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21 September 2009

 

2009-09-21

Call for opinion pieces

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By Sage Ross

The Signpost is calling for letters to the editor, position pieces, and short essays addressing important issues facing English Wikipedia and the broader Wikimedia community. Many Signpost readers have expressed interest in seeing opinion/editorial content; this will be an experiment in that direction, and it may become a regular feature if successful and well-received.

Opinions are welcome, but submissions should be fact-based and well researched, and should not be unnecessarily inflammatory in tone. Sets of contributions that address a single issue from different perspectives are especially encouraged. Submissions can be listed at the opinion desk.

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2009-09-21

Footnotes updated, WMF office and jobs, Strategic Planning and more

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By Phoebe and Sage Ross

Reference system updated

The cite.php extension, which drives the footnote system of references, has been updated by Dragons flight so that references can be defined within the references list instead of the body of the article. Under this system, the <ref> is named in the body of the article, and the corresponding named reference in the references section contains the full reference. Help:Footnotes#List-defined_references explains these "list-defined references".

The articles Arthur Rudolph and Anne Dallas Dudley have been converted to the new system as examples.

A long-standing complaint has been that inline references disrupt the wikitext and make it difficult to read. This change may help alleviate that problem. Extensive discussion about the change took place in July of this year, along with a straw poll about the change. This new method of referencing is strictly optional.

New WMF office

Foundation staff have reported that the Wikimedia Foundation office in San Francisco will be moving to a new location on New Montgomery Street in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco. The current office is not large enough for the size of the staff, many of whom have been hired since the Foundation moved to San Francisco; according to Daniel Phelps, "we've been over capacity for several months now." The new office, which will be located at 149 New Montgomery Street, will be large enough for the entire staff (including the usability team, which is now in a separate office) and will also have room for community meeting space. There is still some time on the lease at the current office; plans are to sublease this space by the end of November.

WMF staff changes, job opening

There were a few staff changes at the Wikimedia Foundation announced this week, and there are several new and continued job openings at the Foundation.

Anya Shyrokova, Development Associate for the Foundation, was promoted to a newly created role of "Stewardship Associate," who will work with donors that give from $500 to $10,000 to the Foundation. This leaves open her role of Development Associate; the job is open until 30 September.

There are also two jobs associated with the Ford grant for Multimedia Usability (see previous story) that are currently open. One is a project manager position; the other is a software developer for the project. Both jobs are temporary, lasting until July 2010. The project manager job is open until 30 September, while the software developer job is open until 2 October.

Erik Möller gave an update on Foundation-l on the status of the CTO job (see previous story); a firm has been engaged to help look for a suitable candidate and the job should be posted early this week.

Finally, Sue Gardner announced that Jennifer Riggs, the Chief Program Officer for the Foundation, has left the WMF; her last day was 18 September. Gardner wrote that "... Jennifer and I have agreed that despite [her] contributions, she ultimately will not be a good fit for the Chief Program Officer role." Gardner wrote that it would likely "take at least three months, and possibly more" to replace Riggs.

Strategic Planning Call for Participation

The formal Call for Participation in Strategic Planning processes and projects launched today with a project-wide sitenotice. Several ways to participate are listed, including serving on task forces. According to the call for participation in task forces,

Task forces will be the backbone for the strategic planning process. They will be given a specific topic and questions to answer related to emerging strategic priorities. Task forces will be responsible for engaging in in-depth research, analysis, and dialogue in order to produce recommendations for the community and the Wikimedia Foundation on their topic. Over the next few months (from October to mid-December), task force members will be asked to commit a substantial amount of time to this work. Each task force will have a core group of 5–10 members who will be asked to volunteer up to 10 hours per week or 100 hrs in total preparing, researching, and consolidating the group's work.

Applications will be taken at http://volunteer.wikimedia.org/, where those interested can indicate their skills and areas of interest.

There is also a need for experts on many subjects; people who are interested in being called upon for specialized expertise (rather than being on a task force) should also submit their name through that form.

The next strategic planning office hours will be held on 04:00–05:00 UTC, Wednesday 23 September, in the #wikimedia-strategy IRC channel; questions about the task force process can be asked here.

