Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2007-05-28

Ongoing disputes over the policies to be applied to biographies of living persons picked up steam this past week with some controversial attempts at intervention. The issue of deletion for particularly sensitive cases has turned the deletion process as well as deletion review into focal areas for the debate, and the controversy was further stoked when a longstanding contributor was briefly blocked over his involvement in the matter.

Deletion review, with its emphasis on procedure rather than the substance of articles, has a curious position within Wikipedia's deletion policy. It also does not necessarily follow the emphasis on consensus decisionmaking of other Wikipedia processes, although Jimbo Wales recently removed a reference to majority votes when reviewing deletions, with a comment that "Voting is evil, this is nonsense."

The deletion review page provides a forum, among other things, for objections when articles have been deleted (either summarily or using Articles for deletion) for perceived serious violations of the policy on biographies of living persons. Recently, Badlydrawnjeff (whose user page currently calls him "the Vile Dark Lord of Inclusionism") has been one of the more active participants in objecting to such deletions. Mounting frustration seemed to have come to a head when, at 1:37 (UTC) on 23 May, Zsinj blocked him for 60 hours with the stated reason, "Disruption and threats; incivil actions in order to achieve personal goals disregarding community concensus; exhausting the community's patience."

Zsinj's explanation to

; his access to that channel was subsequently revoked in light of these events.

The actual conversation was mixed, and whether it could support Zsinj's characterization is debatable. There was some discussion of the problems with biographical articles about people known exclusively in connection with a single, often unflattering incident. Cases mentioned included the accuser in the

on the situation.

Zsinj joined in after the discussion had already run for several hours and promptly suggested a block for disruption. After he continued to push the idea, a few others discussed possible justifications with him (among other things, pointing out that since Badlydrawnjeff is not an administrator, Zsinj's reliance on "wheel warring" was misplaced).

and accepted personal responsibility for "a relatively hasty and uninformed" decision.

The controversy over the block gave added impetus to the possibility of an arbitration case dealing with the situation. Badlydrawnjeff had earlier requested arbitration with respect to the Chinese teenager's article, which was rejected. Within a day,

Doc glasgow

requested arbitration over Badlydrawnjeff's continuing conduct in the matter. With the additional developments, a number of arbitrators now favor addressing the case, although it is not yet clear whether it will be accepted.

Norwegian Wikimedian, journalist, and author Tron Øgrim (no:User:Togrim) passed away last week. He was 59 years old.

Tron was one of the most influential persons in Norway's Marxist-Leninist movement in the sixties and seventies. He was one of the founders of the Workers' Communist Party, a party which strongly advocated the Chinese branch of communism. Tron was also central in the founding of the newspaper Klassekampen and in the publishing house Oktober.

Tron became a journalist after leaving politics in the eighties, having a technology column in the Norwegian edition of

novels under the pseudonym Eirik Austey.

Tron was an early proponent of the Internet in Norway, traveling around Norway giving lectures. In 1995, Tron tried to get the Norwegian parliament on the Internet, claiming that “without politicians online, there is no such thing as a democratic IT policy!” Tron was also a supporter of the open source movement. In his book KVIKKSØLV!, Tron described Linux as “applied communism.”

Tron became a Wikimedian in December 2005, when libelous statements about a colleague appeared in a

announcements page.

Tron was extremely important for the Norwegian wiki movement, and he was often interviewed by the press about Wikipedia. He gave a lecture about Wikipedia when Wikipedia's founder

Jimbo Wales

visited Norway in May 2006.

The Norwegian community, in recognition of Tron's work, decided to commemorate Tron by displaying a half-masted flag in front of the WP logo for a day. This was noticed by several Norwegian newspapers.

WikiWorld is a weekly comic, carried by the Signpost, that highlights a few of the fascinating but little-known articles in the vast Wikipedia archives. The text for each comic is excerpted from one or more existing Wikipedia articles. WikiWorld offers visual interpretations on a wide range of topics: offbeat cultural references and personality profiles, obscure moments in history and unlikely slices of everyday life - as well as "mainstream" subjects with humorous potential. The comic can now be found on cartoon site Humorous Maximus.

Cartoonist

for use on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

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School-oriented Wikipedia selection released

Volunteers at the English Wikipedia and SOS Children UK have today launched the

. The Selection is about the size of a 15 volume encyclopaedia, with 24,000 pictures, 14 million words and articles on 4625 topics. It includes the best of Wikipedia, and many thousands of pages of extra material specifically selected to be of interest to children who follow the UK National Curriculum and similar curricula elsewhere in the world.

