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Volume 2, Issue 46 13 November 2006 About the Signpost
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Full accessibility, dramatic growth reported for Chinese Wikipedia ArbCom elections: Information on Elections
Report identifies Wikipedia as a leader in non-US traffic News and notes: Board passes four resolutions, milestones
Wikipedia in the News Features and admins
Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News The Report on Lengthy Litigation
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Full accessibility, dramatic growth reported for Chinese Wikipedia

By Michael Snow, 13 November 2006

A month after the rest of Wikipedia was unblocked in mainland China, the Chinese-language version, which had remained partially blocked, now appears to be generally reachable. During this period the Chinese Wikipedia has also experienced significant growth in articles and the number of new users joining the project.

Andrew Lih, who has been tracking the availability of Wikipedia in the aftermath of October's partial unblock (see archived story), reported Friday that over the previous 24 hours, the Chinese Wikipedia was widely accessible in the People's Republic of China again. This included several ISPs that were already allowing access to other Wikipedia languages, such as English, but had been continuing to block the Chinese-language version. (Around the same time as the unblock, Shizhao reported on the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list that the https connection to Wikimedia servers, previously used as one potential circumvention method, had been blocked in China.)

Growth follows unblocking

In a follow-up, Lih noted that the number of new users registering on the Chinese Wikipedia had gone up significantly after the partial unblock on October 10, with an even bigger spike coming after the full unblock. At the latest rate of increase, Chinese was adding contributors faster than any Wikipedia language but English. Lih called the increase "exciting" but also pointed out that it would test the community's ability to absorb this volume of newcomers.

This spike in interest may have been helped by, and also contributed to, another factor as well. The growth since the partial unblocking helped the Chinese Wikipedia surge past 100,000 articles this past weekend. This makes Chinese the twelfth language for which Wikipedia has passed that milestone.

A sustained increase in participation from the PRC would help the Chinese Wikipedia compensate for the factors that have hindered its growth up till now. Lih indicated that while the block was in place, the mix of contributors to the Chinese Wikipedia was roughly 1/4 from Hong Kong, 1/4 from Taiwan, and the rest from a mixture of locations with Chinese-speaking populations (Singapore, Malaysia, the United States, Canada, and those from the PRC who could circumvent the block). And even in the unblocked areas, country data from Alexa suggests that Wikipedia's popularity has been affected by the block. Wikipedia is currently #45 in web traffic for Hong Kong and #94 in Taiwan, compared to being in the top twenty or even ten for most other countries.

Lih added the tidbit that New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was in Beijing over the weekend "extolling the virtues of Wikipedia" in an appearance at the Bookworm Cafe to promote his latest book, The World Is Flat. Influential support like this may have played a role in the unblocking, as Fortune recently reported that a well-connected ally wrote to PRC officials about a week before the initial unblock, helping to convince them of Wikipedia's neutrality.


ArbCom elections: Information on Elections

By Ral315, 13 November 2006
December 2006 ArbCom elections
A Signpost series
Nov. 6 Campaigns begin
Nov. 13 Election information
Nov. 27 Candidates, part one
Dec. 4 Elections begin, candidates, part two
Dec. 11 Mid-election report
Dec. 18 Elections end
Dec. 26 New arbitrators appointed
Jan. 15 Arbitrator interviews

This week, the Signpost takes a look at the process for, and other information on this year's ArbCom elections.

This year's elections to the Arbitration Committee will be held from December 4 through December 17. At press time, 26 users had presented themselves as candidates; the deadline for submitting oneself is December 1. Candidates for the Arbitration Committee must have made at least 1,000 edits by October 1.

It is anticipated that the election will be conducted in a similar manner to that of last year's elections (which itself was based on the requests for adminship process). All votes are public, and users can either support or oppose a user.[1] Prior elections had used approval voting, but Jimbo Wales had expressed interest in using an open method. In response to questions over which method would be used this year, Jimbo replied:

I have no objection in principle to a secret ballot, but the standard wiki voting system is much more in line with our traditions and appears to produce better results. When we used [private voting], we saw a significant amount of trolling and negative campaigning. ... Additionally, even though [private voting] is theoretically "approval voting", the fact of the matter is that people have tended to use it incorrectly (in my opinion) leading to very low rates of approval. Wiki voting tends to produce high levels of support, and this is important for the confidence and credibility of the committee.[2]

After the public has voted, Jimbo will select users with at least 50% support. In practice, Jimbo has generally appointed by percentage of support, with minor exceptions. Last year, with eight open seats, Jimbo appointed the top eight users by percentage, while also adding three new seats. To these new seats, he appointed three incumbent arbitrators (James Forrester, Fred Bauder, and Jayjg), all of whom had received at least two-thirds support in the elections. According to Jimbo, the choices were made "in the interests of expanding the committee and maintaining continuity".[3]

As in last year's election, voters must have registered before October 1, and made at least 150 edits by December 4, in order to be eligible to vote. Some users suggested a higher limit, while others suggested a lower limit; discussion on changing the limit was eventually dropped.

