Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-01-16/SPV

Wikipedia has progressed significantly in its fifth year. As Wikipedia enters its sixth year, The Wikipedia Signpost takes a look back at 2005 (and a bit of 2006).

The Signpost published its first issue on 10 January, 2005, five days before Wikipedia Day 2005 was celebrated, marking Wikipedia's fourth anniversary. Under founder and editor-in-chief Michael Snow, the Signpost has delivered news to the Wikipedia community every Monday since then. In August, though, after Michael Snow stepped down temporarily, Ral315 took over as editor-in-chief. We are proud to have continued the Signpost non-stop for over 52 weeks now, with over 400 articles written and published by our volunteers.

Besides in The Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia itself has seen the number of articles grow exponentially. On 18 March, the 500,000th article was created. Less than three months later, on 19 June, Wikipedia had reached the 600,000 article mark. In August, we reached 700,000 articles, and on the first day of November, 800,000 articles. Early in the

also rose, surpassing 500 in February. There are currently 850 featured articles.

The number of editors also rose dramatically. In October, the number of registered users surpassed half a million. Earlier in the year in July, the number of

.

The popularity of Wikipedia also increased greatly. According to the Alexa rankings, Wikipedia started 2005 at approximately rank 150. By September, Wikipedia had moved into the top 50 websites of the world, and in January 2006 reached an all-time high one-day rank of 19. Also in January, Alexa reported that Wikipedia's reach was nearly 30,000 per million, and the number of page views had jumped to nearly 2,000 per million page views.

Several technical aspects of Wikipedia were also modified.

, causing a planned shut-down of the site while the servers were moved. Earlier, though, the site had temporarily been shut down twice, once in late February and another time in early March. Both of them were unplanned; one lasted for 24 hours, and the other for approximately two hours. The temporary shut-downs were due to a power failure and faulty equipment, respectively.

Other technical features of Wikipedia were also implemented. After the first

semi-protection

, the blocking of editing by new and unregistered users, was implemented on MediaWiki and activated after a poll showed almost unanimous support for it. In addition, new measures were taken toward article validation, although no such feature has been implemented yet.

In December, article creation was restricted to registered users only following the

in October.

There were also changes in the way Wikipedia operates. In February, the templates that are transcluded onto the

Did You Know?

used to be. (Did you know? still appears on weekdays.)

The

, later clarified the deal, calming down the situation.

There were also multiple changes in the

were held in January 2006, using support and oppose votes for the first time ever. As of press time, the elections were still ongoing.

Wikipedia came under immense public scrutiny in November and December. The

; Chase resigned from his job (from where he had posted the information) and apologized. In response, article creation was restricted to registered users in December in an effort to reduce vandalism and incorrect entries.

Finally, the scientific journal Nature published [1] the results of a comparative review between Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia concerning scientific articles. This was the first comparative review concerning Wikipedia using professionals and was done by scientific experts. After examining 42 articles in both the encyclopedias, Nature concluded that Britannica had 124 total factual errors in the articles (for an average of 2.92 errors per article), while Wikipedia had 162 total errors, for an average of 3.86 per article. Most of the errors in Wikipedia were corrected after the study.

Wikipedia has seen tremendous growth and development in its fifth year, which was primarily in 2005. We've grown into a top-20 website of the world and have become a valuable resource and free encyclopedia to millions. We look forward to a successful 2006 - and we'll be here reporting on it.

reporter whose plagiarism was recently discovered by Wikipedia editors, has been dismissed after additional instances of plagiarism were reported. This brought his tenure to an end last week after more than twenty years at the newspaper.

Ryan, an entertainment reporter who has worked for the Star-Bulletin since 1984, as well as writing for other publications during that time, was found to have copied material without attribution in multiple articles dating back as far as 2001, drawing from a variety of online sources. The plagiarism was originally reported in The Signpost two weeks ago and later picked up by a local news website, the Hawaii Reporter. Reporter editor Malia Zimmerman published a story on Tuesday, 10 January, pointing to two more articles by Ryan with passages that matched verbatim to content on other websites.

Zimmerman also noted what proved to be Ryan's last article for the Star-Bulletin, a 28 December column published after the plagiarism had been discovered but before news of the case spread. In the column, Ryan thanked a number of publicists and other sources and commented, "To write "Reel News," I usually can't name any sources because there could be serious repercussions to them." He added, "All who have helped me write this column -- and you do know who you are -- I thank you for your contributions and trust."