• The selection is organised around National Curriculum subjects
• The articles have been cleaned up and checked for suitability for children
• Website: Schools-Wikipedia.org
• Downloads: [1]
• Available for free as BitTorrent download (3.5GB with full size images) standard download, 1GB with only thumbnail images) or on DVD from the charity's offices in Cambridge.

There has been recent public discussion on the suitability of Wikipedia for UK schools. Many articles on the live Wikipedia website are of acceptable accuracy. This Selection aims to correct the remaining criticisms made of Wikipedia as a school resource:

• the Selection has been screened;
• the Selection cannot be vandalized;
• children cannot meet adults there;
• there are no very explicit articles or content. (The most explicit article is Birth control, which has been kept technical and neutral).

Florence Devouard, chair of the Wikimedia Foundation, said: "The Wikimedia Foundation aims to encourage the development and distribution of reference content to the public free of charge: this project is an excellent example of free resources being offered to a particular audience which we warmly encourage, and are proud to support."

Dr. Andrew Cates, CEO of SOS Children (and himself a Wikipedia administrator) said: "Wikipedia offers a fantastic learning resource. We are delighted to have been able to play a part in increasing the number of children who will be able to benefit from it. We are indebted to the volunteers in our offices and on Wikipedia who helped check articles and to the Wikipedia community for their help with this project."

The Selection can easily be run on school intranets or in remote locations in the developing world where Internet access is a problem. A pilot version of this release has already been distributed to schools in South Africa by the Shuttleworth Foundation. It is intended to extend and update the Selection periodically.

Belarusian editor dies

Just a few days after the death of Norwegian journalist Tron Øgrim (see related story), a Belarusian editor passed away this week. Uladzimir Katkouski, a well-known and award-winning Belarusian blogger who also made more than 1,300 edits to the English Wikipedia and nearly 900 edits to the Normative Belarusian Wikipedia between 2004 and 2006 as User:Rydel, passed away on May 26, 2007. Katkouski mostly edited articles about Belarus; among the articles he edited were Orsha, White Russia, and Belarusian language. He was evidently hit by a fire truck, and died after being in a coma.

Wikipedia reaches Alexa rank 9

Wikipedia reached the 3-month Alexa rank of 9 this week, passing Tencent QQ, the website of a Chinese instant-messaging program. Wikipedia generally hovers at rank 9 on most days, falling to rank 10 or 11 on Fridays and Saturdays. Wikipedia still has a long way to go to pass the number 8 site, Orkut; on only one occasion, in February, has Wikipedia reached a daily rank of 8; this rise was probably due to the Chinese New Year, as this usually produces spikes in Wikipedia's ranking, as traffic to the main Chinese-language sites falls sharply at this time each year.

Notably, Alexa statistics also show that about 6.3% of internet users visit Wikipedia, and that as of late, Wikipedia accounts for nearly 0.5% of internet traffic, about 1 in 200 page views. Additionally, Wikipedia reaches more users than Orkut, 7th-ranked

; however, Wikipedia ranks lower due to the low number of pages visited by each user (5.0) compared to the other sites (38.7, 12.5, and 37.0, respectively).

Jimbo Wales appears on Colbert Report

Jimbo Wales appeared on The Colbert Report, a satirical television program hosted by comedian Stephen Colbert. Stephen's character of the same name interviewed Wales, talking about the project and joking about a previous segment of the show where Colbert encouraged viewers to edit articles to state "the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months." (see archived story). Colbert again encouraged various vandalous additions, including the phrase "librarians are hiding something". After a comment by Colbert's character that Spanish users should learn English, Wales joked that he'd have to protect the entire Spanish Wikipedia. The full interview can be seen at Comedy Central here.

Election committee announced

The volunteers who will serve on the Board Election Steering Committee for the upcoming Board of Trustees election were announced by Wikimedia Volunteer Coordinator Cary Bass. They include Aphaia and Jon Harald Søby, both of whom were election officials last year, along with Tim Starling as technical adviser. Joining the group this year are Benjamin Mako Hill, Newyorkbrad, and Philippe Beaudette.

