Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2013-10-02

WMF signals new grantmaking priorities

In what will be remembered as a game-changing week for Wikimedia grantmaking, the Foundation's executive director, Sue Gardner, published a forthright and in places highly critical statement, Reflections on the FDC process, and grantmaking staff revealed that the WMF will significantly strengthen its targeting of optimal impact in funding. These clear signs of the Foundation's intention to shift grantmaking strategies come just after 11 WMF entities placed on-wiki their applications for the October round of Funds Dissemination Committee allocations—the first of two rounds in the 2013–14 financial year in which the combined maximum budget will be US$8M. (The FDC is the volunteer committee, supported by a team of WMF specialist staff, that administers annual grants to chapters and other eligible entities.) The FDC also published the annual report for its first year of operation, 2012–13.

Straight talking from the executive director

Sue Gardner's statement emphasised the successes of the new system, but went on to express significant concerns about how the WMF's affiliated entities are developing: "too large a proportion of the movement's money is being spent by the chapters [whereas] the value in the Wikimedia projects is primarily created by individual editors: individuals create the value for readers, which results in those readers donating money to the movement. ... I am not sure that the additional value created by movement entities such as chapters justifies the financial cost".

While stating her confidence in all FDC members, Gardner wrote: "I am troubled by the FDC being disproportionately chapters-centric, and my concern increased rather than decreasing following the 2013 FDC member elections, which resulted in the two open FDC seats being filled by chapters Board members. ... the FDC process, dominated by fund-seekers, does not as currently constructed offer sufficient protection against

Gardner's comments were, in part, reinforced and extended in presentations of unusual candour by FDC staff at the Foundation's regular Metrics Meeting last Thursday, streamed live and now available on YouTube (starting at about 37 minutes). WMF senior director of grantmaking, Anasuya Sengupta, said that analysing the impact of grants will be a priority in the coming year. One of her main points concerned the asymmetry in chapter allocations: "Last year, of the $5.65M we gave out, about $3M went to three chapters: Germany, France, and the UK. ... there are questions to be asked by all of us around where's the money going, for what, to whom, and how are our individual contributors being supported as best as we can".

Katy Love, the FDC's senior program officer, pointed out that the FDC guidelines generally allow a maximum annual increase of 20% in the funds allocated to any one chapter. Yet most of the 11 applicants are asking for considerably greater increases: Germany, the largest recipient—which already has access to generous levels of funding from German donors—is asking for 36% more ($2.43M). The UK's claim is up 32% from last year, Argentina's 34%, Switzerland's 38%, Austria's 41%, Serbia's 111%, Israel's 204%, and India's 401%. Only the bids from the Netherlands (up 20%) and Sweden (up 21%) were within the guidelines. This will present the FDC with "a very interesting process", Love commented.

Returning to the issue of asymmetry, the disparity between the allocations to the global south and north are more dramatic. Last year, Sengupta said, the global south received just 8% of WMF funding (from all sources, not just the FDC), with an average grant of $1554. The global north received 92% of the funds, and by the Signpost's calculation an average grant of $79,780. Despite this, reaching into the global south is a key priority for the Foundation. Asaf Bartov, head of WMF grants and global south partnerships, explained the rationale: "When our GS editorship is low, we are missing important voices, with different contexts, knowledge maps, hierarchies and categories." This leads to systemic bias from "the paucity of GS editors". More strikingly, Bartov pointed out that in terms of page visits "we are reaching 7% of the planet with our free knowledge – 7%! – so there's a way to go."

But the situation is complicated. In relation to grantmaking, he said, "it's actually hard to spend effectively in the global south. We are very eager to fund work in the global south, but it has actually been hard finding fundable projects that align with our global mission ... So that is a major component in the low number of funds that make it to the global south – it's not like we say 'no' a lot."

Lessons learned

So just what has the Foundation learned about the criteria for funding successful activities? Bartov first talked about a fundamental prerequisite:

"The sine qua non of most programs is a core of self-motivating active editors. Most of the things you want to do, most of the things chapters in the global north are doing, depend on this core. It can be as small as four or five people, but those people need to be actual active editors ... who edit because they like it, they enjoy editing Wikipedia or Commons, they get it, and they are inherently committed to our principles like NPOV; not people who are editing because there's a contest on and they want to win the laptop.

