Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-10-15/SPV

This week, we're soliciting questions for another interview, this time with Wikimedia Chief Technical Officer

I'm hoping to do one to two interviews a month, with a wide range of participants from all areas. You can suggest future interview subjects here.

Thanks for reading the Signpost.

— Ral315

The annual Wikimania conference will be held in Alexandria next year, taking the event to its fourth continent in as many years of existence. The decision was not without controversy afterward, however, as it met with vocal objections over the Egyptian government's human rights record, particularly with respect to issues of sexual orientation.

The choice of Alexandria was announced Tuesday, 9 October, by Wikimedia Foundation volunteer coordinator Cary Bass. Bass served as a neutral moderator for the jury that made the selection, picking Alexandria over bids from Atlanta and Cape Town. Additional bids from London, Toronto, and Karlsruhe, Germany, had withdrawn prior to voting.

Rating the bids

Unlike prior years, in which panel members simply voted for one of the competing bids, this year's selection was determined based on a point system. The bids were rated based on twelve criteria, with each member having 60 points to award in each category. Points within a category could be distributed between multiple bids, depending on how the jury member felt they stacked up relative to each other.

Criteria considered included funding for the event, the location itself, the venue, accommodation for conference-goers, availability of Internet access, social areas, travel costs, local laws, press, the organizing team, rotating Wikimania between geographic regions, and ease of obtaining travel visas. Overall, Alexandria finished with 3026 points, Atlanta with 2419, and Cape Town with 2003. The Atlanta bid was hurt by the difficulty of obtaining visas for the United States, along with the rotation issue, as it was going against two African bids when Wikimania came to the US only last year. Cape Town, rated the most attractive bid for visas, generally scored lower in other categories and was particularly weak for the availability of accommodations.

With the Bibliotheca Alexandrina offering its facilities to host the conference free of charge, and the symbolic tie to the historical Library of Alexandria, the winning bid scored highly on categories related to location and finances. Its lowest rating was in the category "local laws", though not as low as Atlanta and Cape Town's worst scores, and several people objected that information about Egyptian government policies had been disregarded. David Strauss declared, "I'm offended that the desire to have Wikimania hop around the globe... trumps the egregious history Egypt has with LGBT and other civil rights". In response, Jimmy Wales pledged that he would devote his address at the conference to the subject of "Free knowledge and human rights". Further debate followed about whether bids should be awarded or withheld as a political statement, and the extent to which any of these concerns might directly affect visitors attending Wikimania.

Looking ahead to 2009

In a change from previous selections, where the bidding process for next year started after the latest conference, Wikimedia is trying to plan further ahead. Bidding for Wikimania 2009 is already open, and a decision is supposed to be coming in the near future.

Cary Bass encouraged groups who bid or considered bidding for Wikimania 2008 to pursue the chance to host Wikimania 2009. The organizers of the Toronto bid, in withdrawing from the competition, indicated that they would be redirecting their efforts toward a 2009 bid. The experience may prove helpful, as Alexandria was a finalist last year in the bidding that awarded Wikimania 2007 to Taipei.

Another consideration is the value attached to rotating the event between different continents, a subject of some previous debate after Taipei beat out two European bids along with Alexandria. This could convey a built-in advantage to bids for Wikimania 2009 from South America or Australia, of which a potential Buenos Aires bid has one of the most developed pages so far. The effort is running concurrently with the formation of an Argentinian local chapter of Wikimedia; this year's Wikimania was organized to a large extent by people also involved in the creation of a Taiwan chapter.

A board meeting was held over the weekend of October 6-8, and a summary of the meeting was released this week by Foundation Chair Florence Devouard, taken partly from the meeting minutes taken by Secretary Erik Möller. Among the topics covered included the foundation's organizational chart, various foundation policies, fundraising strategies, the process of hiring of a new Executive Director, board membership, a new foundation treasurer, relationships with chapters, and the approval of the foundation's first official budget since 2005.