Briefly

  • Italian Wikimedians are reporting that Wikimedia Italia (the Italian local chapter) and former chapter president (and former Wikimedia board member) Frieda Brioschi are being sued for €20 million over alleged defamation in a (now-deleted) biography on Italian Wikipedia. There is discussion of the lawsuit on the writeup talk page.
  • Due to the success of the strategic planning office hours and the recent board member chat, Wikimedia staff are now holding regular office hours featuring a Wikimedia Foundation staff member. The first chat will be this Friday, 25 September 2009, between 15:30 and 16:30 PDT (UTC 22:30 to 23:30), with Sue Gardner, the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive director. The IRC channel is #wikimedia-office on the Freenode network, which is also accessible through http://webchat.freenode.net/, typing in the nickname of your choice and choosing wikimedia-office as the channel.
  • English Wikizine #117 came out on 17 September.

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2009-09-21

Wales everywhere, participation statistics, and more

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By Sage Ross and Shreevatsa

Jimmy Wales touts openness, sharing, and thinking

In "What the MSM Gets Wrong About Wikipedia -- and Why" on The Huffington Post, Jimmy Wales attempts to clarify what the introduction of flagged protection and patrolled revisions and its likely successor policies will mean for English Wikipedia. Mainstream media sources reported widely but inaccurately that flagged revisions would mean a significant increase in restrictions on editing (see previous Signpost coverage). Wales explains instead that "English Wikipedia will soon launch a new feature that will allow you to edit, as an inexperienced user, articles that have previously been locked more-or-less continuously for years."

"What? Really?", writes Wales. "The solution to the problem of bad speech is actually more speech? Openness and collaboration actually work?" On Twitter, Wales said he hoped the piece would be read widely.

An audio feature, "Jimmy Wales on the (Encyclopedic) Value of Sharing", was posted this week on the Good magazine website.

Advice from Wales is also featured in the 19 September issue of New Scientist as part of the "Blueprint for a better world" series:

The most important thing we can do as individuals is to think. Instead of responding with your gut reaction, get the facts, get a complete picture of the problem and the possible solutions. As an exercise, take one of your strongly held opinions and challenge it. Spend a week, or better a month, researching it. You may find that you were mistaken. And if it turns out that you were right, then so much the better.

Contributor statistics in Time

Time magazine will feature its first story on Wikipedia in over two years in the upcoming 28 September issue. "Where Wikipedia Ends" focuses on the trends discussed at Wikimania and elsewhere of a declining level of active editors on English Wikipedia (see earlier Signpost coverage). The story includes commentary from Wikipedia researcher Ed Chi, whose analysis of recent database dumps was the basis for Wikimania discussions:

There are some bloggers out there who say, 'Oh, yeah, Wikipedia will be gone in five years.' I think that's sensational. But our data does suggest its existence in 10 or 15 years may be in question.

(Chi likely refers to Eric Goldman, who has been a frequent Wikipedia doomsayer: see earlier Signpost coverage.)

The Time story also mistakenly reports that Wikipedia "recently instituted a major change, imposing a layer of editorial control on entries about living people." The current flagged revisions plan has not yet been instituted and will not, at least during the planned trial, extend to all biographies of living people. As Jimmy Wales explained recently (see above) it is hoped that the English Wikipedia flagged revisions implementation (along with ongoing efforts to improve site usability) will make the project more open and easier to contribute to.

While the size of the editing community on English Wikipedia currently appears to be declining slightly or holding steady, many small language Wikipedias' communities are still growing. Erik Zachte blogged about participation level statistics, arguing for the importance of contributor level as a metric for the success of individual Wikipedias—especially as the combination of bot-made articles and relative completeness make the traditional metric of article count less useful.

New and inexperienced editors recount negative Wikipedia experiences

An article about experiences editing Wikipedia, "Wikipedia: No Country for Old Men", appeared in the June 2009 issue of OR/MS Today, the INFORMS magazine. It ends with:

Yet, their ways of manhandling authors of new entries suggests that creating entries there is something to avoid although I did read a newspaper story about a high school dropout who created 400+ entries posing as a classics professor. Overall, my experience of Wikipedia was like that dealing with a gang of marauding young men roaming around the countryside looking for victims—yup, no country for old men.

The Wikipedia article the writer attempted to write appears to be Six Sigma Pricing (AfD). The magazine is sent to all INFORMS members, who generally work in Operations Research and related areas); the article has also been mentioned in blog comments here.

Blogger and some-time Wikipedian Gene McKenna expressed similar frustration in his post "Bullypedia, A Wikipedian Who’s Tired of Getting Beat Up", which sparked a lively set of discussions on the WikiEN-l mailing list.

Briefly

2009-09-21

Discussion Reports and Miscellaneous Articulations

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By Hiding

The following is a brief overview of new discussions taking place on the English Wikipedia. For older, yet possibly active, discussions please see last week's edition.

