Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-07-09/SPV
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| Volume 3, Issue 28 | 9 July 2007 |
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Seven administrators request promotion to bureaucrat status
In an unprecedented coincidence, seven
- Majorly (nom, withdrawn by candidate)
This was Majorly's second nomination for bureaucratship; the prior nomination closed unsuccessfully on 5 April 2007. In support, Phaedriel said, "I know for a fact that he has used his tools with care, thoughtfulness and unfailing will to help the community and its individual members." Opposing, Friday cited her concern that issues raised in the prior nomination hadn't been addressed, in her opinion, and added that Majorly "tends to bicker with those opposing the RFAs of his buddies." Majorly withdrew his nomination with a final tally of 35/15/2 (70% support) on 4 July, stating, "I agree and admit to being confrontational, but I thought that I could be trusted to view others' opinions," and mentioning his plentiful contributions in discussions at requests for adminship.
- Anthony.bradburycommented that, "I believe, from reviewing his work on the project and from personal experience, that this is an admin whom we can trust with the extra responsiblities of bureaucratship." As of this writing, RyanGerbil10's nomination has a tally of 28/11/5 (72% support), and is scheduled to close 11 July.
- mentioned in support, "...some concern over the block log, but I think AMiB is a sensible person in general, and the issues raised there are not really part of the bureaucrat's domain," several former supporters had struck out or amended their initial comments. As of this writing, A Man In Black's nomination has a tally of 27/32/6 (46% support), and is scheduled to close 11 July.
- Mailer diablosaid, "Let's leave holding more than one high position as a grandfather clause. The potential conflict of interest might possibly mean that the Signpost becomes a mouthpiece of crat decisions, whether unwittingly (influence) or otherwise." In response to some of these concerns, Ral315 added an addendum to his self-nomination statement and commented on the requests for adminship talk page, suggesting that he would avoid participating in articles related to bureaucrat activities, and that he would resign as a bureaucrat if he "crossed the line." Currently, Ral315's nomination has a tally of 76/12/0 (86% support), and is scheduled to close 11 July.
- nom)felt that Andrevan had not displayed interest or activity in requests for adminship, until recently, saying, "In the opening to this RfB, you say 'It's been a while'. Indeed it has. You've been utterly absent from WT:RFA since November of 2005 up until a couple of days ago." Andrevan's nomination currently has a tally of 58/9/2 (87% support), and is scheduled to close 11 July.
This is Andrevan's third attempt at bureaucratship, with prior nominations closing unsuccessfully on 16 November 2004 and 3 September 2005, respectively. In support, Shalom said, "I don't have the same 'name recognition' of Andre as for the other candidates, but I like his essay about consensus and I believe that he does 'grok' it." Opposing, Durin
- Deskana (nom)
This is Deskana's second nomination for bureaucratship, the first having closed unsuccessfully on 30 January 2007. Deskana's nomination has seen heavy discussion regarding the so-called "Danny question," (which has been asked of all current candidates) regarding the controversial decision by current bureaucrats to promote Danny to adminship, following his having resigned from the Wikimedia Foundation's office staff (see archived story and RfA nom). While Haukurth opposed Deskana's nomination, saying, "Deskana says the bureaucrats made the right call in promoting Danny even though he agrees that there was no community consensus for such a promotion," Pascal.Tesson supported, saying that, "I trust Deskana's sound judgment and the answer to the tricky Danny-question reinforces that feeling." Many opposing users have cited Durin's post in the discussion, which brings up concerns regarding demeanor and temperament. Currently, Deskana's nomination has a tally of 101/12/2 (89% support), and is scheduled to close 10 July.
- Husond (nom)
This is Husond's first nomination for bureaucratship. Citing personal experience, Ryan Postlethwaite said that, "From my first few weeks on the project, Husond has been someone who I have looked up to and respected. I'm not sure where I first saw him, but I admire his approach on-wiki." However, some users are concerned regarding the philosophy of consensus, with Dmcdevit opposing and stating, "we don't need another vote-counting bureaucrat (we have too many as it is). Asked above for the criteria for promotion, the word 'consensus,' or any reasonable synonyms are completely absent." Currently, Husond's nomination has a tally of 72/20/3 (78% support), and is scheduled to close 10 July.
The most recent addition to the roster of bureaucrats was Cecropia, who returned on 17 May 2007 after relinquishing his status in April 2006.[1] The community has not approved any new bureaucrats after Redux was promoted on 12 June 2006, thirteen months ago.[2]
Why now?
From January through June 2007, there were 11 unsuccessful requests for bureaucratship by nine different candidates - an average of two per month. What caused seven users to request bureaucratship within the same week?
One major motivator has been the persistent backlog at
In his nomination statement, Deskana observed, "Personally, I feel Wikipedia needs more bureaucrats. Most of the
Results
The requests are still running as of publication. The Signpost will report the final results next week.