In other election-related news, arbitrator Sam Korn announced that he would not be running for re-election this year,[4] leaving at least four seats with no running incumbent. The Epopt and Theresa Knott had previously announced their intention not to run, and one seat up for re-election is vacant. Jayjg has not publicly announced whether he intends to run again.

Notes

  1. ^ "Neutral" sections were also used, albeit in just a few cases, in the January elections.
  2. ^ Comment by Jimbo Wales, November 8, 2006.
  3. ^ Arbcom Committee announcement made by Jimbo Wales, January 23, 2006.
  4. ^ Confirmed by edit made by Sam Korn, November 8, 2006.



Report identifies Wikipedia as a leader in non-US traffic

By Michael Snow, 13 November 2006

A new report last week from traffic analysis firm comScore showed that among the busiest sites on the Web, Wikipedia is one of the leaders in drawing its traffic from outside the United States. The report had Wikipedia tied with Google for the highest percentage of unique visitors from outside the US.

Both Wikipedia and Google have 79.8% of their visitors coming from outside the US, according to comScore. Previous evidence has shown that in a number of countries, Wikipedia's popularity is even greater than in the US. For example, Alexa indicates that Wikipedia is the 9th-most-popular site in the US, but 4th in Germany. However, this is one of the first systematic external analyses to confirm the relative strength of Wikipedia popularity on a global basis.

The comScore report, which covers the month of September, studied the top 25 websites in terms of unique US visitors (comScore is based in the US, but has lately been expanding its services to offer reports covering the global internet). Despite the US-oriented sample, 14 of the 25 had more unique visitors outside the US than in, and 12 of 25 had more than half their page views from outside the US.

In terms of the share of page views, Wikipedia came in behind Google, but ahead of all the other sites listed. Wikipedia's percentage of page views from outside the US was at 82.4% (Google had 89.1%). Microsoft, a close third when it comes to unique visitors (79.0% outside the US), was still in third place but further back with respect to page views, at only 75.4%.

Wikipedia was also exceptional in having a higher percentage of non-US page views than the percentage of unique visitors from outside the US. Aside from Google, the only other sites with the same pattern were Lycos (which has non-US ownership) and the Monster network of job sites. Overall, comScore ranks Wikipedia 11th in the number of unique visitors from the US, but 6th worldwide.


News and notes

By Flcelloguy, November 13, 2006

Board passes four resolutions

The Board of Trustees, coming off a reorganization and retreat earlier this month, passed four resolutions on Wednesday, November 8. The first resolution authorizes the creation of a new events committee, to be developed by Board member Tim Shell. Another resolution, meanwhile, authorizes the creation of a group "to assess and later manage Wikimedia Foundation domain names." This resolution comes after increased reports of cybersquatting on potential Wikimedia domain names, and the use of such legitimate-sounding domain names to spread viruses (see archived story). The third resolution authorizes the creation of a committee, led by Brad Patrick, Oscar van Dillen, and Jan-Bart De Vreede, to formulate a process in the search for a permanent executive director; Patrick currently serves as the Foundation's legal counsel and interim executive director. The final resolution summarizes the Board's retreat in Frankfurt, Germany. Among the topics discussed were the resignation of Board member Tim Shell, effective at the end of the year, Wikimedia's expansion, and another face-to-face meeting for the entire Board.

Wikizine and Wikipedia Weekly

Wikizine, a newsletter in blog format about Wikimedia Foundation projects, published its 50th issue this week, having now been active for a full year. In contrast with The Wikipedia Signpost, which focuses on the English Wikipedia, the Wikizine aims to cover news relevant to the larger Wikimedia community, not any specific project.

Meanwhile, another source of Wikipedia news is the recently launched podcast Wikipedia Weekly, a project launched by Tawker and Fuzheado. It has completed four weekly episodes so far, with more in production, and also released a special midweek podcast about the German article-writing contest (see archived story), along with an interview with Larry Sanger of Citizendium.