Does newsworthy mean noteworthy?

At Wikipedia talk:Notability#Do news reports confer notablity? John Kenney sought clarification over the meaning of guidance that "routine news coverage of such things as announcements, sports, and tabloid journalism are not sufficient basis for a topic to have its own standalone article". Jinnai offered the opinion that it related to "stuff like late-night sports highlights on the all the professional games that were played that day, annoucements for stuff like space shuttle launching, and tabloids specifically go out to sensationalize trivial events" [sic]. However, S Marshall countered that "A reliable source is a reliable source, and if there are several of them, the article passes the GNG." Gavin.collins argued that "Notability is about which topics should be included in Wikipedia as standalone topics, and sometimes news articles on their own don't provide sufficient coverage to provide information to provide context to the reader." The debate turned to whether coverage of individual sports matches would allow for the creation of an article on that match. Gavin.collins argued that while "loads of coverage can be found for one match ... I still think rountine news reports (no matter how long) are more or less a primary source" [sic]. Masem said "(w)hen an event occurs, even if it has much coverage that day, it is difficult to ascertain if that event is truly notable to gain an article". S Marshall countered that "what makes something significant (i.e. notable) is the fact that it's been noted in reliable sources. Why should any other judgment of "significance", apart from the reliability of the sources, matter?"

Polling

A round up of polls spotted by your writer in the last seven days or so, bearing in mind of course that voting is evil. You can suggest a poll for inclusion, preferably including details as to how the poll will be closed and implemented, either on the tip line or by directly editing the next issue.

Briefly

Requests for comment

Fourteen Requests for comment have been made in the week of 14–20 September:



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2009-09-21

WikiProject Dungeons & Dragons

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By Kirill Lokshin

The Dungeons & Dragons WikiProject was founded in October 2006 by the now-inactive Piuro as an offshoot of the Role-playing games WikiProject. In the three years since then, the project has seen considerable success, writing six featured articles and twenty good articles, and has grown to include more than 1,700 articles in total.

Today, we've asked three members of the project (BOZ, Drilnoth, and Peregrine Fisher) to answer a few questions about their experiences there:

1. What can you tell us about the origins of the project?

BOZ: In the beginning, there was no D&D WikiProject; believe it or not, we actually had WikiProjects for Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Greyhawk first. At the time, people working on D&D stuff didn't seem overwhelmingly concerned about any "rules" on Wikipedia, and just kind of went around writing about whatever subjects they found interesting, without worrying about any silly notions such as "notability". Consequently, we had more D&D articles about fictional elements like monsters, characters, gods, and locations than anything else; we also had articles about novels and game books which were more plot summary than anything. And that's how we liked it, I imagine – it's what you'd expect to see on any fan website, and it's the sort of thing many fans want to read about. I know that's what I came here to read, and it's what I came here to write about.
Now I don't know if it was me who started people talking about this, or if I was just one of the ones to jump in on the idea early on, but about three years ago we got to talking about making a WikiProject for D&D in general, sort of as a central meeting place for the people working on the various "setting" WikiProjects. I know I wasn't heavily involved in the actual project at the time, just kind of floating around the edges and doing my own thing. I was able to proudly show off what we were doing to other people, who began coming to Wikipedia to lend a hand. The project felt like such an alive and vibrant place back then, with people pitching in to help all over the place, working freely and together. It was almost like an idealistic hippie commune for D&D. That seemed to work pretty well for about a year.
Then came the deletionists. And they were very mad at us, it seemed, for doing whatever we liked all fancy-free and not really caring about the "rules" (which, to be honest, I knew little or nothing about). Wave after wave they came (really just a few determined individuals, rather than in groups – although they grouped up when they realized there was more than one), slapping templates on every article they saw, nominating articles for deletion, redirecting articles... it basically tore the project apart, because I don't think we realized we were supposed to be organized in any way and following someone else's rules. Some of the deletionists were particularly aggressive and persistent, and wound up being far more hurtful than helpful. This activity greatly upset numerous WikiProject members and those working with us, and many people quit working on D&D articles – or even left Wikipedia altogether. The WikiProject was basically in shambles by early 2008, and felt more or less dead to me. Even I felt like leaving Wikipedia.
Later that same year, after the deletionists had more or less subsided and found other treasure troves of fandom to go after, I was still around, and was about the only one left still regularly working on D&D stuff. When the Wikipedia 0.7 release was being prepared, I saw a selection bot listing of all the articles on the WikiProject. Very few of the articles were of high enough quality that they were even being considered for the release. And, I noticed, so many important D&D articles weren't even on the list. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, Wizards of the Coast and TSR, Inc., Gen Con, Dragonlance and Greyhawk were all conspicuously absent... and where were all the D&D video game articles? Why was our project not taking responsibility for all of these subjects so important to the game?
It was then, about a year ago, that I became determined to reorganize and revitalize the WikiProject, even if I had to do it single-handedly. I began adding the WikiProject banner to every article on which it belonged, adding it to probably hundreds of articles. I knew that the only way to legitimize and rescue our WikiProject was going to be by striving to improve article quality and achieve more GAs and FAs. So, starting with Gary Gygax and then Wizards of the Coast, I began my quest for quality. Drilnoth came around at about that point, and together the two of us turned the WikiProject around for the most part. Peregrine got involved again as well and the three of us really got the machine working again, even if it is mostly just the three of us holding it together with help from a few others. And here we are!
Peregrine Fisher: It's interesting to speculate on what happened to all the editors. By 2007 or so, we had covered DnD to such a fine granularity, that there probably seemed like there wasn't that much to do. And the various attempts to "clean up" the projects articles by people who felt they were to in-universe drove a lot of people to quit. Whatever did it, we went from tens to maybe 100+ regular editors, to probably less than 10. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

