couldn't find any."
- Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, "Nobody's perfect, but Wikipedia matches Britannica: study" [14] picked up the Canadian Press story.
- The News-Sentinel, "Wikipedia: Raising perhaps more questions than answers" [15]
- Village Voice "Factually Speaking" [16] The Voice story on the Nature review picked up on a point that was largely missed elsewhere: "...the focus on relative quality missed the more relevant point of comparison. Of the 42 Wikipedia and Britannica articles Nature sent to outside experts for review, the only ones that could be corrected—immediately—by those same experts were Wikipedia's."
- New York Times "Complex Motives" [17] discusses the supposed preparations for a class action lawsuit against Wikipedia and provides a link [18] to an O'Reilly Radar story that notes the connection between the lawsuit webpage and QuakeAID .
- New York Times "Insider Editing at Wikipedia" [19], noting that the "debate over Wikipedia has hit a fever pitch in recent weeks", the story touches on Jimmy Wales self-edits, the Nature story, and Larry Sanger's startup, Digital Universe, "a Wikipedia for grown-ups"
Many other media simply carried the AP story:
Follow-ups on semi-protection policy
Media continue to report on last week's implementation of a semi-protection policy in Wikipedia. See related article.
New York Times notes coverage of Transit Strike
- On December 20, the first day of the transit strike, the New York Times ran "New Yorkers cope with transit strike" [23], which noted that "Wikipedia, the free, open-access, online encyclopedia, already has an entry on the 2005 New York City transit strike."
Year-end summaries
Wikipedia was mentioned in the Discover (the year-in-science Special Issue) article "Beyond Google" (p. 16). The article opens with a quick discussion of Wikipedia as one of the most news-making websites of 2005. There are some pros and cons, and then the article moves on to discussing other website models. The opening paragraphs are available in the Emerging Technology section of the Discover website; the full article is available to subscribers.
Wikipedia appeared as both a WINNER ("Heavily linked, authoritative, and constantly updated, the world's largest interactive encyclopedia came into its own this year.") and a LOSER ("Popular, yes. Accurate? Not necessarily.") on PC World's "Best & Worst of 2005" list.
It also appeared twice on Google's year-end summary: at number 4 on the list of "Top Gainers of 2005" on the Google Zeitgeist home page, and then in a section of its own on the "Phenomena" page, as "The Year of the Wiki", with an accompanying chart illustrating the growing popularity of "wikipedia" as a search term.
Digital Universe
Joe Firmage and Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger announced Digital Universe, meant to be an alternative to Wikipedia with expert review [24]. It is funded by US$10,000,000 in angel investors and will pay experts to review entries. They compare it to "the PBS of the web". Commentators have already questioned the business model of such a venture[25].
Other coverage of Wikipedia
- Are Wikis worth the time? - Point/Counterpoint debate on the merits of Wikipedia.
- Web site seeking people harmed by false reporting on Wikipedia to take part in a Class Action Lawsuit.
Citations in the news
Wikipedia was cited in the last week in the following publications:
Features and admins
Administrators
Administration status was given to sixteen users this week: Bogdangiusca (nom), Joe Beaudoin Jr. (nom), Malo (nom), BorgHunter (nom), GTBacchus (nom), Deltabeignet (nom), EdwinHJ (nom), Eliezer (nom), Croat Canuck (nom), W.marsh (nom), Deathphoenix (nom), FayssalF (nom), Izehar (nom), Jnothman (nom), Jacoplane (nom), and Howcheng (nom).
Featured content
Featured portal, which was proposed by Cyberjunkie, has featured its first portal this week: Cricket.
Surprisingly, no articles were promoted to featured status this week. Meanwhile, Behistun Inscription, Roy Orbison, and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. recently lost their Featured Article status.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program, Chennai, Captain Marvel (DC Comics), Early life of Joseph Smith, Jr., Sicilian Baroque, Ido, and Richard O'Connor. December 25th was to display Christmas, but since the article is currently a candidate for removal, Featured Article Director Raul654 replaced it with Ido.
Two lists reached featured list status this week: List of Oh My Goddess episodes and List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom.
Eight pictures reached featured picture status this week:
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
brion hid deleted edit summaries from non-admins this week. In a mailing list post, brion cited complaints about "private, embarrassing, vandalistic, [and] libelous" material placed in edit summaries that was still visible through Special:Undelete. brion hinted that changes will likely be made to the way these revisions are handled, allowing better revision deleting or revision editing.
Extensions installed
This week marked the installation of three extensions on all Wikimedia wikis: Special:Unwatchedpages, Cite.php, and Special:Filepath. All three were created by developer Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason.
Special:Unwatchedpages
Special:Unwatchedpages was installed on 22 December. The page, only accessible by administrators, shows all pages not watched by any users. The extension was installed in response to a request by Jimbo Wales, and in the wake of the recent Seigenthaler controversy.