The Fiscal Year 2007-2008 budget, built by accounting/auditing consultant Mona Venkateswaran, was approved by the Board on Sunday, October 7. The budget is tentative, and given the difficulty of planning such a budget for a growing organization, is likely to contain some margin of error. The budget has not yet been published publicly.

Among the policies enacted by the Board at this meeting was the Travel Approval Policy, which formalizes the requirements governing the approval of travel expenses incurred on behalf of trustees and the executive director. In short, travel must be authorized in writing prior to the making of travel arrangements. Another policy enacted, the Code of Conduct Policy, covers basic obligations required of the Board and all Foundation employees. Finally, the Donor Privacy Policy was formally approved; while the policy has been in effect since December, it was never formally approved by the Board due to an oversight.

A subcommittee was created to help aid in the search for a new executive director; this subcommittee would, after hiring an ED, monitor and report on the director's actions, and, if necessary, be responsible for firing the director. Devouard, Jan Bart de Vreede, and Kat Walsh will form the initial membership of the committee.

Regarding board membership, the Board discussed extending the term length of appointed members, but did not change the length, which remains at one year. Jimmy Wales and Jan-Bart de Vreede were reappointed to one-year terms ending December 2008, while appointee Michael Davis chose not to seek reappointment. Officers were also reelected, with Devouard remaining Chair, Möller remaining Executive Secretary, and Jan-Bart de Vreede remaining Vice Chair. The position of Treasurer, currently held by Davis, was not filled while the Board discusses a new appointee, potentially one with financial experience. The Treasurer Search will be led by a workgroup, with Devouard, Möller, and Walsh as members, and the job description will be published publicly soon.

One idea discussed but not implemented was the suggestion that a delay of 6 months should be in effect before a Foundation staff member can run for board candidacy, and a delay before a board member can become a staff member. This was briefly discussed after Danny Wool resigned from the office in March, and stood for candidacy in the June board elections (Wool finished in 6th, 37 votes shy of the third and final seat).

The Board discussed how relationships with Chapters should be handled. Four options were presented, with varying degrees of support, from informal relationships to a formal business relationship with revenue sharing. They agreed that the discussion should be postponed, and also agreed to cancel the December Board/Chapters retreat until more discussion was held.

A discussion was also held regarding the

A Wikimedia project and free media repository, the Wikimedia Commons, reached two million media files, on Monday, 8 October. A press release has already been written in English and German; the tentative release date is Tuesday.

Growth

According to a post on the Village Pump, growth there is steadily rising, with 120,000-140,000 uploads from July to October of this year. In addition, uploads day-by-day have risen from just triple-digit numbers in 2005 to about 1,000-2,000 in 2006, and then to over 4,000 a day in 2007. New contributors, as with the English Wikipedia's milestone, also continue to rise, and so do new uploads that are uncategorized, unlicensed, and/or permanently orphaned.

Search

Commons users have provided more features related to browsing and manipulating the repository, including Mayflower search and a user script that easily provides ready to use user talk messages. As Wikimedia Commons is powered by MediaWiki, its default search is the search featured provided by MediaWiki. As a result, the quality of searches is often very low, as it mainly searches the image name, and not always what is in the description. This makes it hard for Commons to grow faster, and it makes it harder for free content-seekers to find free media that is suitable for their use.

Non-descriptive filenames

Contributing to the low quality of searches, contributors there often upload media that is non-descriptive and uncategorized, making it hard for everyone to find media. Renaming files is not easy either; instead, one must upload the file again under a new name, and then tag the old one for speedy deletion. This is similar to transferring media from Wikipedia to Commons; one must download the file and then upload it again in Commons. A bug regarding this issue, reported three years ago, still has not been fixed.

Multilingualism

As evident from an anonymous user's first view of its Main Page, the

Another post agrees:

Quality and Featured Images

Much like the

With the Foundation's move to San Francisco scheduled for the end of January, job openings for the new offices have been published. Some of these positions are current positions that will need to be filled in the new offices, while others are new positions, added as part of the Foundation's expansion.