"Where that core doesn't exist, it's very hard to deploy any other type of program. If you want [a GLAM partnership] with the National Museum of Cameroon ... how are you going to deliver on what you promise the museum if you don't have local editors who will do the work – write the articles, show up to meet the curators. So this is the big, big challenge for which we don't have an answer: how do you grow such a core ... in a certain country? ... we're now cautious about active investment where there is not an active community—although it's still possible if you give us a really great idea."

The WMF's primary formula, Bartov said, is now that "growth happens when community and outside resources come together", although he pointed out that "we are in disagreement with some parts of the community, with some chapters, about this conclusion: some people think we should still do work where no community exists."

What has been learned more specifically, then? He listed six critical advances in the Foundation's understanding that will be of interest to all Wikimedians who are engaged in practical projects:

"Single-session, general-audience outreach has negligible impact everywhere (for example, just giving a single talk about Wikipedia to whoever shows up—the conversion rate to editors is tiny, and yet we keep doing it". This, he said, is distinct from multi-session programs, or very carefully selected audiences, which yield slightly better results.

"WMF contractors operating "on the ground" are too complicated and not effective enough ("we now only partner with grantees").

"Sustained attention to local communities yields actionable plans (a major focus in India and Brazil at the moment, which "has yielded actionable plans in those countries").

"WP Zero is effective, but it's still a challenge to get people to use the resource you make available".

"Just making offline resources [like software] available in the GS is not enough; distribution is the key".

What the WMF has been learning from its role in grantmaking appears to be leading to definite changes in its funding priorities and methodologies. While this is likely to be met with controversy in the movement, there will be inevitable implications for affiliated entities in terms of how they shape their own priorities and the way they achieve their goals. During the Metrics Meeting, Katy Love encouraged all interested members of the community to review and comment on the FDC applications.

Chapter governance under the spotlight

Recent news concerning a related issue—the standards of governance required of FDC grant recipients—was first raised in the Signpost two weeks ago. In that edition we linked to an anonymous tip-off on the Wikimedia India mailing list on 15 September. The post claimed that two returning members of the chapter's executive committee, Pranav and Karthik Nadar, were in the paid employment of a third, Moksh Juneja, who joined them as a new member at the August election. This information did not appear to have been disclosed to voters, despite the obvious potential for conflict-of-interest in having a block of three members in mutual employment relationships out of a total of nine members.

The incident took a new turn yesterday when Moksh Juneja confirmed the employment relationships "have ended / [are] in the process of ending", and denied that this had any connection with the anonymous tip-off. Former president of Wikimedia India Arjuna Rao Chavala served on the chapter's election committee for the August election; his current membership of the FDC means that this information is likely to be discussed on the Committee during the current round, in which the Indian chapter has applied for US$178k for a predicted total budget of $217k .

An additional point of debate may involve another matter raised in the same edition of the Signpost: the allegation by one candidate, Santosh M. Shingare, that the chapter's election committee had failed to release the list of eligible voters 21 days before the election as required by the chapter's rules. In making the allegation that he would no longer participate in the election, Shingare declared he would no longer participate as a candidate.

Two weeks ago, we also reported on a conflict-of-interest issue in Wikimedia UK—that the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR—a professional body for public relations practitioners in the UK) has appointed current Wikimedia UK Secretary Alastair McCapra as its new chief executive. WMF general counsel Geoff Brigham has just published an opinion that "if a substantive issue arises at CIPR with respect to Wikimedia or its projects, I understand that Alastair intends to recuse himself from discussion and decision and appoint someone else at CIPR to act as the final decision maker on that issue within CIPR to avoid any appearance of a conflict of duty of loyalty. Alastair would also recuse himself on the WMUK board from a discussion and decision on any issue concerning CIPR. If an issue is particularly contentious and critical to the very fabric of either organization, Alastair may need to make a decision of resignation to address the potential conflict on that question, but such decisions can be handled on an issue-by-issue basis. The mere possibility of such a scenario does not necessitate resignation today."

Chris Keating, Chair of the WMUK board, has posted this message: "If there is a widespread view that, even with the steps we've outlined, it's not in the charity's best interests for Alastair to continue, then we will listen to that. However since Alastair posted the details of how he will handle this situation, only 5 people (myself included) have taken part in the resulting discussion. Some have posted at some length and in strident terms, but I don't yet see the picture I would need to see to be persuaded we are taking the wrong course of action here."

Discussion continues at the WMUK water cooler, beneath Brigham's statement.

In brief

• Data security: On 3 October 2013 the WMF's deputy director and VP of engineering and product development, Erik Möller (Eloquence), revealed that there had been a four-month window between 29 May and 1 October 2013 in which the private user information (user email addresses, password hashes, session tokens, and last login timestamp) of 37,000 Wikimedia users had been accessible to some 228 individuals who had LabsDB access.