Briefly

• Wikispecies reached 100,000 articles sometime around 20 May.
• After dropping below 2,000 articles when content was moved to the Old Belarusian Wikipedia and replaced by content developed at the Incubator wiki, the Belarusian Wikipedia has reached 5,000 articles.
• The Cantonese Wikipedia has been edited 65,000 times.
• The Dutch Wikipedia has reached 300,000 articles.
• The Asturian Wiktionary has reached 1,000 entries.
• The Indonesian Wiktionary has reached 30,000 articles.
• The Hungarian Wikipedia has reached 60,000 articles.
• The Marathi Wikipedia has reached 10,000 articles.
• The Punjabi Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Nepal Bhasa Wikipedia has reached 15,000 articles.
• The English Wikipedia has reached 1.8 million articles.
• The Wikimedia Commons has reached 1,500,000 media files.
• The Igbo Wikipedia has reached 100 articles.
• The Indonesian Wikipedia has reached 61,000 articles.
• The Turkish Wiktionary has reached 150,000 entries.

Featured content

Twenty-two articles were promoted to

).

Four articles were de-featured last week: Parthenon (nom), Cristero War (nom), Dogpatch USA (nom) and Oxyrhynchus (nom).

Five

).

One featured topic,

nom

) was promoted to featured status last week.

One featured portal, Portal:Fish (nom) was promoted to featured status last week.

No 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: Poison gas in World War I, Montserrat (mountain), Cactus, Toledo, Spain, Lake Mapourika, Man and Limburger cheese.

Two pictures were promoted to featured status last week:

• 
  Lion
• 
  Whirlpool Galaxy

Administrators

Seven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Bjelleklang (nom), Bobak (nom), Yamamoto Ichiro (nom), SpuriousQ (nom), PeaceNT (nom), Ocatecir (nom), and Christopher Parham (nom).

Bots

Eleven bots were

this week: DinoSizedBot (task request), hxhbot (task request), Rabbot (task request), MartinBotIV (task request), UncatTemplateBot (task request), MetsBot (task request), ENewsBot (task request), Bot523 (task request), Aksibot (task request), ArkyBot (task request) and Byrialbot (task request).

This page covers changes to the MediaWiki software and English Wikipedia site configuration, and other technology news, since the last technology report (on 9 April 2007). Bugfixes and new features that do not affect the English Wikipedia have been omitted from this.

Bugs fixed

• Nested <sub> tags now render correctly. (bug 599)
• Underscores and spaces are now interchangeable when unblocking users. (bug 8573)
• The cascading-protection and regular protection notices now both appear if they both apply. (r21452, bug 9634)
• Changing the page size in the 'What links here' results no longer forgets which
  namespace was searched for links. (r21440, bug 9630
  )
• The edit summary for the dummy edit created during cascading protection now indicates that the protection cascades. (r21512, bug 9652)
• A bug which lost the anchor information for links to a page below the logged-in user's stub threshold that contained both a space and an anchor was fixed. (r21635, bug 5959)
• Paging back on Special:Contributions now pages the same distance backwards as paging forwards goes forwards (it was off by 1 before). (r21664, bug 8602)
• Some cases where Internet Explorer was falsely identified as not supporting Unicode were fixed. (r21726, bug 7629)
• If a template redirect whose target contains a section heading is transcluded into a page, the 'edit' link on the heading now links to the correct template. (r21758, bug 9670)
• 'Cite this page' on an old revision now cites that revision rather than the current revision. (r21819, bug 7958)
• For some sequences of headings on a page (such as levels 2, 3, 4, 3, 2 in that order), the Table of Contents is now indented correctly. (r21814, bug 9764)
• An error message shown to bureaucrats when renaming a user in such a way that their new userpage is already taken has been fixed. (r21848, bug 9784)
• It's now impossible to rename pages to have illegal titles starting with a space. (r21853, bug 9780)
• A bug causing the AntiSpoof extension to disallow all names containing Korean characters was fixed. (r21978, bug 7906)
• An interface error when a page with no text is
  oversighted was fixed. (r21997, bug 9842
  )
• Horizontal scrollbars no longer appear inappropriately in thumbnails in categories. (r22035, bug 9854)
• A regression causing Special:Contributions to always show 50 edits by default was fixed. (r22010, bug 9808)
• Undeleting a page now updates the history caches. (r21989, bug 2635)
• Usernames containing a # now cause an error rather than being silently truncated. (r22266, bug 9813)
• RSS feeds no longer have a chance of setting the background to the same colour as the text. (r22271, bug 7989)
• Links to nonexistent Special: pages (for instance, Special:Closewindow) now show up as redlinks. (r22450, bug 908)