Briefly


Wikipedia in the news

By Trödel, November 13, 2006

Influence of Wikipedia

Several articles discussed the influence of Wikipedia. In What does Wikipedia say about you, Law.com advises readers to monitor Wikipedia's article about their firm and prominent members because of the influence Wikipedia has. The Dallas Morning News reported on Google's ranking criteria and the results that make Wikipedia articles and shopping sites appear first in results list. In an editorial released by opinioneditorials.com, Rex Curry reports on the references Wikipedia makes to Curry's own research in an apparent attempt to use Wikipedia to bolster his credibility. In an email from Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, Wales asked Wikipedians to carefully verify the referenced articles.

Reputation of Wikipedia

The New Haven Register reports in Academia split on free-for-all Wikipedia that students should be "skeptical about the content, but people should be skeptical about all the content they read..." A prank that changed the president of Kazakhstan to Borat was highlighted in a short article by Digital Spy.

Wales interviewed and honored

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was the topic of articles in two major UK newspapers. The Telegraph carried a very long article, titled Wiki's World discussing the unlikely success story, the varying quality level of different articles, the issues involved in the biographies of living persons, and other topics. The Guardian reported on an interview of Wales (including an audio file of excerpts of the interview) where Wales answered questions about Wikipedia's success, his initial vision of the project and the dynamics of the Wikipedian community. Wales was also given the "Visionary Achievement" award by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum. In a more lighthearted vein, Wales played the 'Not My Job' game on the November 4, 2006 NPR quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Wales was asked three obscure questions originating from Wikipedia articles and got none of them correct.

Wikipedia processes generate coverage

Deleted Wikipedia articles also have generated minor media coverage. Ars Technica covered the deletion of NPA Theory of personality; and Gawker.com covered the deletion of the "Internet It Girl" article and how some rejected Wikipedia articles live on.

Continuing coverage

The following topics in prior "In the news" coverage continued to generate media reports:

Wikipedia as source


Features and admins

By Ral315, 13 November 2006

Administrators

Eleven users were granted admin status via the Requests for Adminship process this week: Future Perfect at Sunrise (nom), Lostintherush (nom), EVula (nom), AnonEMouse (nom), Rockpocket (nom), Shyam Bihari (nom), Husond (nom), Trialsanderrors (nom), Cholmes75 (nom), Femto (nom), and Dalbury (nom).

Featured content

Thirteen articles were promoted to featured status last week: Dundee (nom), Alain Prost (nom), Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (nom), Extratropical cyclone (nom), Great Fire of London (nom), Stegosaurus (nom), Bette Davis (nom), West Wycombe Park (nom), Lead(II) nitrate (nom), Fin Whale (nom), Girl Scouts of the USA (nom), Basiliscus (nom), and Hurricane Fabian (nom).

Five articles were de-featured last week: Emacs, F-35 Lightning II, Sid McMath, House of Lords, and Speech synthesis.

No portals reached featured status last week.

Two lists were featured last week: List of Telecaster players and List of countries by Human Development Index.

The following featured articles were displayed last week on the Main Page as Today's featured article: Eric A. Havelock, Virtuti Militari, Concerto delle donne, Karen Dotrice, Supreme Court of the United States, Leonhard Euler, and Spyware.

The following featured pictures were displayed last week on the Main Page as picture of the day: Wide-body aircraft, Weedy sea dragon, Mallard, Giza pyramid complex, American Bison skulls, Comet Hale-Bopp, and Dingle Peninsula.

Eleven pictures were featured last week:

House Sparrow

Regensburg

Göttingen

Erg Chebbi

Ambrosian Iliad

Battle of the Somme (1916)

Chipmunk

Ferrofluid

Zabriskie Point Panorama

Lemon

Movable type


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Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News

By Simetrical, November 12, 2006

Since the last edition

Since the last edition of the technology report, there have been a number of noteworthy changes to software and server configuration. Most significantly, the AntiSpoof extension (written by Neil Harris in Python and translated to PHP by Brion Vibber) has been enabled on all Wikimedia sites. It is now impossible to register usernames that are too similar to ones already registered on the wiki. Due to concerns that the restrictions were too harsh, they were relaxed less than a day before press time, and discussion is ongoing on the mailing list as to what changes exactly should be made to the code to strike the right balance between false positives and false negatives.

Nick Jenkins, Simetrical, Evan Prodromou, Andrew Garrett, and Jason Richey have become developers and now have general-purpose access to Subversion.