Current job openings include that of Accountant, Personal Assistant to the Executive Director, Office Manager, Heads of Development, Communications and Business Development, and Chief Financial and Operating Officer. All positions require experience within their individual field, and emphasize the knowledge of multiple languages, and prior work experience outside the United States. All positions, except that of Accountant, will accept candidates living outside the San Francisco Bay Area.

Applications for the offices of Accountant, Personal Assistant to the Executive Director, and Office Manager close on October 31; applications for the offices of Heads of Development, Communications and Business Development close on November 5, and applications for the office of Chief Financial and Operating Officer close on November 12.

Meanwhile, the office of Executive Director still remains open. At the board meeting earlier this month, an Executive Director Subcommittee was created (see related story). This subcommittee has been tasked with hiring a new executive director, monitor and report on the director's actions, and, if necessary, fire the director.

More hires are forthcoming, with positions for developers, public outreach, and partnerships development not yet open.

After a deletion discussion, the

Nomination

On October 6, Picaroon nominated the page for deletion. The rationale for deletion (or retirement, rather) was that the page was only a solution to a nonexistent problem from AN/I. The nominator also stated that blocks and bans were only discussed for one day before action happens. In fact, even though the discussion process clearly stated that it was not a vote, discussions were held contrary to what was supposed to be done. Even the scope of users commenting is significant: only a small minority of users and administrators participated in discussions. Picaroon and others argued that this was not community-wide consensus, which is required for a discussion that deals with a user potentially losing editing privileges indefinitely.

Sjakkalle argued in favor of keeping the noticeboard:

Unpleasant as the discussion may be, discussion which concerns the banning of somebody must stay in order to maintain openness, and to have something to point to when someone questions the ban. Outright deletion is not a viable option. Now, on the issue of shutting down this noticeboard, I really don't understand what is going to improve if we send such threads to ANI instead of CSN. What is it that will make the banning threads at ANI more pleasant than here? If we want to abandon unpleasant community ban discussions, we might as well abandon community bans. By keeping this at a separate page we make it clear that community bans are really by the community, not merely a community of administrators. ... CSN is clearly a page with problems, the concerns in the nomination are correct observations, but shutting this down is not going to solve the problems, just move them to somewhere else.

On October 11, the discussion was closed with a result of "mark historical". Closer Titoxd noted that "Sjakkalle's point for not deleting the page [was] the most convincing, and was not successfully contested by anyone", but the strongest consensus was to merge the page with the incidents noticeboard.

The noticeboard was previously nominated for deletion in May 2007. However, that discussion was closed as no consensus, and reform was attempted, with little success. That failed attempt to reform CSN ultimately led to this second MFD that led to CSN being marked historical.

RedirectCleanupBot was approved through a special request for adminship, which opened shortly after a request for bot approval began. The request for adminship succeeded with 168 supporting voters and 15 opposing. Various members of the community asked a total of 34 questions, an unusually high number. The bot operators assured the questioners that the bot could be shut down easily if it malfunctioned, and that it would not accept any other tasks.

Previous formal requests for admin-bot approval have not succeeded. The most notable example was ProtectionBot, which might have passed a request for adminship in January 2007, but it was rendered unnecessary by a change in the MediaWiki software.

However, there are a small number of bots which take advantage of sysop access via the bot operator's account. One known example is

Two types of copyright licenses are currently examining proposed updates that may be of interest to Wikipedia contributors. One is the ubiquitous GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which may be adjusted to allow for Wikipedia to switch over to the GSFDL, designed as a simpler license without such features as invariant sections. Meanwhile, Creative Commons has proposed a clarification to its portfolio of licenses over the issue of moral rights.