Officially, Star-Bulletin editor Frank Bridgewater initially indicated that any disciplinary action against Ryan was a confidential matter, but Zimmerman reported that according to her sources, he had been given a one-month suspension. She added that the Star-Bulletin had earlier been running an advertising campaign touting the paper as the source of "Truth" from among the state's news outlets, with Ryan featured prominently in one such ad.

After the Hawaii Reporter's discovery of additional problem articles, the Star-Bulletin announced Ryan's dismissal in its 13 January edition. In a statement, Bridgewater acknowledged that six Ryan articles contained unattributed content from other sources, including one case found during the paper's investigation that had not been publicly identified before. The statement also pointed out that Ryan's stories "did not include inaccurate information or any fabrications."

Craig Silverman, whose Regret The Error blog reports on corrections and retractions in the news media, commented on the Star-Bulletin's response: "This is the correct course of action, and it's good that the paper lists the plagiarized articles and placed corrections/Editor's Notes in them." Other industry coverage appeared in Editor & Publisher and on Jim Romenesko's site for journalism news, Romenesko. Rob Malda also posted an item about the incident on Slashdot, where among other discussion it prompted a form of humor that might be called recursive plagiarism. And Talk Stink, a blog focusing on Hawaii, ran a cartoon depicting a mock interview with Ryan.

Wikipedia editor Calton, one of those who participated in the original discovery of Ryan's plagiarism, commented that he felt bad for Ryan, "Twenty years at the paper down the tubes, for stuff he should have known better about."

Despite encountering significant errors in their biographical articles on Wikipedia, two people have published lengthy defenses of the project. Both article subjects, Cory Doctorow and Bertrand Meyer, took an optimistic view of the experience and argued that Wikipedia's transparent processes make it more useful.

Wikipedia vs. The Register

Doctorow, an author and Fellow with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote an essay Wednesday on the Boing Boing blog that contrasted Wikipedia with one of its most frequent critics. In his piece, Doctorow compared the process of getting information corrected in his Wikipedia biography with his experience in seeking a correction of an article by Andrew Orlowski in The Register.

With respect to his Wikipedia article, Doctorow related that an anonymous editor had misrepresented some of his views and cast aspersions on the success of his books. Doctorow fixed this as soon as he became aware of it, then progressively worked with other editors to produce a satisfactory article. He summarized, "That's what it was like when someone maligned me on Wikipedia: within five minutes of discovering it, I was able to correct it, and subsequently I had a public discussion with the guy, hammering out a consensus."

The Orlowski piece for which Doctorow wanted a correction involved people editing their own Wikipedia biographies, after the reports of

, so he took some quotes from it and called Doctorow "silly and foolish" for talking about himself in the third person. However, since Orlowski had gone on vacation, Doctorow was unable to get a correction until after he reached Orlowski's editor. Doctorow also complained that after the misquotations had been removed, no record was left that a correction had been necessary.

Doctorow argued that the test of both systems was not "how they perform when they work as they're intended to -- it's what happens when they fail". On this issue, he favored the Wikipedia process, in which he said you could trace how the truth was negotiated, over the hidden workings of The Register.

The reports of my death...

A similar defense of Wikipedia came from Meyer, a computer scientist whose biography on the German Wikipedia was changed to indicate that he had died on 24 December. The change, actually made on 28 December, survived until someone else noticed it on 3 January. Meyer commented on the events in a treatise entitled "Defense and Illustration of Wikipedia", which he said he had initially prepared in response to another commentary published in Communications of the ACM. The authors of this commentary had cited several dangers associated with Wikipedia, which Meyer acknowledged, but he criticized their failure to cite concrete examples.

Meyer now had his own personal experience to relate as well, in an incident that was also reported by a number of German-language media sources. The offending revisions have been deleted from the page history, but a screenshot was preserved by Christian Kirsch of Heise. In Meyer's own translation, the article stated at the time, "According to the latest reports, Bertrand Meyer died on 24.12.2005 in Zurich. On 23.12.2005, exam results were published; links between that publication and his death couldn't be confirmed".

Like most people, Meyer thought the report of his death amounted to a student joke. In an observation on the media coverage, he gave as his impression that, after the

, it reflected a sort of pride in the German-language press having their own Wikipedia scandal to report. Responding to Lauren Weinstein, one of the authors of the Communications of the ACM article, Meyer conceded that an erroneously reported death was less disturbing than a false report of an arrest "for some truly reprehensible offense" would be. Meyer nevertheless concluded, "But if someone is going to slander me horribly on the Web, I'd rather that he chose an editable medium."