Additionally, various new features were added, including:

  • The @ character is now forbidden in usernames, with Brion Vibber having blacklisted it in r16658. The original concern raised in bug 6849 was that a common cause of unneeded blocks was users signing up with e-mail addresses as their names, against the English Wikipedia's policy. Brion did not comment on that concern, but rather said that the symbol "interferes with multi-database tools and was meant to be banned years ago". The ban takes effect on every wiki running the MediaWiki software package, including all Wikimedia Foundation wikis.

    Users who already had names with the @ symbol in them will be permitted to log in for the time being, but at some point in the indefinite future it's possible that they'll be renamed. The similar-looking ＠ symbol (Unicode character FF20, "full-width commercial at") is not banned.

  • Dozens of new mathematical symbols have been added for <math> tags, all committed by Jens Frank but many of the patches written by Carl Fürstenberg. The added functions are too numerous to list here, but were added in response to bugs 4528, 7749, and 7774, which contain complete lists in the form of patches. Fürstenberg and Frank also fixed a bug in the display of uppercase Greek letters in mathematical formulas, and another bug relating to the syntax of underbraces and arrays.
  • The edit summary box was expanded to 80% of available screen width by Nick Jenkins in r16926. It can be changed back to something closer to its previous form by adding the line #wpSummary { width: 360px } to Special:Mypage/monobook.css (or another skin as appropriate), although that might not be precisely the previous width.
  • A bug that caused the horizontal bars in section headings to visibly pass through floated tables in Monobook was fixed by Simetrical in r16956. This will cause white backgrounds to appear inappropriately on certain tables in wikis (such as the English Wikipedia) that have made incomplete changes to the background colors of some pages. Local administrators can fix inappropriate backgrounds by modifying their wiki's MediaWiki:Monobook.css page.
  • Error messages for misuse of <ref> and <references> tags have been made less technical and more descriptive by Simetrical in r16960 (bug 6554).
  • In response to abuse of the password reminder by blocked IP addresses that repeatedly requested password reminders for other users to harass them (bug 6427), Brion Vibber removed the ability for blocked IP addresses to request passwords in r17147. (Apparently 69.50.208.4 requested thousands of passwords for various users over the course of days. Sysop Jaranda reported receiving almost a thousand password reminders from that IP in a week.)
  • A new extension by Dirk Beetstra, Chemistry, was added to the repository by Rotem Liss in r16831. The extension has not yet been enabled on any Wikimedia site, but may eventually permit easier formatting of chemical formulas.
  • The 'w' and 'd' shortcut keys now no longer have conflicting uses (bug 2241). 'd' had been used for "show changes" in some languages, conflicting with "delete", and on edit pages 'w' was used both for the "watch this page" checkbox and the "watch" tab. In r17118, Simetrical changed all languages' "show changes" shortcut to 'v' (which the English shortcut has been for some time), and set 'w' to refer only to the checkbox on edit pages.
  • Minor edits by bots to talk pages no longer trigger the "you have new messages" notice (bug 3224), as of r17281 by Andrew Garrett.
  • When using named <ref> tags, the one containing the contents of the reference no longer needs to be first (bug 5885). This may help alleviate complaints that lengthy references clutter articles' wikitext and make it difficult to read. Patch is thanks to Phil Boswell, committed by Andrew Garrett in r17382.
  • It is now possible for administrators to disable autoblocks when blocking a username (bug 1294). Andrew Garrett committed a patch in r17338.

This week

The only significant software improvement made this week was retroactive autoblocking (bug 5149), added in r17486 by Andrew Garrett. When a user is blocked, the last IP address that they edited from will be immediately blocked. Previously, it was possible for a blocked user to log out without editing anything and then edit anonymously; this would only be stopped by an autoblock if the user attempted to edit a page before logging out. As an added bonus, CheckUser is now much faster, due to the indices that this modification required.

The Wikimedia Commons now allows users to specify that they should receive e-mail notification for changes to their talk page there, like Meta. (bug 7870, enabled by Brion Vibber)

A number of minor tweaks were made to the interface this week:

  • Two grammatical errors in English messages were fixed. (bug 7826, r17472 and r17474)
  • Edit summary reminders are no longer displayed for null edits (edits which change nothing and do not appear in revision histories), for users with this option enabled. (bug 5365, r17475 by Andrew Garrett)
  • When viewing a diff, minor edits are now marked as such next to their edit summaries. (bug 5936, r17476 by Andrew Garrett)
  • Error messages for uploading of files from URL (not currently enabled on Wikipedia) were improved. (bug 7820, r17478 by Simetrical and Nick Jenkins)
  • The block log now states whether a block has autoblocks enabled or not. (bug 7833, r17491 by Andrew Garrett)
  • Media files have their own heading on category pages. (bug 3687, r17554 by Simetrical)
  • Autoblocks now block account creation if the block that they resulted from had that bit set (r17605; r17606 by Andrew Garrett.