GSFDL

As text on Wikipedia is under the GFDL, a change to the

The GSFDL tracks much of the GFDL language but eliminates references to document features such as "cover texts" and "invariant sections", portions that must be preserved without alteration in future versions of the original work. Wikipedia already does not accept submissions using these features, since they conflict with the principle of a wiki where anyone can modify the content. The GSFDL is still at the first draft stage and comments on the text are invited at Wikipedia:GSFDL. Comments thus far have addressed the text of the preamble, how best to deal with attribution requirements, and what to do about the requirement to preserve copyright notices.

CC 3.01

In a somewhat more arcane issue, Creative Commons announced its own proposed license change last week. Along with a number of other changes, earlier this year version 3.0 of the CC family of licenses introduced a clause dealing with moral rights. These are a set of artists' rights in addition to standard copyright, such as the right to be acknowledged as the author of the work and to prevent distortion, mutilation, or modification that would prejudice the author's honour or reputation. The extent of these rights is a matter of controversy, particularly since moral rights laws usually expect authors not to waive or renounce them, and different jurisdictions have recognized or ignored these rights to varying degrees.

The moral rights clause would be modified to address confusion about the subject, according to a recent CC blog post. Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig explained that the change was proposed primarily to address concerns from people involved in Wikimedia projects. He said that "some — especially within the Wikipedia community — have read this clause to mean not that moral rights are untouched, but that moral rights are being enforced by the license. That was not our intent."

In particular, the concern from some Wikipedia contributors was that the 3.0 version of the license risked introducing these rights into jurisdictions where they were far more limited. The change in wording is meant to address this issue, clarifying that the license does not reserve moral rights where they do not apply, while not attempting to waive them in jurisdictions where that is not allowed.

This week's

Historian who studied Wikipedia dies

American historian

Wiki Wednesdays

A series of monthly wiki-related chats have begun recently. Wiki Wednesdays have various structures depending on the particular meeting location; some focus on featured speakers, while others have round-robin talks, and some are unstructured. Most events are held on the first Wednesday of each month. This month, events were held in the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, Oregon, Montreal, Vancouver, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. New events are scheduled for London and Chicago on Wednesday, November 7.

Briefly

• US$
  250 million; the deal will allow HowStuffWorks to incorporate Discovery programming into its articles. According to HowStuffWorks CEO Jeff Arnold, doing so would "ultimately deliver an accurate 'video Wikipedia'"
• The Wikimedia Commons has reached 2,000,000 media files (see related story).
• The Min Nan Wiktionary has reached 7,500 pages.
• The Limburgish Wiktionary has reached 3,000 edits.
• The Dutch Wikipedia has reached 10,000,000 edits.
• The Chinese Wikisource has reached 20,000 articles.
• The Portuguese Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.
• The Limburgish Wiktionary has reached 500 articles.
• The Dutch Wikibooks has reached 2,000 modules.

Deletionists and inclusionists

Delete generation rips encyclopedia apart - The article presents the view that administrators are divided into deletionists and inclusionists, two diametrically opposed schools of thought about the inclusion of content into Wikipedia. The article reviews the deletionist and inclusionist arguments, and states that "notability debate has spread across the discussions like a rash". There is a focus on the deletion of stubs - in particular, the debate over Mzoli's - and how some Wikipedians have changed their ways, reflecting back on the "old times".

Wikipedia with slower growth

Wikipedia Showing Slower Growth? So What? - There has been interest in the move to San Francisco and the decline in Wikipedia activity over the last six months. However, as the title says so strikingly - so what? The author argues that Wikipedia eventually has to slow down, given its pattern of growth thus far, and sustaining the current growth indefinitely is not realistic. Wikipedia has achieved much in its time, and will remain useful despite this.

Beyond that, debate continues about Wikipedia not only slowing down, but whether its community is shrinking. Much of this is based on data from an analysis posted by Dragons flight, while others have contested whether drawing such conclusions is sensible.

