Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2006-06-12
From the editor
This issue, we welcome back a feature that's been noticeably absent over the last three and a half months. That's right, the Signpost's RSS feed is back up and running on a new server. You can find the new RSS feed at http://wikipediasignpost.com/feed.rss.
I'd like to apologize for the long hiatus of our RSS feed. I've had some technical difficulties with the old RSS feed (mainly
Thanks again for reading the Signpost.
— Ral315
English Wikipedia reaches 1,000 Featured Articles
The
A press release was issued by the Wikimedia Foundation when the article was promoted; because the number of featured articles had been steadily increasing toward one thousand, this milestone was already anticipated beforehand, with some Wikipedians even joking about creating a million-
The Iranian peoples article had been nominated last Friday, 2 June, by Tombseye, one of two primary contributors to the article. He commented that the article had been "written with some extensive referencing" and that it had "withstood and evolved with various disputes... now resolved." The other primary contributor to the article was Khoikhoi. The article received mostly positive comments during the FAC. "[It was a] very informative article," commented Eupator, "[that] scrutinizes every aspect of the topic." However, there were also several suggestions on improvements, most of which were acted upon.
Featured articles must pass
Administrator desysopped after sockpuppeting incident
Arbitrator Kat Walsh (Mindspillage) stated in a posting on the administrators' noticeboard, which was also attested to by five other arbitrators:
- The Arbitration Committee has been made aware of very strong (but necessarily privileged) evidence that NSLE abused his sysop privileges in unprotecting an article which he then used a sockpuppet to edit, and we believe that these actions were done under the direction of a permanently-banned user. Despite repeated pleas over many weeks from the Committee for some benign reasoning of the evidence, no such satisfactory explanation was forthcoming.
As a result, NSLE was desysopped, and is not permitted to seek administrative powers again without the permission of the Committee.
No other information was given in the case, with arbitrators and other users involved in the case stressing that the evidence, while damning, was kept private for reasons of deterrence, and per NSLE's request.
NSLE noted that his stand was always that of innocence, though he understood the Arbitration Committee's decision. [1] NSLE also posted in the discussion:
- Thanks for your support, everyone, I've previously discussed this extensively with Jimbo and understand the actions of the ArbCom. I'll continue to be in discussion over this with Jimbo, but for the meantime please just treat this as a blip in the road, and please, for my sake, drop the matter.
In its initial post, the Committee thanked Greg Maxwell and Kelly Martin for their involvement in dealing with the situation. Neither user made any public comment on the issue. As a result of the decision, NSLE becomes the tenth user to lose his adminship involuntarily, and the seventh such user since November 2005.
NSLE later left a note on his talk page, noting that he was on "extended wikibreak," staying only to make minor edits to his favorite articles.
Featured speakers at Wikimania
This week, the Signpost takes a look at some of the speakers who will be at this year’s Wikimania conference.
Lawrence Lessig
Jim Giles
Jim Giles is a news and features editor for Nature magazine, and author of the much-discussed Nature News article which compared some of the scientific content of Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia, and found that the two encyclopedias were comparable in accuracy [2]. Giles will be speaking about the article and about content analysis of Wikipedia.
Karen Christensen, Paul Kobasa
Paul Ginsparg
Wikimedia luminaries
Several notable people from Wikimedia projects will be speaking as well, including a keynote by Jimbo; Anthere on the history of the Wikimedia Foundation; Angela leading a discussion of cross-wiki features and policies; and Soufron on copyright topics, leading a workshop on copyright as applied to Wikimedia, and speaking to Wikimedia legal issues at large.
The full schedule of presenters and topics will be available soon on the Wikimania site. Registration is now open; please be sure to register early if you want to sign up for the discounted accommodation on site.
Next week, the Signpost will take a look at Hacking Days and other events planned for the week of Wikimania 2006.
News and notes
Two resolutions passed
The
World Cup brings debate
The World Cup brought debate and controversy to the "In the news" section of the Main Page this week. The discussion centered around whether Wikipedia should place updated scores from the monthlong competition, which draws significant worldwide attention, on the Main Page. Previous sporting events, including the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, had been featured with updated scores and/or medal counts, with a distinguishable section placed below the other entries on the template. The question of whether other less-global sport events, such as the ongoing Stanley Cup Finals and NBA Finals, merit updated scores or even a mention on the page was also discussed. As of press time, "In the news" did not have updated scores but had an item mentioning the games with a link to Portal:Association football, which contains the scores.