The LabsDB program, initiated in May, is intended to allow tool builders access to certain data from Wikimedia databases, data which is—or, in this case, should have been—automatically redacted before reaching tool builders. According to Möller, redaction failed in 30 databases owing to a schema incompatibility, allowing this user data to be read by anyone with a LabsDS account. Since this was caused by the addition of new wikis with different schemas (a column unused in earlier wikis was removed in the newer ones), affected wikis are only those added after May 2013. This means many smaller wikis, as well as Wikidata and Wikivoyage, were affected; the English Wikipedia and Commons were not.

There is no vetting process for who can become a LabsDS user. According to Krinkle: "anyone can sign up for an account and start developing software (within their own space)"; this means that anyone could also have accessed a read-only copy of the database, and therefore the personal information. The upshot is that the data could be used for illegitimate means (although, as Möller emphasises, there is no evidence that it has been).

Access to the data was revoked within 15 minutes of the bug report, and affected editors have been informed via email and required to change their passwords. People who use their Wikipedia password on multiple websites are urged to change their password on these other websites as well, preferably to a different password than the new one they choose here. According to staffer Marc-André Pelletier, in the future, the Wikimedia Foundation will add a layer of redundancy to the checks to prevent this from happening again.

• Wikimedia France: The chapter has announced that it has hired a new executive director, Nathalie Martin.
• Arbitrator resignation: English Wikipedia arbitrator NuclearWarfare has resigned with immediate effect. He is the third arbitrator to depart in this year.
• Quarterly update: The Quarterly update of the changes to the English Wikipedia's content policies has been released.
• Openings: Several positions related to the Wikimedia movement have opened or remain open, including a Software engineer for the mobile team, an Operations engineer for the WMF Labs, a Fundraising coordinator, and a Tester for Visual Editor.
• Australian politician copies Wikipedia: The Canberra Times has profiled an Australian representative who copied and pasted from Wikipedia and other online sources to report on a four-day trip to the United Kingdom.
• Editing Wikipedia for credit: The New York Times (among other sources) has reported on the University of California, San Francisco's offering of course credit to students for editing articles on diseases. The effort comes as a result of WikiProject Medicine's outreach to medical communities.
• Engineering report: The Foundation's engineering report for September has been published on-wiki, on the WMF's blog, and in summary form.
  
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2013-10-02

Bobby, Ben, Roger and a fantasia

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By Cdtew and Dank

fantasia exhibition in Tan-Tan, Morocco

is depicted in one of this week's new featured pictures

This Signpost "Featured content" report covers material promoted from September 22, 2013 through September 28, 2013.

Featured articles

Hurricane Nadine in 2012.

Six featured articles were promoted this week.

• Nintendo DSi (nom) by Ryūkotsusei. This handheld game console with two screens was first released in 2008 as an update to 2004's Nintendo DS. The Nintendo DSi XL, with a larger screen and overall size, was introduced in 2009. As of June 2013, Nintendo had sold over 41 million DSi and DSi XL units combined.
• Roger Norreis (nom) by Ealdgyth. Norreis, an abbot of Evesham who lived in England in the 12th and 13th centuries, was often embroiled in disputes with his colleagues and superiors. Despite being judged as energetic and enterprising, the abbot turned to making a tidy profit for himself through his religious office before being deposed by a papal legate.
• Bobby Gibbes (nom) by Ian Rose. Gibbes was an Australian fighter ace who scored at least 10¼ aerial victories during World War II. He served primarily in the Middle East and South Pacific, and after the war's conclusion, continued flying civilian aircraft, even going on to found an airline. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2004.
• Benjamin Disraeli (nom) by Tim riley and Wehwalt. Disraeli was a noted Conservative British prime minister, and the only one of Jewish descent. His stints in office were dominated by foreign policy issues. He also authored 18 works of fiction and 8 non-fiction books before his death in 1881.
• Hurricane Nadine (2012) (nom) by 12george1
  . The fourth longest-lived Atlantic cyclone on record, Hurricane Nadine lasted for 24 days in 2012. Nadine made two passes at the Azores, causing some damage on the island of Pico, before dissipating and causing heavy rainfall in the United Kingdom.
• Southern Rhodesia in World War I (nom) by Cliftonian. As a territory of the British Empire governed by the British South Africa Company, Southern Rhodesia contributed to the Allied war effort in World War I primarily by providing recruits to serve in the British Army. Although there was no conscription, more than 8,200 Rhodesian soldiers served, and more than 800 lost their lives in war operations.