References
- ^ Cecropia's last bureaucrat action before the leave of absence was on 31 March 2006, according to the user rights log.
- ^ See Wikipedia:Successful bureaucratship candidacies.
- ^ See the list at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats.
- ^ See the user rename log.
Board elections closed; results pending
Möller, Walsh retain seats; Brioschi elected
16 July 2007
Board election series: Elections closed, results pending
9 July 2007
Board elections open
2 July 2007
Board election series: An interview with the candidates
25 June 2007
Board election series: Election information
18 June 2007
Board candidacies open, elections planned
11 June 2007
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Möller, Walsh retain seats; Brioschi elected |
Here is the original version of this historical template, from 2007:
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| 2007 Board of Trustees elections A Wikipedia Signpost series | |
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| June 11 | Candidacies open |
| June 18 | Election information |
| June 25 | Candidate interviews |
| July 2 | Elections open |
| July 9 | Elections closed |
| July 16 | Election results |
This week, the Signpost covers the closing of this year's Board elections.
The Wikimedia Board Elections closed this Saturday, with 4,713 unique votes from across numerous Wikimedia Foundation wikis. The results of the elections are expected to be released on Sunday, 15 July.
The Election Committee has reviewed many of the votes, looking for possible voter fraud. After this is completed, Software in the Public Interest will tally the votes, and forward the results to the Election Committee. The top three of the fifteen candidates standing will receive two-year terms on the Board. Before the winning candidates officially take their positions, the Board of Trustees must officially certify the elections in order for their results to be valid, a move that is likely to be merely a formality.
Last week, a minor controversy erupted over mailings sent by Gregory Maxwell, urging English Wikipedians and Wikimedia Commons users to vote in the elections. The mailing, which was sent to active Wikipedians who had not yet voted in the elections, was viewed by some as helpful in reminding users to cast their vote. Others viewed the notice as an abuse of the e-mail system, and unfairly benefited the English community (though Gmaxwell offered to help users send out notices in other languages, no users had stepped forward by the time the elections closed). Jimbo Wales suggested that in future elections, the Wikimedia Foundation could personally send e-mails to users who are eligible to vote.
Results from the election are expected on Sunday, barring any complications.
Next week: Results of the Board Election.
Wikimedia Foundation hires consultant, general counsel
Over the last two weeks, the Wikimedia Foundation has hired two new employees: Sue Gardner will serve as a consultant and special advisor, and Mike Godwin will serve as general counsel and Legal Coordinator.
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Sue’s arrival is an important step for Wikimedia as we continue to evolve as an organization. We want to ensure sustainability and reliability, as well as set the stage for future growth: Sue’s role is to help us do that. She is well-suited to the job: she’s consensus-oriented (which as we know is important in an organization like ours), and she has experience leading change and managing transitions like the one we’re facing. She is sympathetic to our goals and values, and also has some experience with collaborative projects.
Sue will be responsible for assessing and improving all aspects of the Foundation’s operations. This means she’ll be taking a look at how we do things today –everything from staffing to fundraising to financial controls– and recommending improvements.
Sue comes to us from CBC.CA, the website of Canada’s national public broadcaster, and that country’s largest and most popular news site. Under her leadership as Senior Director there, CBC.CA more than doubled its audience size, and won dozens of international awards. Prior to running CBC.CA, she was a journalist for 10 years, writing for magazines and newspapers, and making documentaries and talk programming for media companies such as theNational Public Radio.
Gardner thanked Wikimedians for "all the very kind welcomes", and noted that she would be focusing on learning the various processes, wikis and mailing lists, and meeting with office staff, and would start much of her work after Wikimania, due to a prior commitment from July 7 through July 25.
As General Counsel and Legal Coordinator, Mike will be responsible for handling the day-to-day legal needs of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as coordinating pro bono legal help worldwide. Additionally, he will be responsible for evaluating the Foundation’s policies and operating procedures, and assisting the Board of Trustees with legal concerns.
Mike comes to us from Yale Law School and the Yale Department of Computer Science, where he was working as a Research Fellow, supervising student research projects involving law and technology. Mike is an accomplished attorney with over 17 years of experience in legal policy development and advocacy concerning technology, privacy and the internet. Most notably, he was the first Staff Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to educating the public about civil liberties relating to technology, and acted as a defender of those liberties. He also served as Counsel to two Washington D.C.-based nonprofits, specifically Public Knowledge and The Center for Democracy and Technology. ... Mike will be working from his office in the Washington, DC, area. If you would like to volunteer with the Wikimedia Foundation in a legal capacity, we encourage you to contact Mike directly by email at mgodwin at wikimedia.org.
Godwin, perhaps best known for his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and for
The two hires follow the hiring of Vishal Patel as a part-time Business Developer in May, and the hiring of Cary Bass as Volunteer Coordinator in April.