New features

• It is now possible to undo multiple edits at once. (r20785, bug 8133)
• An <imagemap> now need have no regions other than a default. (r21318, bug 8573)
• Several new fonts were installed in the SVG renderer. (bug 8898)
• Image description pages on Commons can now be searched for via 'Go' on the English Wikipedia. (r21419, bug 5439)
• The number of pages that are cascading protection onto a page is supplied to the relevant system message, making it possible to change the message for singular and plural. (r21510, bug 8664)
• Default automatic deletion summaries are now created for pages regardless of their length. (r21464, bug 9656)
• Special:Filepath now finds images on Commons as well as locally. (r21633, bug 9686)
• Admins can now
  create accounts for other users at any speed (the limit of 6 new accounts in 1 day still applies to non-admin users). (r21636, bug 9139
  )
• Image thumbnails are now of better quality. (r21411, bug 6193)
• Bureaucrats can now enter a summary in the log to explain why they have given adminship to a user. (r21683, bug 9693)
• The new message MediaWiki:Autoblockedtext was added; it displays instead of MediaWiki:Blockedtext if the block is an autoblock. (r21827, bug 8868)
• The <references /> tag now generates valid XHTML if there are no references on the page. (r22012, bug 9807)
• The layout of the create-an-account and preferences screens was reorganised to show the hints about a field directly below that field. (r22023, bug 9855)
• A CAPTCHA now appears after an incorrect password is entered when logging in, and other password security measures were taken (bug 9836) (see related story)
• <imagemap> can now contain 'anchor' links to a section of an article. (r21299, bug 8917)
• Redirects are now shown in categories; their appearance can be (and has been) customized to be different from non-redirect entries. (r22156)
• Diff displays are now correctly balanced. (r22204, bug 1229). (The method used to balance it was later updated for some browsers; Internet Explorer 6 and above and Safari will cause long lines to break, Gecko, Firefox and Opera will show scrollbars. (r22227, bug 1438))
• A new special page Special:Withoutinterwiki was added, that displays pages with no interwiki links. (bug 5820)
• When Special:Contributions and/or Special:Watchlist are lagged, a message displays showing how bad the lag is. (r22242, bug 9628)
• Several improvements were made to the query.php and api.php APIs:
  • A new query to find out the edit count of a user, according to the server's internally stored edit count data, was added. (r22095)
  • Old revisions can now be returned using the 'revid' parameter. (r22249, bug 9938)
  • The anonymous contributions from a particular IP address can be queried. (r22251, bug 9927)
  • Watchlist-related queries were re-enabled after being changed to use the correct databases. (bug 9482)
  • It is now possible to query for a list of images used on a page. (bug 9461)
  • It is now possible to limit results to edits made by a particular user. (r22368, bug 8772)
  • Error messages can now be rendered in formats other than xmlfm. (r22500, bug 10046)
• The 'border' keyword, which is used the same way as 'thumb' and 'frame', was added to image markup to give a new way to format an image. (r22358, bug 6072)
• New keywords for specifying spacing when symbols are being used in an unusual manner (such as \mathord) were added to the <math> tag markup. (r22478, bug 7993)

Configuration changes

• 'Tidy', which fixes the generated HTML from Wikipedia pages, has been upgraded; wikitext will now render differently in some cases to how it rendered before, [2] and such wikitext will need to be changed.
• It's now possible to use escaped forms of &rlm; (a right-to-left mark) written in right-to-left text (so as to cause the text to go right-to-left in the edit box too): ‏&רלמ;‏ and ‏&ررلم;‏ are now enabled on Wikimedia wikis. (Left-to-right marks should still be written in English as usual.) [3]
• User accounts where the password and username were equal can no longer log in. Such users will need to reset their password via email; if no email was provided, then only a developer can restore access to the account.
• It's now possible to transwiki pages from the English Wikipedia to Meta, with the help of a Meta admin. (bug 8557)
• A Table: namespace was created, after discussion at
  Wikipedia:Proposal for intuitive table editor and namespace and bug 2194, but it had no special properties. After more discussion, it was removed again
  . All pages that were in that namespace were moved into a pseudonamespace at the time, and now currently reside either in the Template: namespace or User: namespace.
• A hexadecimal number beginning "09 F9" was added to the spam blacklist to prevent it being spammed into articles. It has since been removed from the blacklist. [4]
• Use of the <source> tag (the Highlight extension), which places syntax highlighting on a sample of code, has been enabled. (bugzilla:7163) (Further changes were made to this feature: currently it doesn't link keywords (r22240, bug 9995), and the styling used was made customizable by editing MediaWiki:Geshi.css (r22308, bug 9951).)
• Non-autoconfirmed users can now reupload over files they uploaded themselves. (r21943, bug 5057)