Featured pictures

Two featured pictures were promoted this week.

• Hans Hillewaert and nominated by Tomer T
  . Pelagia noctiluca is a jellyfish found throughout the world in warm, temperate waters. Despite being known in Europe as the "mauve stinger", the jellyfish can be found in colorations varying from pink to golden yellow.
• Fantasia (culture) (nom) created by Priest Maxim Massalitin and nominated by Tomer T. A fantasia, also known as a lab el baroud ("the gunpowder play"), is an exhibition of horsemanship performed traditionally in Morocco. Symbolic of Berber and Arabic desert warfare, the fantasia culminates typically in a simultaneous discharge of antique guns.

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2013-10-02

Infoboxes: After the war

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By Neotarf

Editor's note: To go beyond the mere facts of cases, the "Arbitration report" invited several editors who participated in the recent Infoboxes case to comment on infoboxes: what they are, where new users can go to find out about them, specifications and protocols, best practices, and how the upcoming community discussion recommended by the Committee in the case decision should be framed.

The war is over, declared one music editor preparing to return to editing classical music articles in the wake of ArbCom's Infobox decision. The editor had spent two years away from music topics, "I could see I would get involved in this long-running controversy on infoboxes and it would be an unproductive waste of time."

Another music editor, who had stopped editing in June, and who asked not to be identified, told the Signpost that even though the

current guidelines

say infoboxes are neither required nor prohibited, and the committee cannot decide a content issue, the arbitrators did well with the case, by calling a halt to the disruption, and calling for a community discussion for clarification of the guidelines.

What was settled

"The decision to include an infobox in an article is a content decision," wrote arbitrator

WP:OWN

in the debate:

“

The use of an infobox in an article is a content decision, not a maintenance decision. They should be added as part of content creation; they should not be added systematically to articles.

”

Worm delineated the difference between "content creation" edits and "maintenance" edits. Maintenance tasks should not change the meaning of the article for the casual reader, he explained. These tasks include categorisation, stub sorting, adding wikilinks, formatting and stylistic changes such as number and position of headers or placement of images, and simple copy-editing such as grammar and spelling fixes.

Content creation would include addition and removal of text, images, tables, references and so on—and infoboxes—and should be done by an editor who has some knowledge of the subject.

Starter templates are fine, and general recommendations by a WikiProject are fine, says Worm, but editors should not go through a group of articles, adding infoboxes to each systematically.

A hasty RFC

Before the case had even been closed,

WikiProject Quality Article Improvement by Chedzilla, an alternate account of Ched

, who had initiated the original Infoboxes case request. The RFC drew immediate protests from music editors. The RFC should be in a neutral area, not on the pages of a project that was home to the two topic-banned editors, they said. The language of the proposal should be neutral. And the music editors were already exhausted by years of acrimony. Time was needed.

Arbitrator Carcharoth agreed: "My suggestion, for those who want to sort through their thoughts on this while they are still fresh, would be for people to make notes or mini-essays offline or in their userspace, and to leave articles and talk page discussions well alone for a bit. Don't rush into post-case discussions, but let things calm down, and find other things to do in the meantime. It's not like the issues are going to go away."

As a followup to this, the Arbitration report has compiled a partial listing of essays and previous discussion at the end of this report.

Framing the community discussion

"I don't think the discussions should be hurried", agreed

WikiData

needs to be taken into account; there will soon be more facts and stats than could reasonably fit in an infobox."

"Structuring the discussion is important", music editor Kleinzach told the Signpost. Kleinzach calls for a drafting committee of three or five members to structure the questions. Interested parties would submit topics to the committee and all meaningful questions would be included.

In the past, community discussions have been muddled, and issues have been conflated. The problems need to be separated, said Kleinzach, and detoxified, one by one. The discussion should distinguish between publishing issues and technical issues.

“

What I call ‘publishing' (copy-editing) issues are all about consistence, clarity and coherence, relevance, appropriateness, balance, and presentation. The following would need to be included: 1. position of infoboxes within articles, 2. size/text length of infoboxes in absolute/relative terms, 3. box/lead content relationship, 4. box/article content relationship, 5. collapsed or non-appearing fields and field names, 6. appearing field name rules, 7. linking and referencing within boxes, 8. rules on avoiding anachronism, 9. material exclusive to the box (i.e. not in the article), 10. illustrations, 11. use of technical, scientific and foreign languages, abbreviations etc. What I call technical issues include template coding and design, data formatting, extraction and re-use outside Wikipedia (metadata), development of smart boxes etc.