2. What aspects of the project do you consider to be particularly successful? Has the project developed any unusual innovations, or uniquely adopted any common approaches?

Drilnoth: I think that there have been a few things that have made the project really work. I feel that we've learned that working in collaboration with other project editors produces much better articles than individually-written ones. A lot of our over 20 good articles achieved that status thanks to having multiple users with similar interests but different areas of Wikipedia expertise working together. At this point, the group of "regular" D&D editors consists of myself, BOZ, and Peregrine Fisher, although quite a number of GAs have had one or two other users working on them. We really work together on articles to make them as good as they can be. When choosing what articles to focus on, I like to use the page view stats for the project, with a goal of getting pages higher on the list to GA or FA status before focusing on other articles, which so far has worked to make the project better overall from a reader-standpoint than just focusing on the "easiest to improve" articles would.
I think that of our current articles, one gets the "most successful collaboration" award... Dwellers of the Forbidden City. This article's story really shows the value of an article's potential, not just its current state. It was actually deleted after a discussion before a DRV restored it. A year and a half later, and it's a Good Article. If it had been kept deleted, Wikipedia would have one fewer GA than it does today.
Peregrine Fisher: Our GAs are definitely a high point. Possibly the major reason for them is that we're an active project. We frequently discuss things on our talk page, help each other with article improvement, and congratulate each other on our accomplishments. I feel this helps keep us motivated. I don't have a recipe for how we've achieved this, but it's probably helped a little bit by our demotion of some sub-wikiprojects into task forces, and then keeping the discussion on the main projects talk page. Something we do that's unusual, although it shouldn't be, is that we add a little bit of cited info to a large number of articles. BOZ is particularly good at this. A lot of our best sources are magazines that are 20–30 years old, from the heyday of DnD, and not computer searchable. When we get our hands on these hard to find sources, we do a little summary on the corresponding wikipedia articles and cite it. If we later get serious about improving one of the articles, it's easy to see which sources should looked into further. A little blurb like "This book was reviewed in the September 1979 issue of White Dwarf magazine" can save a lot of research time, even if the actual summarizing of the review is yet to come.
BOZ: Like Drilnoth and Peregrine, I'm proud of the GA and FA articles our little project has racked up this year. They are both hard workers, dedicated to doing what it takes to improve articles on Wikipedia, and this WikiProject in particular. A year ago, this project was almost dead, seeming to exist in a barely active state, and now we have achieved something to be proud of and continue to do so. Getting Dwellers to GA was something that I pushed for, and for the very reasons Drilnoth mentions.