Newspaper obituary plagiarizes Japanese Wikipedia
In an embarrassing mistake, a Japanese newspaper has been caught plagiarizing from Wikipedia for part of a front-page story about the death of a former prime minister, and apologized for the situation last week.
The newspaper, the Shizuoka Shimbun, originally ran the article in question on 29 June, one day after the death of Kiichi Miyazawa, who served as prime minister from 1991 to 1993. It included a tale about Miyazawa, much earlier in his career as a cabinet minister, telling Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko to sit down during negotiations over the Kuril Islands, where the boundary between the two countries has long been disputed.
Once the Shizuoka Shimbun published the story, readers noticed that this excerpt strongly resembled the description of the incident in the Japanese Wikipedia's article about Miyazawa. After this circulated on Japanese blogs and other sites, the newspaper came out with an apology last Thursday, 5 July. According to the Mainichi Shimbun (Shimbun means "newspaper" in Japanese), the writer responsible thought the information was common knowledge and didn't need to be cited, but the editorial chief of the Shizuoka Shimbun called the reporter's action inappropriate.
For a sense of the magnitude of the situation, the Shizuoka Shimbun has a reported circulation over 1.4 million. Although not quite in the class of Japan's leading national dailies, it is a major regional newspaper. By way of comparison, its circulation figure is higher than that of almost all British or American non-tabloid newspapers (Japanese newspapers generally have some of the world's highest circulation numbers).
WikiWorld comic: "Ann Coulter"
This week's
News and notes
Featured article stats changed
With help from SandyGeorgia, Rick Block, Gimmetrow, and Raul654, the FA stats page was revamped this week. The numbers there are more accurate and (for the FA proportion) more precise.
Wikipedia tops Nielsen/NetRatings' news/information rankings
Briefly
- The Quechua Wikipedia has reached 30,000 edits.
- The Nepal Bhasa Wikipedia has reached 100,000 edits.
- The Polish Wikipedia has reached 400,000 articles.
- The Sicilian Wikipedia reaches 10,000 articles.
- The Spanish Wikipedia has reached 250,000 articles.
- The Venetian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
- The Wikimedia Commons has reached 1,600,000 files and 2,000,000 pages overall.
- The Wikipedia of Ripuarian languages has reached 250,000 edits.
- The Greek Wiktionary has reached 150,000 entries.
- The Icelandic Wiktionary has reached 11,000 entries.
Features and admins
Administrators
Ten users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Mike Peel (nom), Citicat (nom), JodyB (nom), GDonato (nom), Daniel Case (nom), Grant65 (nom), Acalamari (nom), Mattbr (nom), Andrew c (nom) and FisherQueen (nom).
Bots
Nine bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Seedbot (task request), JL-Bot (task request),
Featured content
Thirteen articles were promoted to
No articles were de-featured last week.
Seven
One list was de-featured last week: List of states with nuclear weapons (nom).
No portal were promoted to featured status last week.
No topics or sounds were promoted to featured status last week.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as
The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Magnificent Hummingbird, U.S. states by date of statehood, Tawny Owl, Pecans, Brise soleil, Second Severn Crossing, and Vernal Fall.
Eight pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.
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Hadrosaur tree -
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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.3 (b671e57), and changes with a version number higher than that will not yet be active.
Fixed bugs
- )
- An API query for a page's protection status now no longer has a chance of causing a database error and thus producing no useful output. (r23636, bug 10439)
- Parameters 3 and 4 to MediaWiki:Movepage-moved can now be used inside wikilinks without problems. (r23604, bug 10455)
- Watching pages no longer fails in Gecko-based browsers when the page's title contains a zero-width non-joiner character in the page's title. (Previously the watch appeared successful but failed anyway.) The same fix fixed the same error when using the CategoryTree feature. (r23834, bug 10477)
New features
- An (undo) link is now available for each edit on page histories, without going via the (diff) link first. (r23771, bug 1783)
- A new API query prop=imageinfo has been implemented, to query for details about an image. (r23819, bug 9142)
- It's now possible to query the size of the database server replication lag, using an API query for meta=siteinfo. (r23823, bug 10211)
- A local page MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist was added for blacklisting spam links from just one Wikimedia project. (Adding spam links to the Meta blacklist, m:Spam blacklist, will blacklist spam links from all Wikimedia projects.) (r23849, bug 8492)
Configuration changes
- Adding an external link to http://en.wikiversity.org (or any other language-version of Wikiversity) no longer triggers a CAPTCHA for new and unregistered users. (bug 10440)
Other technology news
- The Choctaw Wikipedia (http://cho.wikipedia.org) has been closed. (bug 10443, proposal on Meta)
- Wikipedia was uneditable for about an hour from 14:54 to 15:54 UTC on 3 July; the developers' log gives some possible reasons as to why ('brion' is User:Brion VIBBER):[1]
- 15:53 brion: lag problems on enwiki -- all slaves lagged (approx 3547 sec), but no apparent reason why
- 15:56 brion: lag problem resolved. stop/start slave got them running again; presumably the connections broke due to the net problems but it thought they were still alive, so didn't reconnect
Ongoing news
- Internationalisation has been continuing as normal; help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are, and post any updates to bugzilla.