”

"Any future discussion needs to be much broader than that defined by ArbCom", Kleinzach told the Signpost. "Looking just at how infoboxes are ‘used‘ (i.e. inclusion/exclusion disputes on article pages), but not at how the templates are created, means concentrating on effects rather than causes. Fundamental issues about template design and MOS guidance should be faced."

Objections to infoboxes

Infoboxes have been controversial, explained Kleinzach, because they have often been edited behind the scenes, without content contributing editors being involved. The idea that there are two ‘stances', "pro-box" and "anti-box", is not really correct. "There is a spectrum. Objections to infoboxes have been localized, and focused on particular topics and particular infoboxes.

One particularly controversial infobox is the 'bio-box' or biographical infobox. Another infobox that received a particularly negative reaction from serious music editors was Musical artist infobox with anachronistic, pop music derived fields such as 'birth name', 'genres', 'occupations', 'labels', 'associated acts', and 'past members' —misapplied to classical music articles.

An example of a positive response to an infobox was the Template:Infobox classical composer, which according to Quiddity was the result of a 2010 discussion which clarified problem areas in the documentation, and has been uncontentiously used in a few articles.

"Rather than trying to force them on the unwilling," recommends Brian Boulton, "improve them by returning to their original principles ('a few key facts'). I have recently added an experimental infobox to an opera article I have written." The sample infobox proposal was intentionally introduced in a relatively low-profile opera article, to minimize controversy.

Monsterboxes

English Wikipedia infobox for Angela Merkel
Minister of the Environment
In office 17 November 1994 – 26 October 1998
Chancellor	Helmut Kohl
Preceded by	Klaus Töpfer
Succeeded by	Jürgen Trittin
Minister of Women and Youth
In office 18 January 1991 – 17 November 1994
Chancellor	Helmut Kohl
Preceded by	Ursula Lehr
Succeeded by	Claudia Nolte
Member of the Bundestag for Stralsund-Nordvorpommern-Rügen
Incumbent
Assumed office 2 December 1990
Preceded by	Constituency Created
Personal details
Born	Angela Dorothea Kasner (1954-07-17) 17 July 1954 (age 69) University of Leipzig
Signature

While there are a few uncompromising ‘pro-box' editors who believe there should be a box on every article, no-one has taken up the opposite position: that there should be no infoboxes at all, says Kleinzach, a music editor who has added hundreds of infoboxes to articles. "Unfortunately many current boxes are not fit for purpose because of poor design."

In particular, some 'monsterboxes' have been created with far too many fields, unfamiliar abbreviations etc. that are actually longer, bigger, more prominent and more difficult to read than the articles they are supposed to summarise."

German Wikipedia in particular is known for its minimalist approach to infoboxes. They are particularly unpopular on biographies. Even the article for Angela Merkel has no infobox, only a photo and signature (see above). In contrast, the infobox for Merkel's English Wikipedia page (right) would extend well past the fold in most browsers.

Loss of nuance

One of the major criticisms of infoboxes is the loss of nuance, when complex information about a subject is forced into an abbreviated infobox format.

"I feel strongly that it is poor form to use an infobox entry, which almost by definition is extremely short, to summarize situations which might be too complicated for a one word or short phrase, says SPhilbrick. "That is exactly what well-written prose is for—to explain nuance, in as many words as it takes to explain the issue."

The articles best suited to infoboxes, says Smerus, in an essay provided to the Signpost, may be in scientific and geographical topics. "The arguments over infoboxes seem to have occurred in articles relating to history, biography and music." Infoboxes may be particularly unsuited to liberal arts fields when they repeat information already available in the lead section of the article, are misleading or oversimplify the topic for the reader, or include a vast amount of irrelevant or inappropriate information from the article.

Smart boxes?

The metadata question may well be obsolete. If you Google La traviata , Giuseppe Verdi, and Johann Sebastian Bach, you will find that it now creates its own small infobox on the subject, even though none of the corresponding Wikipedia articles have infoboxes. [screenshot] Quipped one user, "The Google box is better than the WP ones!" Perhaps Google has spent time and money identifying what their customers want.

Appendix A: A crash course in infoboxes

Anyone who attempts to read any of the infobox discussions will quickly come up against some specialized terms.