Editor's note: This article discusses a possible lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates this site. The Wikipedia Signpost takes no official position on this lawsuit.

Dutch and German press sources report that the family of Boris Floricic, a.k.a. Tron, is suing the Wikimedia Foundation over the reporting of the hacker's real name in Wikipedia.

The German Chaos Computer Club affiliate, who gained fame within the group for cracking phone chips and digital television boxes, was found dead in 1998 in a Berlin park. Floricic had been hanged by a belt, the cause of death. Police ruled the death a suicide, and the Berlin prosecutor's office stopped its investigation in 2001. ^[2] However, many of the club's members still suspect foul play may have been a factor. ^{[3] [4]}

The family's first announcement of the lawsuit was reportedly on 14 December, 2005. However, the notice was originally addressed to St. Petersburg, Russia, rather than the Foundation's address in St. Petersburg, Florida, causing some delay in the delivery of this information.

There is still a question as to whether a lawsuit has actually been filed. No proof has been submitted showing that such a lawsuit, or any legal action, has been taken. No public comment has been made by the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikimedia board members regarding the issue.

Addendum

The Wikimedia Foundation is facing a privacy lawsuit in Germany. The German courts have ordered that the German Wikipedia must remove all forms of the hacker's complete civil name, and have issued an injunction that ordered the German chapter to cease redirecting www.wikipedia.de to de.wikipedia.org. Wikimedia Deutschland complied but its lawyers announced that they will appeal the decision, saying that Tron's civil name was public knowledge for a long time. Further information can be found here.

References

1. ^ Sevriens, Dennis, The postmortale personality right: Controversy over Tron alias Boris F (in German). Accessed January 16, 2006.
2. ^ Sullivan, Bob, High-stakes hacking, Euro-style. Accessed January 16, 2006.
3. ^ Hudson, David, Out of Chaos Comes Order. Accessed January 16, 2006.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a trademark registration for the term "Wikipedia" to the Wikimedia Foundation last week, bringing to a conclusion an application process that has taken over a year.

According to the USPTO's trademark database, Wikipedia was officially registered as a trademark on Tuesday, 10 January. The description of the class of goods and services for which the registration was issued reads, "Providing information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet". The Wikipedia trademark also has an international registration through the

.

The application, filed with the help of attorney and Wikipedia editor Alex756, was originally received by the USPTO in September 2004. Although this may seem like a lengthy delay, in reality the process for reviewing trademark applications is quite drawn out, and a time frame like this is fairly typical.

The Wikimedia Foundation has also applied for other trademarks including "Wikinews" as well as "MediaWiki" for the underlying software. These marks will be published in the USPTO's Official Gazette on 7 February.

One advantage of trademark registration is the ability to use the federal registration symbol '®' as opposed to use of '™' or no designation after the mark. This gives notice that a trademark or servicemark is protected under federal law. Wikipedia may now be written Wikipedia® when used as a trademark.

The steward elections concluded this week, with nine of the sixteen candidates meeting the requirements, which included a minimum of eighty percent support and at least thirty support votes. All nine were later granted approval by the Board. The nine new stewards are Jean-Christophe Chazalette, Ausir, Romihaitza, Walter, Paginazero, Jon Harald Søby, Suisui, Rdsmith4, and Ascánder. One current steward, Arno Lagrange, was also demoted after he failed to garner the required amount of support.

In addition, Raul654 withdrew from the race prior to its closure after he faced opposition from users citing that he had little or no interlanguage experience. "While I don't agree with [the users who voted oppose], I can appreciate where they are coming from," he said. "So, I'm withdrawing my candidacy, with no hard feelings."

The full results of the elections:

	Username	Total votes	For	Neutral	Against	Support percent
1	Jean-Christophe Chazalette	81	77	1	3	96%
2	Ausir	72	71	1	0	100%
3	Romihaitza	45	42	2	1	98%
4	Arno Lagrange	36	10	9	17	37%
5	Walter	83	82	1	0	100%
6	Traroth	26	9	10	7	56%
7	Klemen Kocjancic	16	3	4	9	25%
8	Paginazero	65	54	5	6	90%
9	Jredmond	19	5	3	11	31%
(10)	brian0918	24	11	6	6	withdrawn
(11)	Raul654	72	54	3	15	withdrawn
12	Jon Harald Søby	58	56	2	0	100%
13	Suisui	78	77	1	0	100%
14	Rdsmith4	48	44	3	1	98%
15	Ascánder	49	47	2	0	100%
16	Linuxbeak	6	0	0	6	0%