Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2005-07-18
Trustees re-elected, but exact results delayed
The two community representatives on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, Angela Beesley and Florence Nibart-Devouard, were re-elected to their posts in the election that concluded last week. Detailed results are still not available, but both were apparently approved by a majority of voters.
Within a few hours of the election closing on Monday, Danny, one of the election officials, released preliminary election results indicating that Beesley and Nibart-Devouard had been re-elected. They had both been chosen in June 2004 for one-year terms and have now been elected to serve for an additional two years.
Delay in releasing full results
When the initial results were released, Danny indicated that the exact totals were being validated and would be completed over the next 24 hours. However, after a couple days passed and this did not happen, a few people asked about the delay. It seems now that the results will finally be available sometime this week.
In last year's election, the vote totals were also released somewhat after the identity of the trustees had been announced. This was due to uncertainty over whether the unsuccessful candidates were willing to have this information disclosed, as it had not been clear in advance that it would be.
This time the delay is reportedly due to issues with determining the validity of some votes. For example, it was pointed out that Gzornenplatz voted while subject to an indefinite ban, and it was not certain whether the vote should be counted. Several other possibly spurious votes have been identified and are being reviewed.
Order of finish, additional analysis
However, the number of questionable votes is apparently low enough that it will not affect the outcome in any case. Beesley and Nibart-Devouard were both approved by more than 50% of all voters, and
As the election used approval voting, majority support was not guaranteed even for the winners; last year only Beesley was elected by a majority, and only one of the current arbitrators received over 50% of the vote using the same system. Both Beesley and Nibart-Devouard increased their percentage of the overall vote from last year.
The total number of votes cast was 1,484, more than double the number of people who participated in last year's election. Although the candidate totals are not yet available, a breakdown of votes by languages is. Just under half of all votes (49%) came from English-language projects, a significant increase from about 40% the previous year.
Update: The detailed vote totals for each candidate were finally published on Monday, 18 July. Beesley received 70% of the vote and Nibart-Devouard 55%. Results for the remaining candidates were as follows: Klein 33%, Heiskanen 25%, Lagrange 21%, and Schonken 12%.
Picture of the day debuts on main page
This week the picture of the day made its first appearance on Wikipedia's Main Page, replacing the Did you know feature, albeit temporarily. Also, there were 3 new admins, 10 new featured articles, 8 new featured lists, and 5 new featured pictures this week.
Picture of the day
The possibility of replacing "Did you know" with a rotation of featured pictures had been brought up already a week ago (see archived story). On Saturday, MacGyverMagic said that due to "a lack of suggestions" for new articles he would give the Picture of the day feature a trial run in its place. Following an earlier compromise suggestion, he indicated that he planned to rotate so that "Picture of the day" would be used on weekends and "Did you know" on weekdays.
Some problems quickly cropped up, particularly technical issues with the templates involved, and further editing broke the layout of the main page on some browsers. Also, Solipsist, who helps organize the selection of the "Picture of the day", suggested that better coordination was needed to avoid repeating featured pictures on the main page, much as is already done for featured articles.
Admins
Three wikipedians received administrator status after their requests for adminship received wide support: Triddle (nom), Jredmond (nom), and Uncle G (nom).
Featured content
Ten more
Eight
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Common snowdrop
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Barren Ground Caribou
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2004 Tsunami
Two articles draw crowds on votes for deletion
Two of Wikipedia's rather well-known articles survived
The latter article is Folksonomy, which was nominated for deletion by an anonymous user who said, "Just because some self-proclaimed, vain 'online journalists' repeat a meme on their web-site in every post doesn't mean it is fit for inclusion in an encyclopedia." The term, a neologism for collaborative categorization that has gained considerable usage, is often defined even in other sources by reference to the Wikipedia article.
Blogger Steve Rubel noticed the debate and mentioned it in one of his posts. The article was, of course, overwhelmingly kept; the only person voting "delete" other than the nominator apparently did so in jest. Prompted by the incident, BusinessWeek blogger Rob Hof made some observations about the deletion process in general: "Dig down into why there's a debate, and you see the care with which Wikipedia and its community have set up policies to ensure entries are useful and accurate."