3. Have any major initiatives by the project ended unsuccessfully? What lessons have you learned from them?

Drilnoth: The project actually hasn't had any "major initiatives" that I thought didn't turn out at least OK. Although this is kind of odd for a project of our size, I'd attribute this to our small group of editors: When you have a project like WP:VG or WP:BK, major initiatives are more likely to fail because the group of editors is so unconnected. With the D&D project, there's only the few of us, and we really try to work on things together, which is harder to do with large groups.
Peregrine Fisher: Well, there is no deadline. ;-) But, we've had some trouble with cleanup. We have about 1700 articles tagged as being part of our project. We're currently discussing a cleanup push, with the goal of condensing those down to about 1000 articles. We're still getting rolling on that, but I think we had a cleanup discussion about a year ago that didn't work as well as this one hopefully will. For whatever reason, it's more fun to take a stub to GA than to condense a group of in-universe articles down to one GA. If/when we have major success in this area, it will probably be because we keep trying.
BOZ: Earlier this year, I was pushing to get as many articles as possible to GA or higher, but changes in my personal and professional life began seriously limiting the amount of time I had for Wikipedia activities, so that drive slowed down considerably. I wouldn't say it's ended (got Pool of Radiance to GA very recently) but I wish there were more volunteers to work on these articles the way we have been. This used to be a much more active, vibrant WikiProject; I'll touch more on that in my response to the next question.

4. Your project works in an area which has often been criticized for being too concerned with trivia and plot details. Do you believe such criticism is justified, and how has it affected the project? Have you developed any special methods for dealing with such issues?

Drilnoth: I think that in various discussions I've made my views on trivia, plot, notability, etc., fairly clear... I feel that a number of the current guidelines are too strict, a feeling which I think has to be shared by most people working in an area so closely related to fiction. That having been said, I do understand the need for such guidelines and generally I try to follow them, although maybe just not as tightly as some would like. With the D&D project, one of our long-term goals is to try and merge a lot of articles about fictional elements of the game, like monsters or deities, into list pages. In this way, we hope to preserve useful content while also compromising but not giving everything its own article. I believe that a topic should be allowed its own article if there are enough sources about it, even if they are all primary. For example, in discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kalamanthis, I !voted delete because the article's topic isn't even well-covered in primary sources; however, with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mimic (Dungeons & Dragons), I !voted keep or merge because it is very well covered in primary and in-universe sources, which I think should count for something. In the end, I think that most everyone in the project agrees that content should be preserved, and merging content is usually the best way to go about preserving that content while also keeping most of the "deletionists" happier than if everything had its own article.
Peregrine Fisher: Well, DnD editors are probably a bit inclusionist. You kinda have to be to want to keep an article around until rare 30 year old magazine sources are found. I think most of our articles were started back in 2005–2007, when editors thought we were organizing the sum of all knowledge, and not just the sum of "notable" knowledge. So, I wouldn't really criticize what people before us did, but it has left us with a bit of a mess. I think our GA/FA production stems quite a bit from the criticism. When you get and article to GA or FA, you feel like its safe from deletion, and you can move on without worrying about it.
BOZ: To an extent, the criticism is not entirely unfounded, in the sense that fans of fiction have a tendency to write for... well, other fans. I know I'm not immune to this impulse. There is an overwhelming amount of cleanup work that needs to be done, and we can only do so much at any given time. But generally, I have to agree with what Drilnoth and Peregrine say above. Plenty of individuals on Wikipedia are rightly concerned with article quality, and can easily point out how many articles on fiction or pop culture are so poorly written. However, there is a very vocal minority of editors who simply don't like Wikipedia having articles on pop culture, and deprecate such coverage by deleting articles, redirecting them, or sending them to GAR or FAR simply because they don't like to see such subjects covered at all in a "serious encyclopedia". There seems to be plenty of evidence to me that our readers like such material, and keep coming back to read about it, so why deprive them? I feel that the notability guideline is a good idea in spirit and is used by many as a tool in good faith to examine the worthiness of a subject, but it is also used by some as a weapon against anything they personally dislike. Fiction is a particularly tricky subject area of pop culture, because anything created in the past few decades is a lot less likely to have received the sort of coverage that something from fifty years ago, or even centuries ago, may receive as a piece of classic literature. I don't doubt that there has been some effort to "stack the deck" in some of our guidelines and policies by those seeking to limit how much pop culture and fiction elements can be covered. The mimic, for example as Drilnoth mentioned, has appeared in dozens of D&D and related books since its introduction some 32 years ago, and has been duplicated countless times in other games, yet some people still feel we should consider it "not notable" and therefore delete it? Something is wrong with the "rules", at that point, I feel.
In the past, our WikiProject has been the target of campaigns by individual editors to severely reduce the material we cover. Some of these efforts have been particularly aggressive, even hurtful, and I feel this is a reason many editors who were once rather active in the WikiProject have either quit working on related articles, or left Wikipedia altogether. We have attempted to work past this in a number of ways, mostly by merging articles about lesser fictional elements into lists, and redoubling our focus to improve articles for which we have found reliable secondary sources. I'm hopeful that, in time, our efforts will attract more people back to the WikiProject and make us generally more viable to the doubters – so far, it seems to be working, if slowly.