Language select starts at Meta
Language select was implemented using JavaScript in meta this week. The script allows users to select their preferred language(s) and then narrowing down multilingual templates, pages, and articles to only the languages chosen. For example, the stub template prior to language select contained 20 languages and lines; the new script makes the template only display the languages selected.
Wikipedian dies
The death of a Wikipedian was noted this week. Gérald Anfossi (Nataraja) was an active contributor on the French Wikipedia, where he was an administrator, as well as on Commons and on the English Wikipedia. Known for his contributions to Indian and South Asian-related articles, as well as inter-wiki work, Anfossi succumbed to cancer in mid-March and was buried in India.
Project and logo proposals
Incubator, a proposed project where new projects or new languages "can be arranged, written, tested and proven worth for being hosted by Wikimedia", was started this week. The project is also looking for a logo. In addition, a proposal to change the current Wiktionary logo was also initiated. Finally, Wikicitizens, a forum where people could discuss current events, ideas, and viewpoints, was also proposed this week.
Briefly
- The Bengali Wikipedia has reached 2,000 articles.
- The Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
- The Piedmontese Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Northern Sami Wikipedia has reached 1,000 articles.
- The Uyghur Wikipedia has reached 500 articles.
- The French Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.
- The Spanish Wiktionary has reached 8,000 entries.
- The Latvian Wikipedia has reached 1,000 registered users.
- The Indonesian Wiktionary has reached 10,000 entries.
- The Japanese Wikinews has reached 1,000 published articles.
- The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 4,000 articles.
- The Quechua Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
- The Thai Wikipedia has reached 6,000 registered users.
- The Vietnamese Wikipedia has reached 40,000 pages.
- The Chinese Wikisource has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Sicilian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 100,000 total pages.
- The Greek Wiktionary has reached 30,000 entries.
- The Romani Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
- The Thai Wikipedia has reached 12,000 articles.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 2,000 registered users.
- The Russian Wikipedia has reached 85,000 articles.
- The Norwegian Wikipedia has reached one million edits.
- The English Wiktionary has reached 150,000 entries.
- The Esperanto Wikipedia has reached 45,000 articles and 500,000 edits.
- The Greek Wiktionary has reached 100 registered users.
In the news
Seattle Times column
On 3 June 2006, Linda Knapp, a columnist for the
Discover analyzes evolution
The July issue of .
Discover does not have nearly as much sway as Science or Nature. Nevertheless, it correctly states that Wikipedia has over 1 million entries, about half of all vandalism is reverted in five minutes, and that Wikipedia is "the Internet encyclopedia that anyone can edit". It also touched on Neutral point of view, though did not clearly state that it was a policy.
Newsweek names Wikipedia as a way to "Recharge America"
An article titled "15 Ideas to Recharge America" by Paul Saffo (Wikipedia advocate and Director of Institute for the Future) appeared in the 12 June 2006 issue of Newsweek. Saffo named Wikipedia as one way to invigorate the United States by focusing on a "New Age of Creators."
Features and admins
Administrators
Seven users were granted
).Featured content
Eight articles were
One article was de-featured last week: Breastfeeding.
Four lists reached featured list status last week: List of New Jersey hurricanes, List of Anuran families, List of Fullmetal Alchemist episodes and List of The Simpsons episodes.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as
These were the pictures of the day last week: Radiolarians, Mushroom, Nevado Alpamayo, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Euro, Grand Central Terminal and Hanko, Finland.
Ten pictures reached featured picture status last week:
-
Leaf Green Tree Frog
-
San Francisco earthquake
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Flinders Street Station
-
Greylag Goose
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News
Information about recent software changes was not provided as of press time.
Last week in servers
- Japanese Wikipedia database dump stalled in infinite loop, restarted.
- Job queue speed changed to allow for faster clearing on the English Wikipedia.
- Hemlock, a new login services Toolserver, was installed
- clematis tested, failed with Squid 2.6.
The Report On Lengthy Litigation
The Arbitration Committee closed two cases this week.
Sam Spade
A
DarrenRay, 2006BC
A
Other cases
A case was accepted this week involving Raphael1 (user page).
Other cases involving a request to unblock Saladin1970 (user page) and editors on Francis Schuckardt are also in the evidence phase.
Cases involving a
are in the voting phase.A motion to close is on the table in the case involving Locke Cole (user page).
A motion to restrict StrangerInParadise to one user account was officially approved, with seven supporting users and no opposition.