Setting a record
The
The GNAA has been highly controversial, because many Wikipedians believe that the group does not warrant an article, either because the article is promotional or the group is simply not notable. Dislike of their activities also plays a role, as
The group, originally organized on
How the vote was held
As the previous VfD nominations were known for having issues with irregular votes, Ta bu shi da yu set up the process in a manner slightly different from a normal VfD. The page was divided into separate sections for voters to choose Delete, Keep, or Redirect, and a "Comments" section was also added. Anonymous editors, and those that had fewer than 100 edits at the time of voting, were subject to having their votes discounted, and a separate section was created to which these votes could be moved. In addition, personal attacks were barred and any comments deemed a personal attack were immediately removed without comment from the vote. Fortunately, most of those participating were civil and well-behaved.
The procedure for the vote drew both praise and criticism. Who complimented Ta bu shi da yu on his work in laying out the vote. Gmaxwell, however, said that "by putting the article up again and unilaterally creating a whole new family of voting rules just for this VFD, you are in effect disrupting Wikipedia." In particular he disagreed with the ongoing process of discounting votes, arguing that this would be better left to the administrator who would close the vote.
The final result, using the rules outlined, had 55 users voting to delete against 78 who preferred to keep the article. Only three people suggested redirecting to
Dealing with future nominations
Concerns about this article being repeatedly submitted to VfD also prompted a proposed policy page called
The proposal also indicated that it was not a referendum on the value of having the article: "It merely means you're sick of the amount of time being wasted on the whole thing and want a reprieve." Responses suggested that the general idea has widespread support, although a few people indicated they were uncomfortable with the language being used.
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
Although currently understaffed, the Arbitration Committee did open a new case last week and moved quickly to take preliminary action in the matter. However, the rest of the current arbitration cases remained in limbo as the arbitrators continue to deliberate. In other dispute resolution news, the idea of another variation on the mediation process has been floated.
On Tuesday, the arbitrators accepted a case brought by Ta bu shi da yu against Alfrem, arising from a dispute over the Libertarianism article. In light of continuing revert wars, the arbitrators issued a temporary injunction the next day banning Alfrem from editing the article.
Wikimediation
Also on Tuesday,
Snowspinner indicated that he wanted Wikimediation to be less confrontational, emphasizing instead "friendly advice and constructive criticism on how to resolve an issue." Since the proposal discouraged its use merely as "a dry run" for arbitration, some people wondered if it was meant to be entirely separate from the existing dispute resolution system. However, Wikimediation would still count as an alternative method of dispute resolution, since use of such methods is strongly encouraged before resorting to arbitration.
This is one of several recent attempts to revitalize the dispute resolution processes that come before arbitration. The
Media praises, pans Wikipedia, uses it for corrections
With the London bombings prompting increased press coverage of Wikipedia and its sister projects, a spate of reviews appeared in the media this week ranging from the glowing to the dismissive. Also, in a change of pace from journalists pointing out errors in Wikipedia that want fixing, some are now finding Wikipedia being used to correct their own errors.
Hot, cold, lukewarm reviews
Contrasting views emerged this week from Fort Worth, Texas and Rochester, New York as columnists considered how useful and informative Wikipedia is. In the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, columnist Susan Barnes looked briefly at the history of the project, claiming that it now had 440,000 articles in the English language version [1] (the correct figure is currently almost 640,000). She noted the problems that arise through not knowing whether experts in a field have worked on articles in that field, and said that 'in some cases, a recognized expert in a subject area may not be respected or supported by the rest of the Wikipedia community'. Overall, Barnes's view was that 'for information about popular culture, the Wikipedia is a gold mine of information. However, it might not be the best source for an academic paper.'
In
Finally, a predictably negative outlook from
Wikipedia and the London bombings
One of the most commonly praised aspects of Wikipedia is its ability to keep track of
UK journalism website http://www.journalism.co.uk reported that
The article pointed out that while Wikipedia has 75 times the readership of Wikinews, it only has five times the number of editors, pointing to an impressive degree of reader participation in the news project. The Guardian's director of digital publishing said he was not convinced that a wiki could ultimately deliver a reliable news source, but said that 'Everything on the internet is about acquired trust, and news sites earn their spurs with each news story'.