5. What experiences have you had with the featured article process? It's a widely held belief that fictional topics are very difficult to bring to featured article status; do you believe this is true, and, if so, how does it affect your project?

Drilnoth: I would say that fictional topics are tough to make into FAs, although certainly not impossible... I'd expect to see Drizzt Do'Urden as an FA sometime in the next couple of years, and a number of such articles can make B or even GA class if someone really takes the time to work on them. Probably the best experience with the FA process, in my opinion, was Planescape: Torment, which ties in to the next question.
Peregrine Fisher: I've been getting into the FA process quite a bit lately. I've recently had two DnD articles promoted: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and Ravenloft (module). I had kinda sworn off doing FAs last year after a failed attempt at getting Jackie Robinson promoted, and focused on GAs exclusively. Then one evening, I got a wild hair and decided to nominate the GA that I had copy edited the most (Expedition). It passed without too much trouble, and now I'm kinda hooked. I must say that those two FAs are about real books, and not fictional characters, places, or things. Getting purely fictional topics to FA is extremely difficult. There may be many sources that mention a fictional character, for instance, but rarely do they go into great detail. They're mostly mentioned in passing when discussing the media they appear in. Drizzt Do'Urden is a good example. He's a character who has starred in a huge number of comics, novels, and other media. You might find two reviews for a single issue of a comic he appears in, without ever actually finding a single large article on the character itself. By our rules, this makes that one comic issue notable, and the character not notable. So, the next few FAs in the pipeline are all books.
BOZ: I have to agree, this is true, due again to the need for finding reliable secondary sources and the difficulty in finding them for many pop culture subjects. While certain elements of pop culture (films, video games) can and often do receive significant attention in the press, other media such as RPGs may receive little or none despite having a considerable following. The lack of sources must be partly due to issues within the publishing industry; if your publication wants to write something about a character such as Drizzt, what sort of challenges do you have to face in order to do so, and how often do publishers simply not bother because of this? I really don't know. For D&D, it seems that some twenty years ago there were a quite a few more independent publications in existence reviewing RPG material, and that sort of coverage appears to have dropped off significantly over time. I know of no current independent print publications that review D&D material, and I don't know of any that have been active in the past decade or so, despite the popularity of the game's third edition. I suspect this is due in part to the boom in the internet, and the difficulty many websites seem to have in being recognized by Wikipedia as reliable sources.
Peregrine Fisher: That's a good point BOZ makes. There isn't a viable model for an independent magazine that covers DnD in the current internet age. The internet is filled with sites that discuss the game, and they're reliable enough for a reader who wants to know if the latest DnD book is any good, but they don't meet our reliable sources guideline. To throw out some wild numbers, there's probably 100 times as much published info out their now, and 10 times less being published in a way that we can consider independent and reliable.

6. What experiences have you had with the WikiProjects whose scopes overlap with yours? Are they useful collaborators, or do you feel that they have little to offer you? Has your project developed particularly close relationships with any other projects?

Drilnoth: For the most part, the D&D project works on its own. Its parent project, role-playing games is essentially inactive, and its grandparent, board and table games has too large a scope to devote much attention to D&D. However, I think that we have formed a good collaboration with some members of the video games project. D&D influenced a huge number of video games, so the two overlap naturally. Planescape: Torment became an FA primarily due to work on both the part of the D&D and VG projects, and we're getting close to having a Neverwinter Nights 2 good topic.
Peregrine Fisher: I don't do that much on the video game articles, but the collobaration Drilnoth mentions has been very impressive. Plus, DnD video games make up a large part of the top of our most viewed articles. Of our top 10, we've gotten three to GA, and two to FA, with one video game GA and one video game FA.
BOZ: Drilnoth is right, in that we mostly work on our own, although we have been able to work with the VG WikiProject to good effect. There are several other WikiProjects that overlap in some way with ours, so hopefully we will be able to establish good relationships with them some day.

7. What is your vision for the project? How do you see the project itself, as well as the articles it shepherds, developing over the next year? The next five years?