The Report on Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee closed one case last week, and accepted five new cases.
Closed case
- Community sanction noticeboard. Upon reviewing the case, the arbitrators concluded that the original dispute had been resolved and that all editing restrictions arising from this incident had been lifted, and adopted a motion to dismiss the case without taking any action.
New cases
The five newly accepted cases are all in the evidence stage of consideration:
- COFS, a case initiated by Durova based on a discussion at the community sanctions noticeboard. The case involves allegations of tendentious editing by various editors, sockpuppetry, and other user conduct issues on Scientology related articles.
- Great Irish Famineand other Ireland/Northern Ireland articles.
- Attachment Therapy, initiated by Shotwell, alleges that other editors have engaged in POV pushing and tendentious editing on attachment therapy and related articles.
- microformatson Wikipedia and other matters.
- Vision Thing, initiated by Infinity0, concerns alleged edit-warring on anarchism, anarcho-capitalism, and related articles. The dispute has already been the subject of a prior arbitration case, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Infinity0, involving some of the same parties.
Evidence phase
In addition to the new cases listed above, these cases are in the evidence stage:
- Armenia-Azerbaijan 2: A case alleging misconduct by various editors, some of whom were previously placed on revert parole in an earlier case, on articles relating to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the conflict between them.
- Thatcher131alleges on the talkpage that -jkb- has himself revealed personal information on Zacheus.
Under review
The "under review" category refers to situations where the arbitrators are examining a party's compliance with a prior ArbCom decision, without opening a full new case to address the matter.
- Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram: A review of the Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram case. Ideogram and Sean William allege that Certified.Gangsta has engaged in tendentious editing since the main case.
Voting phase
In these cases, a proposed decision has been drafted and is being voted on by the arbitrators:
- TOR proxies. This occurred during CharlotteWebb's request for adminship, which then failed to reach consensus. In a proposed decision submitted by arbitrator Kirill Lokshin, the Arbitration Committee would note that CharlotteWebb remains a user in good standing and is welcome to resume editing, and would advise or remind Jayjg to seek to resolve this type of dispute privately before making public statements alleging misbehavior. Other arbitrators have not yet commented on these proposals.
- three revert rule following an earlier history of blocks. In a proposed decision submitted by arbitrator Mackensen, the committee would advise Miskin to seek consensus on an article's talkpage if his initial edits are reverted, and advise Swatjester to take the length of time since previous blocks into account in deciding for the length of a later block and to treat all editors violating the 3RR fairly.
- probationfor one year. Arbitrator voting on the remedy and some of the findings of fact underlying it is split.
- Lewis Libbyarticle. The proposed decision authored by Fred Bauder would grant an "amnesty" for past edit-warring on this article, but providing that further misconduct may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator.
- Piotrus: A case involving User:Piotrus and other editors on Central and Eastern Europe-related articles. In the case, multiple parties have accused one another of edit-warring, incivility, unethical behavior, and biased editing. Arbitrators have proposed remedies ranging from granting amnesty for prior editing problems on these articles to placing "all articles relating to Eastern Europe, broadly defined, on general probation and parole" to banning M.K from these articles for one year. Voting on all the proposed remedies is divided.
- attribution, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon. Remedies including limiting editors on articles relating to the paranormal to one revert (other than of simple vandalism) per week, and cautioning Dradin and Kazuba, have been proposed.
Motion to close
An arbitrator has proposed closing the committee's consideration and finalizing the decision in this case:
- Hkelkar 2: This case involves the actions of, among others, Rama's Arrow, Bakasuprman, Dangerous-Boy, and Sbhushan. Rama's Arrow has alleged that the others acted as meatpuppets of banned user Hkelkar, which they deny. Rama's Arrow has since been voluntarily desysopped. Remedies supported by a majority of the Arbitration Committee would confirm Rama's Arrow's desysopping (but note that he is eligible to seek adminship again through RfA at any time), would urge the editors involved to enter into mediation regarding any unresolved conduct disputes, and would emphasize that administrators involved in a dispute should not exercise admin powers such as blocking against others involved in the dispute, but should ask an uninvolved admin to review the matter. Also supported by a majority are the principle that off-wiki e-mails should not be posted on Wikipedia without, at least, the consent of the sender, as well as a recently added proposal stating that "all parties are reminded in the strongest possible terms that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a forum for conspiracy, personal attacks, nor the continuation of ethnic disputes by other means."