Other mentions

• Mercedes hunts for Wikipedia vandal -
  Daimler
  , makers of Mercedes-Benz, investigate vandalism from work computers to car racing-related articles on Wikipedia.
• Internal Affairs: Council members' fluffy Wiki entries - The article ponders the wide disparity between council members' Wikipedia articles.
• AP Journalists Sue Arkansas Officials - Journalists sue over freedom of information about the location of computers with certain IP addresses discovered using WikiScanner.

The project was first to introduce the "new articles" page to bring attention to the new articles created on the topic. This approach quickly gained popularity among other WikiProjects and communities and recently was automated by the AlexNewArtBot.

Current events

See also:

the project newsletter

Recently, the Military History project's

While they are not given any executive position, the Military history project's coordinators are responsible for making sure all the administrative and procedural tasks for the project are carried out, and serve as people to contact if someone has a procedural issue about the project. The lead coordinator is

Many task forces, or subprojects, have descended from WikiProject Military history. They include, but are not limited to:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Maritime warfare task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Military aviation task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Military historiography task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Military memorials and cemeteries task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Military science task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Military technology and engineering task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/War films task force
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Weaponry task force

How to help

If you would like to help out WikiProject Military history, you can add your name to its

Administrators

Eight users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Aarktica (nom), AA (nom), The Placebo Effect (nom), RedirectCleanupBot (nom) (see related story), Jehochman (nom), Alasdair (nom), Blood Red Sandman (nom) and Dfrg.msc (nom).

Bots

Nine bots or bot tasks were approved to begin operating this week: Maelgwnbot (task request), CounterVandalismBot (task request), Giggabot (task request),

Featured content

Seventeen articles were promoted to

No portals or sounds were featured last week.

Four articles were de-featured last week: Architecture of Windows NT (nom), Typewriter (nom), Schabir Shaik trial (nom), and Charles Ives (nom).

Two pictures were de-featured last week: Image:Vitruvian.jpg (nom), and Image:Cyclone Catarina from the ISS on March 26 2004.JPG (nom)

No

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Night of the Long Knives, William Shakespeare, The Smashing Pumpkins, Intelligent design, Knights Templar, Battleship, and Donkey Kong (video game).

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Thespsis, Dust Bowl, Sami, Military Camouflage, Soyuz TMA-9, Compass Rose, and Portland, Oregon.

Nine pictures were promoted to featured status last week and are shown below.

• 
  Neuschwanstein Castle Photochrom (nom

  )
• nom

  )
• 
  Attack on

  nom

  )
• 
  nom

  )
• 
  nom

  )
• 
  Eastern newt (nom)
• 
  Fly (nom)
• 
  nom

  )
• 
  Citric acid cycle (nom)

This is a summary of recent technology and site configuration changes that affect the English Wikipedia. Note that not all changes described here are necessarily live as of press time; the English Wikipedia is currently running version 1.43.0-wmf.3 (b671e57), 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.

Fixed bugs

• When an editintro is used to give advice about editing a page, it no longer causes a stray line break between the 'minor edit' and 'watch this page' checkboxes. (r25793, bug 9252)
• It's now impossible to set a default number of days to show in Recent Changes in preferences that's greater than the number of days that Recent Changes actually stores. (r26591, bug 11612)

New features

• A feature was added to expand templates (action=expand) and render wikitext (action=render) using the API. (r26501, bugs 11173 and 11572)
• When logging in via the API, the relevant cookie prefix and session ID are now returned in the API results in addition to returning them in the cookies. (r26507, bug 11569)
• Administrators can now view a diff from a deleted revision to the (deleted or not deleted) revision before it, via Special:Undelete. (r26604, bug 7872)
• When querying the API for recent changes data, the type of recent changes entry (edit, new page, log entry) is now returned as a word, rather than as a number. (r26615, bug 11632)

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 or use Betawiki.

The Arbitration Committee accepted two new cases this week, and closed one case.

Closed case

• WP:NPOV
  .