Drilnoth: I see two major things as goals for the project: Merging the various less-notable topics so that the project has fewer articles to focus on, while still preserving most of the useful content; and writing more GAs and FAs! In another year, I'd like to see the article count reduced to at least 1,500 or so via merging, if not lower to 1,000-ish, although I doubt that the latter is very likely to happen in a year. Having another ten or so GAs would also really enhance the coverage of the game; I'm especially interested in seeing some of the "core" articles like TSR, Inc., Editions of Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons gameplay, and Dungeons & Dragons controversies as GAs to cover more of the "basic" topics beyond the Dungeons & Dragons article itself and the articles on Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, and Wizards of the Coast. It would also be nice to have some more high-quality articles on fictional topics.
Peregrine Fisher: Pretty much what Drilnoth says. Try and work from both ends. I think editors work from example more than from the rules, so creating high quality articles through normal improvement and merging should encourage more of the same. I'd like to give a shout out to the IPs we have that do quality work. I'm not sure why, but DnD seems to draw in good editors who don't feel it is necessary to sign up.
BOZ: I'm hoping to see an increase in active membership, so that the improvement of articles doesn't fall on the shoulders of so few people. I've had very little success in coaxing former collaborators back into working with us, and we've actually had more new contributors join us instead. I guess putting the word out and waiting to see what happens is going to have to be the way to go!
I would add to Drilnoth's wish-list for fictional elements by stating I'd like to see topics on iconic monsters (Drow, Beholder, Illithid (aka "mind flayer"), or even the eponymous Dragon), character classes and races (Elf, Paladin, Halfling, Wizard), individual characters (Raistlin Majere, Artemis Entreri, Elminster, Lolth), and popular campaign settings (Dark Sun, Planescape, Eberron, Ravenloft, Greyhawk) get to be GA and FA as we continue working on improving our articles. In addition to that, I think we have a real opportunity with more tangible subjects related to the game, by continuing to improve articles on classic adventure modules to GA and FA, and focusing on topics such as writers and designers (R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman), rulebooks (Monster Manual. Player's Handbook, Deities & Demigods, Dungeon Master's Guide), and publications like Dragon magazine.

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2009-09-21

Approved this week

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By seresin

Administrators

Two editors were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: MuZemike (nom) and Willking1979 (nom).

Featured pages

Five articles were promoted to featured status this week: Loihi Seamount (nom), Starvin' Marvin (South Park) (nom), MissingNo. (nom), Stanley Green (nom) and Werner Mölders (nom).

Ten lists were promoted to featured status this week: Desperate Housewives (season 1) (nom), Seinfeld (season 2) (nom), Listed buildings in Widnes (nom), List of New York Mets managers (nom), David Bowie discography (nom), List of Tokyo Mew Mew episodes (nom), Major League Baseball All-Star Game Most Valuable Player Award (nom), List of bridges to the Island of Montreal (nom), List of international cricket centuries by Ricky Ponting (nom) and List of defunct National Basketball Association teams (nom).

One topic was promoted to featured status this week: Rawlings Gold Glove Award (nom).

No portals were promoted to featured status this week.

The following featured articles were displayed on the Main Page as Today's featured article this week: Quark, Stanford Memorial Church, Harbhajan Singh, Samuel Johnson's early life, Economy of the Han Dynasty, General aviation in the United Kingdom and "North by North Quahog".

Former featured pages

No articles were delisted this week.

No lists were delisted this week.

No topics were delisted this week.

Featured media

The following featured pictures were displayed on the Main Page as picture of the day this week: Eritrean Railway, Hobart, Mazda6, eye of Hurricane Isabel, Pirate, Old World screw-worm fly and Bethlehem Iron Works.

One featured sound was promoted this week:

Livery Stable Blues(nom)

No featured pictures were demoted this week.

Thirteen pictures were promoted to featured status this week and are shown below.



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2009-09-21

The Report on Lengthy Litigation

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By Kirill Lokshin

The Arbitration Committee opened two cases this week, and closed none, leaving five cases open.

Requests for arbitration

An arbitration request regarding administrator Law's unblock of ChildofMidnight, who was blocked by Sandstein pursuant to the Obama articles decision, was filed by Sandstein himself. The Committee, having expressed general agreement with the substance of Sandstein's complaint, appears to be preparing to deal with the request by summary motion.

A request concerning the conduct of Dr90s, filed by Thibbs, is being declined as premature.

Open cases

In an unprecedented move, the Arbitration Committee opened the Eastern European mailing list case by sua sponte motion. The case concerns a set of leaked mailing list archives which are alleged to show an extensive history of conspiracy among numerous editors of Eastern European topics; no official confirmation of the archives' provenance has been made, and several of the accused editors have claimed that the archives have been maliciously altered by the party or parties who publicized them.