Cite.php
Cite.php was installed on 25 December. Not to be confused with the similar SpecialCite.php, Cite.php allows parser hooks to be used to aid with creating in-line citations.
Special:Filepath
Special:Filepath was installed on 25 December. The extension allows the creation of links forwarding users to the current version of an image. For example, Special:Filepath/Wiki.png redirects to the current location of the Wikipedia logo.
Last week in servers
Server-related events, problems, and changes included:
- 22 December — New protection interface installed
- 23 December — Amethyst skin removed from all wikis
- 24 December — Wikitech wiki moved to https, the first step in a planned move to secure logins in other Wikimedia locations
- 26 December — In response to upload vandalism, the ability to upload files is restricted to "autoconfirmed" accounts, or those older than 4 days.
- 26 December — An old apache server is converted into an experimental https server for testing.
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee closed six cases this week.
Ted Kennedy
A case brought against editors on Ted Kennedy was closed on Tuesday. As a result, 24.147.97.230 and possible sockpuppets Labgal and FishingGuy99 have been blocked for three months for edit warring. Additionally, the users and any users with similar editing patterns have been blocked from Kennedy family-related articles and talk pages for one year. The user(s) had edit warred and made personal attacks in these articles over the insertion of "dubious content" into Ted Kennedy.
Nobs01 and others
A case brought against editors on Political Research Associates was closed on Friday. As a result, the following remedies were enacted:
General remedies
Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lyndon LaRouche 2 was modified to expand the editing ban to articles Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates, and Dennis King, as well as their talk pages.
Remedies against Nobs01
Nobs01 was banned for one year for disruption of Talk:Chip Berlet and personal attacks. He also was indefinitely placed on probation, allowing three administrators to place restrictions on his editing, including a general ban. Finally, certain material posted against Chip Berlet can be removed on sight as personal attacks.
Remedies against Cognition
Cognition was banned for one month for a personal attack on User talk:Cberlet. Additionally, Cognition has been placed on indefinite personal attack parole. Finally, Cognition has been banned from Lyndon LaRouche-related articles per the prior arbitration case.
Remedies against Herschelkrustofsky
Herschelkrustofsky was placed on probation for one year, allowing three administrators to place restrictions on his editing, including a general ban.
Remedies against Rangerdude
Rangerdude was placed on probation for one year, allowing administrators to ban Rangerdude from any article where the user's editing is considered disruptive. Rangerdude was also admonished to "extend respect and forgiveness" to users, particularly Cberlet.
Remedies against Sam Spade
Sam Spade was cautioned to avoid personal attacks, and to properly cite sources.
Remedies against Cberlet
Cberlet was cautioned to avoid over-involvement on Chip Berlet, an article about himself.
Ultramarine
A case brought against Ultramarine was closed on Friday. As a result, the editors involved have been instructed to reach a consensus on Democratic peace theory. If they continue to revert war, administrators can enforce the case with blocks. Two separate groups have kept different versions of the article, reverting each other's edits regularly.
FuelWagon/Ed Poor
A case against FuelWagon and Ed Poor was closed on Friday. As a result, Ed Poor has been desysopped, and FuelWagon has been banned for six months, limited to one revert per article per week, and placed on indefinite general probation, allowing any three administrators to place limitations on FuelWagon's editing. FuelWagon had been accused of instigating edit wars, and wikistalking SlimVirgin. Ed Poor, meanwhile, was accused of acting inappropriately in the dispute, including blocking FuelWagon, and moving part of FuelWagon's talk page to a protected subpage. He had earlier lost his bureaucrat status in a previous arbitration case.
Climate change
A climate change-related dispute was closed on Friday. As a result, SEWilco was placed indefinitely on probation, cautioned not to strictly apply Arbitration Committee rulings, and prohibited from converting citation styles, either by bot or manually. Additionally, a one-revert parole placed on William M. Connolley in a prior case has been revoked, having been deemed "unnecessary".
Ted Wilkes, Wyss and Onefortyone
A case against Ted Wilkes and Wyss was closed on Saturday. As a result, both Ted Wilkes and Wyss were placed on probation indefinitely, and were banned from making edits related to a person's alleged sexual orientation. The dispute with Onefortyone had previously led to Onefortyone being placed on probation in a prior case.
Other cases
Cases were accepted this week against Robert I (user page), Deeceevoice (user page), Firebug (user page) and freestylefrappe (user page). All are in the evidence phase.
Other cases against Sortan (user page), Benjamin Gatti (user page), Gibraltarian (user page), Carl Hewitt (user page), Reddi (user page), EffK (user page), and numerous editors on Neuro-linguistic programming are in the evidence phase.
Cases against voters on webcomics AFDs, Johnski (user page), a series of editors on Winter Soldier, Copperchair (user page), Xed (user page), and AndriyK (user page) are in the voting phase.
There are no active motions to close.