What exactly is an infobox? A navbox? A template? A header or a footer? And where can new users turn to for assistance? Is there a place to "shop" for infoboxes, where you can see what is available and how it will look in a new article? The answer to the last question is no; apparently new users who are creating articles outside of a WikiProject have little to go on.

According to Kleinzach and Smerus, an infobox offers a quick summary of the article, sometimes with an illustration. It is normally in the right hand corner position. A navbox (navigation box) offers links to related articles, and is often found at the bottom of the page. All infoboxes are templates, but not all templates are infoboxes.

Quiddity provides a crash course in all things infobox and navbox, along with examples and links to the help files:

“

"Where can new users find out about infoboxes?" All in the sidebar navbox! {{ Infoboxwatch }} "What is the difference between an infobox, a header, a navbox, a footer?" Infoboxes – Use Template:Infobox as the meta-design. E.g. {{Infobox settlement}} Footer navboxes – Use Mathematics-footer}}, {{Evolution }} Sidebar navboxes – Use Template:Sidebar as the meta-design. E.g. {{General physics}}, {{Economics sidebar}} Header navboxes – Not used in articles, only in other namespaces. Erratic design. E.g. {{Help pages header}}, {{Village pump page header}}, etc Sidebar navboxes are complicated, and figure into my concerns about "collapsible sections". Back in the misty early days, they were intended to be very brief and focused (and were called an "WP:Article series") with usually 5–12 entries, e.g. {{History of Uganda}}, but since then, many have grown obese. E.g. {{Politics of the United Kingdom}} I suspect the large sidebars are generally unused by readers; partially because they're overwhelmingly large/dense, and partially because of the default-collapsed content (again, due to size). The sidebars (and footer navboxes) make sense to the people who build them [who are familiar with the entire topic's scope and breadth], and it's often difficult to convince them that a problem exists. There is never going to be a perfect answer to "how big" a navbox/category/Seealso section should be, hence they grow and split and grow again.

”

Note: The natural place to look is [[Wikipedia:Infoboxes]], but that is a redirect to [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Infoboxes]] which is of more interest to someone interested in designing a new infobox. There are also various options at Category:Infobox templates.

Appendix B: Previous discussions

Infoboxes

• Proposed Decision September 2013—the 66,392-word talk page, with proposals for framing the infobox discussion

Essays

• THRC: An essay on infobox issues, particularly the "upper right hand corner", provided to the Signpost by Smerus.
• Brianboulton, "Infoboxes: time for a fresh look?" Signpost, July 2013
• Disinfoboxes: "The disinfobox offers a competitive counter-article, stripped of nuance."
• Riggr Mortis's Wikipedia as database "As long as Wikipedia drifts from its origins as a tool for human learning to a second-rate quasi-database—apparently to the benefit of ADD-inducing tech companies—I will no longer participate as a volunteer. Neither should you."
• Quiddity: framing the discussion (Notes from Proposed Decision talk)
• Design solution proposal from Vibhabamba at the WMF.

RFCs

• April 2013 – discussion with multiple people in Ched's user space – machine readable data, advantages and disadvantages of infoboxes
• 2010 RFC on microformats
• Brianboulton's a sample infobox, a proposal introduced in a relatively low-profile opera article, L'Arianna, to minimize controversy. Discussion is ongoing.
• Classical music infobox-related discussions 2007–2010

Template deletion discussions

All infoboxes are templates, but not all templates are infoboxes. People create new ones unnecessarily all the time, hence many editors bring them to TFD to get them merged.

• Template Infobox journal, that generated a lot of discussion.
• Infobox soap character 2
• Infobox TaiLamTunnelENG
• And most of the current contents of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#To review
  
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2013-10-02

U2 Too

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By Mabeenot

Your source for

WikiProject News

• WikiProject Articles for Creation is holding a Backlog Elimination Drive this month with barnstars and brownies up for grabs
• The 2013 WikiCup has entered its final round
• With a variety of celebrations and observances coming up the next three months, the folks of WikiProject Holidays could use your help

Submit your project's news and announcements for next week's WikiProject Report at the Signpost's

WikiProject Desk

.

This week, we revisited the enthusiastic editors at

Miss Bono

.

What motivated you to join WikiProject U2? Have you contributed to any of the project's Good or Featured Articles?

Melicans: I've been a fan of U2 since I heard "Two Hearts Beat as One" a decade ago. I edited the U2 articles sporadically after joining Wikipedia, so when the first iteration of the project opened it was a natural thing to become part of. Over time the numbers dwindled to only about two or three active editors in the WikiProject, but with the recent push to rejuvenate it I am excited about what new blood can bring to these articles. I hope to be a part of that again in the near future. I've been a primary contributor to four Featured Articles in the project, and an additional six Good Articles; and I hope to add to both those categories in the future.