As part of the ongoing investigation, the Committee has temporarily removed Piotrus' administrator status, and is considering placing restrictions on various other editors for the duration of the case. A draft decision is to be written by arbitrator Coren, but no date for it has been announced.

The Asmahan case was also opened this week. The filing editor, Supreme Deliciousness, alleges that Arab Cowboy has engaged in a variety of disruptive behavior on the "Asmahan" article; Arab Cowboy denies the allegations, and claims that Supreme Deliciousness is pursuing a disruptive agenda of his own. No drafting of proposals has yet taken place; a draft decision is expected from arbitrator FayssalF, but no date for it has been announced.

The Speed of light case entered its second week of deliberations. The case was filed by Jehochman, who cited concerns about "tendentious editing and disruption" by a large number of editors on the "speed of light" article. Unusually, arbitrator Cool Hand Luke, who is slated to draft the decision in the case, has directly asked the parties "what resolution [they] would like to see from this process, and what (if any) concessions would [they] be willing to give to achieve that end?"; the parties have provided a set of varied responses to this. A draft decision in the case is expected by 30 September.

The Noloop case entered its fifth week of deliberations. The case involves mutual allegations of disruptive conduct by several parties, and is expected to address the conduct of all the editors involved. Evidence has been presented by several editors, and one of the parties, Noloop, has posted a statement that he does not intend to participate in the proceeding, but no drafting of proposals has yet taken place. A draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Carcharoth, was expected by 13 September, but has been delayed.

The Lapsed Pacifist 2 case also entered its fifth week of deliberations. The filing editor, Steve Crossin, alleges that Lapsed Pacifist has engaged in advocacy, original research, and edit warring, as well as various other improprieties, over a wide range of articles. A temporary injunction prohibits Lapsed Pacifist from editing articles related to the Corrib gas project for the duration of the case. Several arbitrators have commented on the evidence or workshop proposals; a draft decision, to be written by arbitrator Wizardman, was expected by 11 September, but has been delayed.

Clarifications, amendments, and motions

Two separate requests to amend certain clauses concerning Scuro in the ADHD decision were filed by Hordaland and Literaturegeek. Most of the Committee has not yet responded to the requests.

The Committee adopted a motion removing Pastor Theo's administrator status and indefinitely blocking him after an investigation determined that he was the same individual who had been community-banned under the name "Ecoleetage".

The Ban Appeal Subcommittee announced that it was granting an appeal by Life, reminding him to "adhere to the guidelines of harmonious editing". The subcommittee also granted an appeal by RMHED, unbanning him with several conditions.

Hersfold, Hmwith, and KnightLago were promoted to full clerks to the Arbitration Committee.

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2009-09-21

Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

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By Jarry1250 and Aude

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Some bug fixes or new features described below have not yet gone live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.4 (2111e6d), and changes to the software with a version number higher than that will not yet be active. Configuration changes and changes to interface messages, however, become active immediately.

Software updates

This week saw a major code update, including changes for how MediaWiki handles file uploads and new Upload API capabilities that work with the Firefogg extension for Mozilla Firefox. As part of the updates, the cite features have been updated to allow list-defined references.

Bugs resulting

The software changes resulted in a number of bugs, and caused the pywikipedia Python library used by bots to break. [1] As a result, bots stopped working for a few days.

According to Kozuch [2], major bugs resulting from the updates have been:

  1. Uploading new version of file fails (bugzilla:20677)
  2. Commonist upload tool stopped working – errors at upload
  3. AWB experiencing ongoing problems (WP:AWB/B). Due to changes in the MediaWiki Software, the current release (4.6) has been broken, and due to some other discovered bugs, a fix cannot be implemented and rolled out as of yet. ApiEdit (4.9) versions work fine.

Compatibility problems were discovered in the Usability Initiative's new edit toolbar, when it was used with Internet Explorer. Due to the bug, developers disabled the new edit toolbar for a few days while the bug was resolved.

A full list is available at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=code-update-regression

Bots approved

Two bots were approved this week: HerculeBot 2, for the transfer of interwiki links from redirects to redirect targets, and Yobot 8 to assist with a previously approved task. There are a number of outstanding requests for bots, which anyone is free to comment on.

New features

  • File renaming has been enabled for admins. [3]

Other

  • The tech team is to add full TIFF support in the near future. This support will help MediaWiki render TIFF images (an image format widely used by museums, archives and in scientific research) so that users can view them in their browsers with a reasonable load time. [4]

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