Wikipedia less amusing for Czechs these days
The article suggested that Wikipedia had once used a software translator to populate non-English sites - something certainly never done automatically but perhaps done for individual articles by well-meaning Wikipedians using online translation tools. Lamenting the absence of 'humorous language mutations', the article said that 'Czech readers, for example, learned that hairy legs were “hair that multiplies on legs people, generally at commencement of adulthood.” And that some people are forced to “lead the practices love wood-shaving legs.”
Newspapers corrected
This week, newspapers around the world have found themselves contradicting information found in Wikipedia. In
Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, The Guardian erred in a mention of the 1936 Jarrow March, a landmark in the history of the British Labour movement. The paper described the march as running from York to Aldermaston. A few days later, the paper's daily corrections and clarifications column noted that the march passed neither of these places, and noted that 'the route, with overnight stops, is fully listed on Wikipedia' [7].
Harry Potter book boiled down for article
The much-anticipated release of the latest Harry Potter book naturally led to a busy spell of activity as its contents were rapidly reduced to a summary for the Wikipedia article.
Last Saturday, within minutes of the book's midnight release in the
The busiest location was of course the article dedicated to the book itself, which saw well over 1,000 edits within the first 24 hours. As a first step, the list of chapter titles was added, after which brief summaries of each chapter began to appear. The editors had only managed to get as far as Chapter 4 when somebody, apparently having skipped ahead rather than reading all the way through, revealed the ending and unveiled the answer to the book's mystery. Ultimately, the synopsis of all 30 chapters became too large for the main article and on Sunday it was split off into a separate article for the
Meanwhile, all of the pre-publication rumours about the book's contents, which had been painstakingly chronicled in anticipation of the event, were relocated shortly before the magical hour to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Crystal Ball). Later the page was nominated for deletion as "speculation and original research", but most people seemed to favor keeping it for historical reasons or simply merging useful material back into the main article.
News and notes: Page rank drops
Wikipedia has dropped a notch in a familiar ranking system, although the available information suggests that the reasons for this have little to do with Wikipedia's growth trends. Also, a glance at what projects different Wikipedias are working on.
Page rank drops back
Alterego reports that Google has made a major overhaul to its PageRank system, causing Wikipedia to fall back down a notch. Wikipedia, which first reached a PageRank of 9 at the end of May (see archived story), is now again at 8 (out of a possible 10). He notes that Google appears to show a much lower number of incoming links to Wikipedia, compared with the number of links as calculated by MSN. Minh Nguyễn suggests that Google's number may be after weeding out mirror sites that have used Wikipedia content to manipulate their own rankings.
Double redirects
Portuguese Wikipedia all categorized
German Wikipedia introduces incentive scheme
Until now, the only rewards Wikipedia contributors have received have been the positive feelings that altruism generates and the admiration of their peers. That may all be changing on the German Wikipedia, which has introduced a system whereby people may offer a bounty to encourage the creation or improvement of articles.
The German word for bounty, kopfgeld, literally means 'head money', but the scheme is more likely, say its proponents, to involve the transfer of a small gift such as a CD or a book. Examples of offers so far have included drinks at a forthcoming
A number of German blogs and media sites have noted the appearance of this system, which has already been credited with the creation or improvement of several articles. In several cases the 'exchange' has been more in the nature of one article for another, without needing a transaction outside of Wikipedia. These share some common aspects with the game of using WikiMoney (now largely defunct), but the idea appears to be taken more seriously this time.
Controversy
The scheme is enjoying something of a baptism of fire, however, and has generated strong disapproval from some Wikipedianer who feel it contravenes the wiki spirit. It was initiated on 6 July, but on 18 July Dickbauch nominated the scheme for deletion, saying that the concept was 'diametrically opposed' to the principles of a wiki.
The deletion vote has already attracted strong views on either side of the debate, with those voting delete fearing the beginning of the end of Wikipedia if the scheme continues and forecasting very negative effects of a 'commercialised' wiki. One user said that the project could do without people who would only share their knowledge in return for something.
On the other hand, supporters of the system have said that it does not go against the fundamental principles of building an