Pjoef: I have joined the WikiProject U2 in February 2008, but haven't been as active as I wanted to be. I first knew of this band when a LP dropped on my turntable, it was their debut album, Boy in late 1980, … and decided that "I Will Follow" this band with interest. The first impression is often the best impression, and Boy was followed by October (1981), War (1983), and The Unforgettable Fire (1984), just some favourites of mine. I am a long time member of the WikiProject U2, but, except for marginal and sporadic interventions, I have not contributed much to any of the project's best articles. Maybe one day some of our newest collaborative efforts will become featured articles.

TheOriginalSoni and Mark Miller are two of the no-members that helped me a lot) – we could activate it and revamp it. I wanted to say thank you to my mentor and Pjoef for their entire support. I've been involved in one Good Article, in fact, it was my very first article – with the help of several users – Morleigh Steinberg was promoted very fast to GA. Now Ironholds is making a full revision to Ali Hewson

to see if it can reach FA-Class.

How much has changed since we last visited the project three years ago? What are the project's current goals and initiatives? How have you kept the project's momentum going?

Miss Bono

's efforts to reactive the Project so that editors work together as one unit, rather than as individuals. The Project's goals will always remain the same; to share our love and knowledge of U2 with the world.

Miss Bono

in late 2012 – early 2013. In April 2013, there was a roll call, in order to keep the project up-to-date on our number of active members. Project's pages and portal have been redesigned and reorganized. Finally, after many years, a new newsletter has been published and other newsletters are in preparation. Also, there have been several good results in the main namespace: some articles have seen a marked improvement and new articles have been created while others are in the process of being published. We need to do much more, but the vast majority of the credit goes to Miss Bono, without her active participation, and the hard work she put into it, this would never have happened.

TFA on 9 August, two of the top importance articles were updated and we are working on an upcoming one. We have several things left to do, but that's a good start. Well, what else can I say? The goal is elevation

...

Are some eras of the band's existence better covered than others on Wikipedia? Has it been difficult to find sources for the production details of albums or tours that occurred years ago?

Melicans: There are definitely some eras that have more coverage. The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, arguably U2's best albums, have much more overall detail for their eras than, say, October or Pop. Half of our FAs and a hefty chunk of GAs come from those two albums alone. Because of their popularity it is not very difficult to find information on them, even though they are from the pre-internet era. Would "Mothers of the Disappeared" be FA if it was from The Unforgettable Fire? I really don't think it would; Fire may be one of their better known albums, but it simply isn't a Joshua Tree in terms of press coverage. There is always information to be found for the big songs ("Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Pride (In the Name of Love)", etc.), but for hidden gems like "Mothers", "Gloria", and even internet-age songs like "Original of the Species", that information can be very hard to come by; even for the most well-equipped U2 fan.

Pjoef: The project currently has eight featured articles but only two are from the “eighties”, and more precisely two songs: "One Tree Hill" and "Mothers of the Disappeared", both from the album The Joshua Tree (1987), which is itself a good article. All other albums released before The Joshua Tree are rated as "B-Class", except for October (1981), which has been assessed as C-Class. With the exception of the War Tour, which took place in 1982–1983 and is a good article, all articles about their tours until The Joshua Tree Tour are Start-Class articles. And that says it all! But the problem of finding source and materials for articles regarding albums and torus released before the “Internet era” (circa 1991 onwards) is not a problem that only affects our WikiProject, but it is common to many other projects and articles about music, entertainment, popular culture, and many other area.

Miss Bono: I think that Joshua and Achtung's eras are better covered than the others. The Joshua Tree was a decisive step for the band, it sets U2 in a high position in regard to their previous albums; several of U2s hits not all of them comes from that album: "With or Without You", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "Where the Streets Have No Name"; same happens with Achtung Baby. After Rattle and Hum, the band had been misunderstood, because of their foray into the American music, so at the end of Lovetown Tour they decided to "go away and... dream it all up again". The result was one of the best albums of the band – in my opinion – I guess that's why it is easier to find on-line sources about the two of them, and therefore they are better covered on Wikipedia. I do think that we at WikiProject U2 and editors in general must work towards covering others not so well known eras of the band as well, like in 1981 when October was released and U2 went through this "faith vs. being in a rock and roll band" conflict. It is good to have well covered gems like "One", "Still...", because when people who are not familiar with U2, comes looking for information about the band, they surely will look for those songs, but what about those who are already steeped themselves and want to go deeply into the band's career? What about those who wants to know about "Fire", "Kite", "A Man and A Woman", "Miami", "If You Wear That Velvet Dress" or "The Wanderer

"?, that's one of the goals I am personally pursuing.