Other technology news

• A read-only WAP version of Wikipedia has been set up at http://en.wap.wikipedia.org.
• A new version of the search feature is being tested at http://ls2.wikimedia.org/ (loaded with some old English Wikipedia search data for testing); feedback would be appreciated.
• Several new Wikimedia wikis were created (Kabyle Wikipedia, Italian Wikiversity, Hakka Wikipedia) and two were closed (Kanuri Wikipedia and Low Saxon Wikiquote).

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.
• Lists of redirects and new default names (possibly even containing spaces) for the Special: namespace are being sought, even for English-language projects; please post any suggestions you might have on mw:Special page names.

The

.

The committee is also considering whether to lift

), and instead to impose probation and a revert parole, without a full hearing. Currently, voting stands at 5/0/0/1, but some editors have expressed concerns over whether it is appropriate to deal with the case by summary motion.

Closed cases

• revert parole
  .

• Henrygb: A case filed by David Gerard alleging that administrator Henrygb (talk · contribs) had used sockpuppets disruptively. As a result of the case, Henrygb was desysopped, limited to one account, and banned from Wikipedia until he addresses the committee's concerns.

Evidence phase

• Community sanction noticeboard
  .

• revert warring
  .

• Abu badali: A case alleging that Abu badali (talk · contribs) has disruptively tagged non-free images for deletion, even when a valid fair-use justification exists, and has harassed editors who have complained about this behavior. Abu badali denies the allegations.

• Lewis Libby
  article.

• without prejudice in part due to inactivity of Ghirlandajo (talk · contribs
  ), who was listed as a party in the new case.)

• attribution, on "articles on paranormal and pseudoscientific topics", such as parapsychology and Electronic voice phenomenon
  .

Voting phase

• incidents noticeboard
  . Kirill Lokshin has proposed remedies imposing no sanctions but calling on the parties to enter into mediation, as well as a finding of fact noting the lack of reliable evidence in the case, all of which have the support of four arbitrators. However, voting on principles regarding the posting of private e-mails is split.

• TingMing: A case involving the actions of TingMing (talk · contribs). Ideogram (talk · contribs) alleges that he has engaged in "controversial edits", edit warring, incivility, and possibly sockpuppetry. TingMing denies the allegations, and alleges incivility on the part of Ideogram. Kirill Lokshin has proposed a remedy banning TingMing for one year, which has the support of three arbitrators, but is opposed by Blnguyen.

• Community enforceable mediation
  , but the mediation broke down after Tajik was alleged to have edited through sockpuppets while claiming to be away and unavailable for the mediation. Remedies have been proposed banning Tajik either indefinitely or for one year (which have the support of four arbitrators), and placing E104221 on revert parole (with the support of one arbitrator).

• Transnistria: A case involving the actions of MariusM (talk · contribs) and William Mauco (talk · contribs) on Transnistria-related articles. MariusM alleges that Mauco (who has not made a statement because he is blocked) has engaged in sockpuppetry, edit warring and other misconduct. Fred Bauder has proposed remedies, with the support of four arbitrators, banning MarkStreet (talk · contribs), William Mauco (talk · contribs), MariusM (talk · contribs) and EvilAlex (talk · contribs) indefinitely from any editing related to Transnistria. Alternative proposals indefinitely banning them from the project have the support of two arbitrators, plus one "second choice".

• Zeq-Zero0000: A case involving the actions of Zeq (talk · contribs) and Zero0000 (talk · contribs). Zero alleges that Zeq has engaged in POV-pushing, while Zeq alleges that Zero has misused administrative tools in blocking him, the case in particular involving the question of whether probations, article bans, etc. can be enforced by involved admins. The arbitrators have considered several different versions of a principle covering to what degree involved administrators may enforce probation; none yet has majority support. A majority (between nine and eleven) of the arbitrators have voted to advise Zero0000 not to take further administrative actions against Zeq, including enforcement of probation, and to admonish Zero0000 that editors who are not restricted in their editing of a page or area are entitled to be accorded good faith and be treated with respect and courtesy. Arbitrator Fred Bauder proposed banning Zeq from editing articles related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but no other arbitrator has voted in support, and four have opposed.