Some changes were made to non-English messages. Internationalization help is always appreciated! See m:Localization statistics for how complete the translations of languages you know are.

  • Cédric submitted a correction to the Occitan language talk namespaces in bug 7810. Brion Vibber changed them in r17446 from "discutida" to the more correct "discussion".
  • An improvement to Upper Sorbian language pluralization was submitted by Dundak@post.cz in bug 7835 and committed by Rotem Liss.
  • Håvard Wall submitted a long list of changes to the Norwegian language messages in bug 7856, correcting spelling errors and poor grammar. The changes were committed by Rotem Liss in r17522.
  • AlefZet submitted updates to Kazakh language messages in bug 7859. The changes were committed by Rotem Liss in r17525 and r17537.
  • Cédric submitted a correction to the Occitan language's time format, committed by Rotem Liss in r17540.
  • Cédric submitted a correction to the Occitan user and user talk namespaces, which were changed from Utilisator to Utilizaire and Discussion Utilisator to Discussion Utilizaire by Rotem Liss in r17543.
  • Shinjiman submitted an update for the Cantonese language in bug 7869, which Rotem Liss committed in r17536.
  • kaikkd submitted an update for Japanese messages in bug 7882. Andrew Garrett committed the update in r17562.


The Report On Lengthy Litigation

By David Mestel, 13 November 2006

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

Closed cases

  • Ulritz: A case involving the actions of Ulritz and Rex. Rex alleges that Ulritz has engaged in a variety of disruptive behaviour, and shows a strong German nationalist bias. Various other editors allege that Rex has also engaged in a certain amount of disruption, and shows a certain Dutch nationalist bias. As a result of the case, Ulritz and Rex Germanus were placed on revert parole and probation for one year.
  • Vivaldi: A case involving the actions of Vivaldi on Jack Hyles and related articles. Arbustoo alleges that Vivaldi has removed "cited criticism" from the article, as well as harassment, incivility and edit warring. However, an anon IP, 205.157.110.11 accuses Arbustoo of removing comments from AfDs. As a result of the case, various articles edited by Vivaldi and Arbustoo were placed on article probation, with the intention of removing poorly sourced material, and both contributors were warned against edit-warring.

New case

Evidence phase

Voting phase

  • Protecting children's privacy: A case involving a policy proposal on the Wikipedia:Protecting children's privacy page. The committee is being asked to make a ruling as to the consensus requirements for the adoption of new policy. Fred Bauder has proposed remedies establishing the right of children to edit on Wikipedia if they do not disclose their age, but that if they do the information should be deleted.
  • Bowling for Columbine: A case involving the actions of Schrodinger82 and others on the Bowling for Columbine article, and in particular his disputed removal of some criticism of the film. Fred Bauder has proposed a remedy, supported by Dmcdevit, banning him from the article for one year.
  • Pseudoscience: A case involving the actions of ScienceApologist, Ian Tresman and others, involving the insertion and removal of so-called "pseudoscience" on various articles. Fred Bauder has proposed various remedies, most of which were opposed by Dmcdevit and Charles Matthews, but among those supported or not yet voted on are remedies placing Tommysun on probation, and banning Elerner from various articles.
  • Jean-Thierry Boisseau: A case involving the actions of Jean-Thierry Boisseau on List of major opera composers. Various users accuse him of "a course of bullying, personal attacks, and generally making things awful for all contributors". He strenuously denies the allegations. Remedies have been proposed banning Boisseau and others attributed with Musik Fabrik from editing articles relating to their work, and placing Boisseau on probation and civility parole.
  • Rachel Marsden: A case involving the actions of Arthur Ellis, Rachel Marsden, Bucketsofg and others on the Rachel Marsden page. Marsden and Ellis allege that the page contains inaccurate and libellous material, and that this has been protected on the page by various admins. In response, others allege that Ellis has engaged in edit warring on the page. Fred Bauder has proposed remedies, mostly supported by Charles Matthews banning Arthur Ellis for one day, permitting articles relating to Rachel Marsden to be stubbified, as well as other measures.
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