WikiProject U2 also covers philanthropic ventures launched or supported by the band. Have you seen other music-related projects include philanthropy in their focus or is this unique to WikiProject U2? How is the format and focus of these articles different from the project's music-related articles?

Melicans: I don't know of any other musical WikiProject that includes philanthropic projects in their areas of focus. That isn't to say that WikiProject U2 is unique in this regard; there are obviously many philanthropic musicians and multiple ventures launched by them, and I admit that I've never really looked to see if other band or singer WikiProjects cover these ventures or not. If the WikiProject is unique in this regard among bands, it may be because this philanthropy has been so essential to U2's character since the mid-1980s (and yes, that means more than just Bono; every U2 member has been significantly involved in philanthropy). Not covering this aspect of U2, including the criticisms, would be detrimental.

remember that there are more Wikipedia's readers

than editors. Readers and editors often use Wikipedia as a starting point of their researches and studies expanding their knowledge and also the number of contributions to Wikipedia in the fields of their everyday life. And, as in everyday life, you cannot live on U2 alone.

Has the project run into any issues with

notability

with regards to U2-related subjects? What can be done to help the band's fans contribute to Wikipedia in constructive ways?

Melicans: Any issues with neutrality usually centre around the article for Bono. There used to be a criticism section in the article, but having that is as much a violation of neutrality as a section centred on recognition (which was also present). So both were merged into the most applicable pre-existing section, and I think that helped to give the article a more neutral balance. Articles on albums, songs, tours (so basically everything not-Bono) have rarely had issues with neutrality. Notability is certainly a more problematic issue for the WikiProject, and a few years ago most of the song articles were redirected to their respective parent albums because there was so little information available. That isn't to say that the coverage isn't out there; "Exit (song)" was one of the redirected articles, and it is now a GA that is not far from an FAC. If there are any fans reading this who would like to contribute, adding information to an article is never a bad thing! If there are fans out there who aren't reading this, we'd still like your help! Everyone reads Wikipedia, so try a little editing every now and then. It's fun! And taking an article from a stub to an FA is an incredibly rewarding experience.

NPOV dispute started in March 2011. It is a criticism or contorversy about its Criticism or Controversy section; in fact, a matter of controversy. Joking a part, no "notability" issues are known currently. U2's fans that want to contribute to Wikipedia (and to Wikipedia's articles related to U2) can ask for help at the project talk page or by contacting any of the active members of the project

— we would be glad to help in any way we can.

TheOriginalSoni, and Fylbecatulous, have done a lot of great work, and I am taking this opportunity to thank all of them for their help and support. Regarding fans of the band, I believe it is possible to be a fan and contribute to Wikipedia in constructive ways, believe me. We would like having fans sharing their knowledge with the world and helping us to cover U2 related topics. So, if you are out there and you are a fan and you would like to be part of this great adventure, do not hesitate we need you

. You can make the difference!

What are WikiProject U2's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?

Melicans: The number one need is constructive activity. We've done a lot of impressive work over the years, but WikiProject U2 is small in number and there is too much to do. So even the little things like fixing typos, formatting references, fixing dead links, and of course the ever-necessary addition of information, would be a huge help. Your efforts could be what we need to make "With or Without You", "One", or "Lemon" (just to throw an incredibly obscure song into the mix) into the FAs that they deserve to be.

FA-Class. At the moment, we have 67 articles rated as top or high importance; some of them list editors who are available to help with them and have specific "to-do" lists; you can find both of them in their talk pages. New contributor, and all other editors, are encouraged to contribute and review articles within the scope of the WikiProject U2, and also to share their thoughts, ideas, suggestions and concerns via discussions on talk pages. A to-do list for WikiProject U2 is also available. Please consider joining us, WikiProject U2 needs your help

!

Live8, EDUN, Chernobyl Children International, among several others. Looking for free pictures on-line and adding them to the articles. There are so many things left to do. We need your input

, your enthusiasm and your ideas. Let's start turning stubs into FA-Class stuffs!

Next week, we'll head off on a road trip in the outback. Until then, take a pit stop in the archive.

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